Wednesday 4th September 2013 - Bourne End to Marlow

Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me!  After walking the dog and flying the pigeon we set off for Marlow.  Did I say that our heron has morphed into a pigeon?  Well it has.  We picked up a little tiny bundle of fluff several days ago. With its huge beak, long legs and neck we could be forgiven the mis-identification!  Anyway we became suspicious because as the days went by our heron chick became more and more pigeon-like...
..
Found a lovely mooring in Marlow just before the lock and I did a reccy into town to find the George and Dragon which Christine had booked for lunch. I returned to find the boat bedecked with balloons and 60th banners. Ho hum it didn't matter after all you cant feel self conscious if you had just walked through the centre of Marlow wearing a large 'I am 60' badge chasing a chihuahua on a lead!

Met Mum, Chris & James for a lovely meal except the kitchen forgot our order and they came back to the boat briefly afterwards before setting off for home.  Son Mark and his girlfriend Abi came over in the evening and we went for another 'light' meal which was great.  Kept things simple and returned to the George and Dragon again.  True to form they again forgot our order, thie time due to a fault with the till.  Nevertheless a lovely evening.  Returning to the boat I was ordered to sit *eyes forward* and suspected a birthday cake was to be produced.  Behind me Mark had managed to stuff no less than 60 candles onto a chocolate cake - respect!  I suspected there were a lot of candles when I could feel an intense heat on the back of my neck.

The cake was brought around for me to admire (admiration given) and I was asked to blow out the candles.
Now being a none smoker I have a decent set of lungs and put down my inability to blow out the candles to the fact that there were 60 of them, fast becoming a conflagration!  Then a suspicion - are these magic candles that wont blow out?  Ah yes they might be.....  Annie managed to avoid using the fire blanket and extinguished the bonfire with a wet tea towel that any air raid warden faced with an incendiary would have been proud of..  After the smoke had cleared we were able to cut the top half of the cake off and eat the rest - warm gooey chocolate - lovely!