Sunday 19th. May

It's other members of the family left to post tonight....Mother has decided that she's having a rest.

We could state the obvious....the weather's been pants today....but then everyone in Jersey will have already known that....and if you weren't in Jersey, then you were luckier than us. We all had plans for today, and they quickly all got put in the bin. Even Dan didn't get to go boating.....engine problems for him that will need to be sorted first thing tomorrow. Dad was hoping to get to do some more work on his boat....but weather got the better of that too....he settled for a very wet dog walk on Grouville beach. Mum managed her usual keep fat class, but she hasn't been on 100% form recently and decided not to play tennis in the rain.

The only one of us that had any sort of a success story was the dog. She was discovered chewing one of Mum's new (brand new) gardening gloves late this morning. Mum decided that she was getting short of "things to chew".....so off she went to the cupboard to get out a new "indestructible" dog toy. 5 minutes later the dog has pretty much eaten one end of said toy, and there are bits of it all over the floor.What part of the "weeks of chewing pleasure" (that is claimed on the packaging) doesn't she understand? Anyway, she's been a happy dog today...especially as she had a second walk in the rain at St. Ouen this afternoon.

Daniel announced at lunch time that he is going to design a new website....and by that he means....he'll have the idea and get Thomas to design it for him. Anyway, the idea is to create a site that gives all the local boating information you're likely to need in one quick move. Basically, that translates to "get the best bits from a load of other websites and steal them". Anyway....we spent an hour or so trying to think of a suitable name for this site...one that hasn't already been reserved. Clever ones like "Salty Seahorse" and "Lazy Lobster" were already taken....in fact, anything that sounded remotely clever has already been reserved. We settled on "3gusting4.com".....yes, we know, not really catchy but then this site of Dan's will be compete disaster anyway.....so why are we bothered?

Talking of shipping forecasts....Mum has a new radio alarm clock next to her bed....it goes of at 06:30 apparently (well, none of us are ever awake at that time) and Dad is usually awake, up, dressed and done an hours works by then. On Saturday morning however he had a very unusual lie in. Two things he hadn't been told were.....that Mum had a new radio clock that goes off at a half past six, and two, that when it goes off it's tuned in to the shipping forecast. Not only did Dad jump out of bed assuming that some disaster was about to befall the house with this "commentary" that he could suddenly hear coming from somewhere....but then (once he had recovered from the shock) he had to try to decide why anyone would set their radio alarm to come on with the shipping forecast? As it turned out, it wasn't supposed to go off at the weekends.....so when Dad asked Mum what the forecast was this morning she didn't have a clue. That's a lot of use, we all thought.

....apparently Mum likes the forecast to wake up to because "the tone of voice is very soothing and relaxing".....as Dad pointed out, you wouldn't find it very blooming relaxing if the announcer says force 8 gusting 10.....and you happen to be on a boat in that particular area. You can tell Mum's not a serious boating type.

Judging by some of Dad's language since the boat came out of the water on Tuesday, the days of BIG boats may be numbered.....the proverbial "standing naked in a cold shower tearing up £50 notes" story has been reeled out a few times this week end. Time to go back to blow up plastic rings for next year?