The burning ferry

While I love the ferry ride from Canary Wharf to Waterloo, it does irritate me a bit that it seems to stop at Embankment pier for longer than is apparently necessary. It’s only one more stop and you can see the wheel tantalisingly close, just across the river, but they seem to just phaff about for reasons known only to the staff.

Take today, for instance. We pulled in at Embankment with the usual announcement that passengers were to disembark from the front of the ferry where those clever clogs who had had enough of being inside left the vessel. Then we had the painful wait as a young ferry boy chatted with a shore side ticket person while a long queue of passengers waited onshore to board. Eventually the captain (I assume) told him, over the tannoy, to untie the boat. I figured we were just going to leave the new passengers on the dock and steam ahead to my stop. I was sadly mistaken.

Untied, the ferry moved forward a few metres and then stopped as they tied up at the back to let the new passengers aboard. There was another excruciatingly long wait. Then, suddenly, an extremely loud, high pitched alarm went off. It alarmed everyone who still remained on the boat. Until it stopped. And then started again.

Then an announcement came telling us to get off the ferry because it was broken and was being taken out of service. We were all informed there was another one directly behind. I left the vessel, determined to walk across the bridge rather than wait any longer. As I walked by the back of the boat, a thick stream of very black, evil looking smoke was pouring from one of the motors.

As I walked across the bridge, watching the ferry moving slowly down the river, the black plume of smoke grew worse and I half expected it to explode. It remained intact, however, as it slowly turned and limped away to where ever broken ferries go. Because of all the nonsense, I was quite late getting back to Waterloo.

I’d been at Canary Wharf , fixing a curtain rod to Mirinda’s bedroom window. She complained last week that the sun was waking her up at daybreak as it flooded the room with searing light. While the bedroom window has a blind, it doesn’t do a very good job of filtering out the light so a good thick, black out curtain was required.

The job wasn’t a complex one but, even so, it took me a bit longer than I thought it would. Particularly when you factor in the search for the earring I’d managed to vacuum up when cleaning the drilling mess. This wasn’t particularly easy because it had lodged itself inside the tube and it was only after carefully sifting through the dust in the main collection bowl that I realised it hadn’t managed to travel quite that far. This was irritating, to say the least.

Still, the curtain pole is now up and the light has been banished from the bedroom. Hopefully, Mirinda’s sleep will no longer be interrupted.