Wrong Day

I've mentioned before that my husband works as a volunteer at the Waterways Museum in Goole, East Yorkshire. He's part of the Sobriety Project based at the museum, a role he took on on the advice of the social worker assigned to us when he was discharged from residential care.

The Project uses the Museum's facilities (vessels, nature trail, community gardens, café and allotments) as "resources for personal development and training for disadvantaged people in a deprived community. The disadvantaged people include adults with learning disabilities, young people at risk of exclusion or excluded from school, people re-settling from custodial sentences and low income families."

I didn't know any of this when T started at the museum. I thought the reason the social worker had suggested it was because he knew of T's nautical background; he's a time-served marine electrician and spent all his working life in boat-building. It took a while for me to realise that the reason was, in fact, because T was deemed to be one of those disadvantaged adults. That aside, he has fitted in perfectly at the museum and has spent the last six months working on their 'flagship' - a boat called Sobriety.

Sobriety is a residential boat which is also used for day trips and today was her first voyage of the year. She was also going to be my blip for today. She was to make her way down the River Ouse, through our village and on to the Humber Estuary. The return trip would take about ten hours. She was due to come through the village at about 8.15am so we took ourselves up to the riverbank to see her go past. The tide was quite fast so when it got to 8.45am and there was no sign of the boat we assumed that she had made good time and gone through early. We gave it another five minutes and then went home.

Which is when T realised that he'd got the wrong day. The trip isn't until tomorrow. I'd just spent 40 minutes on a cold, wet riverbank at what seemed like the crack of dawn for nothing. I'm not doing it again tomorrow.

Edited 13th April: it would have been helpful to say that this is the view across the river Ouse from the village to the town of Goole.