This weekend only 30 kids turned up to stay at the centre for activities.
This meant we were rather over staffed so half were given the day off and
the other half were put on activity. I went with one of the support staff, who visit at weekends only, in the safety boat to watch kayakers and bell boaters paddle around the loch. This is supposed to be a fairly simple affair as kayakers can rescue themselves and a bellboat with 12 people in is generally OK on its own.
Today was far from simple. First the boat we use for running people out to the other boats (all out boats are moored in the loch except one which goes on a trailer and is taken out every night) had a fit and refused to start. This wasn’t helped by the fuel line not fitting properly and eventually falling off the engine. Then when we got to the safety boat it started once then stalled and took a further 20 minutes to get going again. The phone I had been given to use in just such unforseen circumstances wasn’t working… I tried phoning the centre and was politely told by a Vodafone message that I had no credit and to go annoy someone else instead. I’m glad they don’t usually listen to our calls as they’d have heard some slightly offensive words said to them :-/
Fortunately the people we were looking after managed to all stay upright and out the water like they should.
Things didn’t much improve in the afternoon though. The boat we used to get out once again had a fit and a disagreement with its fuel line, which
getting a bit bored by now decided to perish and leak fuel into the boat. I had to paddle out in a canoe to help sort things out and once again our
safety boat wouldn’t start properly.
In the afternoon we took some visitors out to a Drascombe to go sailing.
Their rudder kept sticking for mysterious reasons and then freed itself.
I also had to paddle the big inflatable we have onto a trailer so we could take it out to fix its broken steering wheel. This went fine until I jumped out the boat, stepped onto the trailer and slipped into the water. It went up to my thighs, but it was either get wet or fart around trying to line the boat up with the trailer again.
Oh, and the tax office have found me and want 156 quid in unpaid tax from
1999. Bastards. They politely informed me and said that since I wasn’t in
employment they couldn’t take it out my pay so I should just give it to them all in one go within 30 days thankyou. The housing benefit people are being arseholes too, they want to see proof of my savings account I have, so I trekked off and showed them a statement. They obviously can’t read since they’ve now sent me another letter saying they want to see proof of my savings account again. Obviously a sheet of paper with ‘E-Savings Account’ on the top doesn’t quite connect in their little brains. They’re very strange and keep sending mail to me as recorded delivery which costs a bit more than a 27p stamp.
Well, I have a day off tomorrow and then I’m going to hospital to get my gob x-rayed and will phone the housing benefits people and tell them they’re morons. Our country’s social service and tax office must be one of the most slow and badly organised on the planet and seem to have a head/arse conflict. Can’t they just let me off the tax, it was 4 years ago after all.