Early Morning on the Canal

What a lovely morning I've had, just a shame The Owner got into so much trouble over it. Not my fault this time I might add! I was curled up in the early hours of the morning under one of the lazarettes (now aren't you impressed how I am picking up the boating language?). It was barely light and certainly before the sun came up.

I became aware of movement in the galley, so I went to investigate. It was The Owner, making tea, and already dressed in his shirt and shorts. He tells me that as it was such a lovely morning he thought he would get up and "see the morning in". I'm not sure how he arrived at that conclusion as he hadn't even looked out of the curtains at that point, but I went along with it. He took his mug of tea and went and sat on one of the seats in the bow (more technical terms!). So I sat up there with him. He was right, it was a beautiful morning, the mist was rising gently from the water and forming an eerie mist on the fields from which the cows appeared almost to be hovering. The odd moor hen calling from the canal bank somewhere. The gentle hum in the distance of the pumps in the dairy and otherwise, peace and tranquillity enveloped the emerging morning scene. I sat beside him watching the scene and catching the odd sniff on the almost imperceptible breeze as he gently and absent mindedly ruffled the fur on the back of my head. After his second cup of tea and when the sun was starting to burn off the mist from the field announcing the arrival of a new day, drowsiness started to get the better of him and he started to fall asleep again, so he took himself off for what he described as a little lie down. All that was left of that pleasant hour was a ring of tea on the deck where his cup had stood. I curled up back under the lazarettes; the next thing I heard was a loud banging on the roof of the boat and a very aggressive, official looking chap was getting very agitated saying,"It's 11 in the morning and this is a night time only mooring area! People should not be drinking so much they can't get up in the mornings if they want to be mooring on my canal bank!". As far as I know The Owner only had a tea and an orange juice last night. The Owner emerged, bleary eyed, from the cabin wondering what all the fuss was about and got a fixed penalty notice slapped in his hand from Horrible Man, (that wasn't what The Owner called him) from Inland Waterways, who went off up the path tutting loudly about people shouldn't drink so much they can't get up in the morning. The Owner has been talking grumpily to himself all morning since then.