You know how labradors eat everything - I think Flash ate everything and it died inside him and the gas is now coming out - what a smell! and it's been going on all day!!
Did I tell you we got the training stages from Yoda Neil? Well, we did, and Sian asked him what he wanted to do about staging me - that means when someone takes a look at what you're doing, and decides whereabouts in the list of stages you're at. It's quite important to do really because it gives you something to aim at, and it sort of sets in stone where you're up to. I think - and Sian agrees - that I'm at stage 7 - which is shoreline searches, and working towards stage 8 - which is where the target is up to 10m out in the water, and somewhere along a 500m stretch of shoreline. Actually, I'm probably at stage 8 really, but we don't have a 500m stretch to use - the lagoons in Llyn Padarn are very broken shoreline, but I guess in total we manage to search 500m. Lockwood is less than that, but you can manage more than 10m out. Sian's going to ask some more people if we can use their lake - that's got nice clean edges so will be good to use for training. She's done risk assessments for everywhere we use so far - I do dynamic risk assessments myself - goes a bit pearshaped when I get new experiences, but I guess that's the dynamic bit of it!!!
Anyway, Sian's asked Richard if we can go for staging at the next training weekend in a couple of weeks - maybe use Llangollen Canal and go for the Stage 8? What do you think?
The boat engine has arrived, we're just waiting for the cheque to clear. Once we get that, we can start on the boat stages - can't wait!!!
Sian showed me the photos of Celyn and Teal on the Llanberis job yesterday -it looked awful weather, cold, windy, snowy. The look on their faces was classic! Sad as well though 
- I'm glad I do water search - we can't go out when the wind is too strong, the waves too slappy, and the water too cold! How good is that !!! We can justify waiting for nice weather!! Sian's talking about doing a poster to show people what the water searching is all about - that'll be good! I don't think people generally have a clue what we do!
I'm ready for my tea - just off to nag a bit!
See ya x
