Jokes that Paddy makes up that aren't funny:

Doctor Doctor! I feel like a pineapple!
Don't worry, I won't eat you.

Jokes that Paddy makes up that are unintentionally funny:

Doctor Doctor! I fell like a telly!
Don't worry, I won't turn you on.

Not Billy Connolly, exactly, but an improvement.

We went on a barge on the Erne (well, the Shannon/Erne waterway too, but the Erne mostly. Ballinamore to Enniskillen and back, to be precise). I used to as a kid, go on family (well, partial family) holidays on a bout of my father's construction on the Erne and Shannon rivers. This brought back a few memories, and made me a little less judgmental about my father's sailing abilities. We each had an accident of sorts; mine involved sailing too close to the shore and catching Sally with the branch of a hawthorn tree. She went down on top of Paddy, and the lifebelt on the roof of the barge was swept onto his head too. *boink*. No-one hurt, but it was all a bit sudden, like. Others has similar things happen, but that's for them to tell. Anna was a bit smug in that she was the only one not to have an incident.

It was very pretty and great fun. We didn't do a whole lot of sight-seeing but we all just enjoyed the tootling about on the boats (we had friends with us in another barge). We did have a spot of engine trouble in the other barge and we had to tow them for what felt like an age through the gathering gloom in the pissing rain to the nearest jetty. We just made it before it got completely dark, which was good as the jetty we were headed for wasn't lit up or anything, and navigating in the wind and rain was bad enough when you could see. But nobody was going to die or anything and as we didn't have to spend the night drifting aimlessly about the lake, it was fine. And the next morning was beautiful.

The boat people sent out an engineer, who fixed up the engine and took over the driving of that boat for the haul home. We ended up towing it again for a while and then eventually we got the boat to a safe harbour and spent the last night there and in the morning the others left for the plane home and we brought back our boat.

Neither the breakdowns, nor the slight curtailment of our traveling interfered with the enjoyment of the holiday and both families are talking about going back next year.

The boats themselves are really well equipped and comfortable, the only down side being that when it rains the drive has no cover. And you're standing on top of the engine when driving, so it's a bit noisy. But while they sound like relatively significant minus points, they weren't for me. Even on day one when it rained so hard I had to keep wiping my face to be able to see, I still loved it. Mind you, I had Paddy keeping me company, catching the rain that fell off my coat in a bucket and pouring it overboard, which made me grin.