Moved to tears

Following his award of best Guest Crew Member - see a couple of posts back-, my old pal Rick has delivered his acceptance speech, which was so moving that felt that I reproduce it in full below.


I am so happy to be presented with this prestigious award. It is thoroughly deserved because of all the hard work that I have put in over the years.

But this is not just about me:

I would first of all like to thank my mother who brought me into this world, and taught me that nothing should be wasted – if you have twelve old cookers in the back yard then you can always make one good one from the parts.

I must also thank Mr Wheelwright, my woodwork teacher who taught me the important lesson that you should measure once and cut twice.

And then there is my daughter Vicky who toiled selflessly to find jobs for me in her house so that I could hone my handicraft skills.
(Sob)

And of course, there’s my wife Marylin who stuck by me through thick and thin and has accompanied me on many boat trips with only the slightest complaint.
(Sob)

There is also Peter John Alain del Strother who instilled in me my love of boats, mainly by capsizing his dinghy with me in it.

It is easy to have grand schemes, but not so easy to make every part of them work, so I must thank Martin Bryce for showing me the importance of atenttion to detail.
(Sob Sob)

I must mention two people who sadly I never met, but who had a great influence on my career. The first is James Brindley without whose pioneering work on canals none of this would be possible. The second is Mr Tab Qwerty whose brilliant invention of the keyboard made nbherbie.blogspot.com what it is today.
(Sob Sob Sob)

And last, but by no means least, my heartfelt thanks to Neil and Kath for persisting with me when all was going wrong; and most of all for pretending to enjoy having me on board Herbie when this was obviously not the case.
(Sob Sob Sob Sob)

I love you all.
(Floods of tears, rapturous applause, exit stage left)