In my last update I promised pictures of my investiture at Buckingham Palace. It was an interesting occasion, but the official photographs had a £100 copyright release fee, and that did not seem a wise use of charitable funds and so you will have to make do with less formal ones! We arrived as requested at 10 a.m. The Investiture was conducted by H M The Queen and in descending rank of the recipients, then alphabetically so I was about 20th of around 100 recipients. Afterwards pictures in the quadrangle (official and otherwise).

In the New Year's Honours there were two more close waterway friends receiving honours - Alison Smedley an MBE also 'for services to the waterways', and Brian Cassells OBE 'for services to the Inland Waterways of Ireland' (he was President of IWAI whilst I was National Chairman of IWA).

After Christmas the weather deteriorated and the New Year working party was cancelled. A number of other issues are at planning stages but with some there are commercial or other sensitivities and so I regret we will have to delay telling you about them for now.

John Fletcher