A Belated Welcome To The New Year

It has been some time since our "Blog News Page" has been updated. All for good reason and from hereon in we hope to be updating on our usual frequent basis. There have been many reasons for the delay and hopefully as you read on, you will understand the reason why, some happy times and some sad. So, where do we begin?

November 2007, there was no guest news/items to report as The Ship Inn followed tradition and shut down for 4 weeks to cover annual holiday (photo top left going for a Singapore Sling at Raffles Hotel) and much needed maintenance. During this time we renovated a bedroom that had laid dormant (excuse the pun!) for some years and are now proud to announce that Room No:4 is now open for bookings for the 2008 .

December then came upon us with the relatively quiet days the early weeks leading up to the lovely atmosphere that always prevails at The Ship during the festive weeks. The New Year weekend was one of our most memorable (our 3rd to date) that Janice and I have had since living on the island. New Years eve night was well attended and finished at 4.30 am New Years Day.!

Men's Day on the 1st January and Ladies Day on the 2nd January was a real success. One of the talking points on the 2nd was the "world record" set by Dick Patterson and Colin Johnson (our annual cockney sparrow visitor!) by sitting on the same bar stool for a record 10 hours & 15 minutes!

Our photo (from left to right) shows Colin with Dick trying to coax The Ship's cat back into life. Sadly the moggy has been in this transfixed state for at least 10 years, A bit like the two in the photo, apologies, editor!

Nearing the end of the traditional 2 weeks of festivities, Janice and

I thought, as we approached the weekend of the 5 January, we were in for a quiet time. How wrong we were, as the "A team ladies" of Holy Island with a few male hangers on descending upon us to celebrate Barbara Kyle's ?!'th birthday. This turned out to be a great end to the week with our resident chef, Paul Armstrong putting on an impromptu buffét and even throwing a birthday cake to boot! A great time was had by all and we hope to do it next New Year and maintain this unique island tradition.

(Picture above right shows Barbara proudly showing off her 21st birthday cake with husband George proudly looking on!)

The sad news (and we would like to thank all of the island for their kind thoughts and support) is that during the New Year week, daughter Lisa with her fiance Brian had a wonderful time joining in with the unique atmosphere providing by our Holy Island friends. Sadly just 3 weeks to the day of leaving Holy Island Brian passed away suddenly on the 27 January. The day they were due to announce to us on the Sunday evening their planned wedding booked for the 2 October, very sadly this is not to be. So as you can imagine this year has started, from a personal viewpoint for Janice and I on a very sad note, particularly for my daughter Lisa. The positive side are of the happy memories Brian spent here on the island with Lisa. So thanks once again for the kindness shown by all of our island friends who showed so much kindness when Lisa was up on the island recently.