We didn't:

- Fall overboard (yay! Although it was a close thing on a few occasions, especially when swapping punting shifts)
- Overturn the punt (see above)
- Catch Weils Disease (hopefully)
- Get beaten up by a swan (despite its terrible death hiss, and the evil look in its eye that said "I'm a beyootiful bloody swan, me, so gimme some fuckin' bread or I'll peck yer eyes inta the backuv yer skull.")
- Get tangled in angling lines (but only because they saw us coming for about twenty minutes, in a delightfully meandering route, and sensibly removed their lines from the water before we got there)
- Lose the pole and have to paddle our way home (but there was a couple of hairy moments when it nearly came down to a decision whether to hang on to pole or boat)
- Go very far


We did:

- Buy a tacky straw boater (to protect me from the sun!)
- Get up close and personal with every patch of nettles within a quarter of a mile of the boathouse
- Zig-zag wildly from bank to bank (punts crash with quite a thump, it turns out)
- Turn sideways and block the entire river
- Crash into other punts
- Have other punts crash into us (we weren't the only rookies out there)
- Go backwards, sideways, round in circles, and every other damn way except straight forwards
- Almost get the hang of punting (about an hour and 45 minutes into the 2-hour trip)
- Take lots of photos (still haven't found my camera lead, but that's probably because I've not really searched for it)
- Have a fantastic time

We scrabbled our way back to the boathouse, under the cynical eyes of a lot of very tall young men who were clearly all experts, and staggered to shore and safety. To his eternal credit, when one of them asked him how we'd done, A said, "You know, the moment we got out of your eyesight, we did brilliantly!", and got a laugh. Thus we arrived back with style, if not dignity.

And then we went home and I fell asleep for three hours because I was exhausted, and then I woke up and we had taco punts (little taco things shaped like trays - I just found them the day before!), and I made a rose-flavoured cake which involved ludicrous amounts of icing, and we had Champagne, and I think A had a lovely birthday.