Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Machiavelli wasn't wrong

This is a burgee. To be prosaic, a "wind-direction indicator", though I expect this one didn't have chance to indicate the direction from which came the wind and the rain of terror that rendered it an ex-burgee. It just wasn't made for official storms with names.


For those who are confused, this man is a bargee.

(photo player.bfi.org.uk)

This is our saloon.


I normally pride myself on how tidy the interior of the boat is, but, sad to say, the photo only shows part of the current chaos. I have to add that the piles of stuff that are dotted around the saloon are there for a very good reason. Grace is making new curtains - two curtains and seven blinds, to be precise; you can see just a corner of one of the curtains on the right - and these require a lot of storage space. I use the word "storage" lightly, but the metres and metres of fabric, thread and cords have to go somewhere. This is where. Somewhere in there is wool, needles and who knows what else - well, Grace does - for her knitting and needle-point. The sewing machine is buried on the other side of the room. Other things too, probably. The sofa I was sitting on to take the photo was shared with rolls of fabric. The cabinet I stood my coffee on had tins of reels of thread and... more stuff.

It's just as well that we're not needing to light the Bubble stove in the corner. The timber for the blind-rails has to go somewhere, too. What's left of the floor is the only space that Grace has in which to do the job, and it would be impossible for her to work in front of a burning stove. It's not best as it is!

I tell you what, though. This will all be worth it. The two curtains and one of the blinds are completed and looking great. When the rest of the blinds are done, it's all going to look fabulous. In this case, Machiavelli wasn't wrong. The end really can justify the means.

I'll show you photos of the clear floor in due course. And of the window hangings. When it happens.

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Sunday, August 23, 2020

"Time is a storm in which we are all lost" - William Carlos Williams

I've heard several people say that lockdown - version one, that is; the one in which we were quite severely restricted - changed time itself. Each successive day felt like the previous one. That was our experience, too. But add that to the pre-existent phenomenon of "boaters' time", and we now find ourselves temporally challenged to an extreme degree. What makes things worse still is that, some weeks ago, we changed our daily eating routine to one in which dinner is eaten two or three hours earlier than what's been normal for the past forty-seven years. There is a very good reason for that, though it'd be really difficult to explain outside of a lengthy discussion. But time's confusing. Suffice it to say that I've started to wear again the watch that had lived in a drawer for years, and we both have to check the time and the day far more often than ever before.


Storm Ellen just added to my confusion. Again, each successive day felt like the previous one. The weather was the same every day, following much the same pattern, and neither of us ventured outside the boat at all save for a brief walk to the end of the jetty in the evening when conditions were generally better. One may attribute this befuddlement to the fact that my memory's never been fantastic, and/or that I'm sixty-nine next month, but I can't say with any certainty when the storm struck, nor how long it lasted if, indeed, it's over now. All I do remember is the torrential rain, the vicious, gusty wind, and the skies they left behind during the brief respites.








I'll never forget those.

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Tuesday, August 18, 2020

No quite what we had in mind

Our very satisfying plans to go out on the cut for a few days each week to do touch-up painting were foiled by the heatwave, which raged up to 38°C in the saloon. It was a lot hotter than that in the sun. Paint would dry on the brush on its way from the tin. So Grace got to work making the curtains and blinds instead.  It was good to sit out on the jetty amongst the reeds and in the shade of the trees.


Heavy, though brief, rain and equally unenthusiastic thunderstorms broke the heat after a week, and we could again sleep under a light duvet rather than on top of it. But still the painting was out of the question. The rain was totally random and the weather forecasts did nothing beyond telling us that the rain would be totally random. Wet paint and rain don't mix, either. Grace continues with her sewing, and I'm left feeling cheated, and more loose-endy than ever. I'm trying to get on with writing the book, but it's reluctant in the heat. And in the rain. I considered offering to help with the sewing, watched one very long YouTube video about making curtains, and went for a walk.

Needless to say, it rained on me.




Lindsey Anne set out to Oxford today, and our wide views of the marina pond have been returned to us. I don't know if they studied the weather forecast, but it says it'll rain. Randomly.




*****

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

A well-travelled blog, even in this heat!

Every now and then, I take a look at the statistics on where in the world this blog is being read. There's been an odd trend recently, and I'd love to know what explains it. For most of the life of the blog, the vast majority of readers were from the UK. Recently, however, British readership has slumped, and Italy and the US have overtaken big time. The table below shows page views for yesterday.


Odd, isn't it? Why are Italians so interested? And why am I losing readers from the UK? (Am I that boring?) Four readers in Cambodia? Two in The UAE?? And just who is that one lonely reader in Canada? Maybe some of you from outside of the UK could use the comments facility at the bottom, and introduce yourselves? Please? I'd love to hear from you.

I fixed the mushroom vent. That glue is truly amazing! And we've started on the chimney, too. It's not as difficult and scary as we'd imagined, of course. It's just slow because the sealant we're using in conjunction with glass-fibre rope takes hours to set fully. And of course, it's been VERY hot, which doesn't help with jobs. The maximum temperature in the cabin has been 32° Cwith all windows and doors open. But, of course, the skies are wonderful.










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Friday, August 07, 2020

A new outlook

We're back now, after the weekend at our house and an excellent Monday evening birthday celebration meal for all of the family out on the lawn. The excellent and plentiful food was prepared by Naomi, and we had the best company we could ever have. Saturday and Sunday were really hot, but the forecast for Monday had suggested rain. We gambled on there being no rain and, though there was a lot of threatening cloud, we were in the garden for three hours and didn't suffer a drop.

We were anxious that the cans of paint and varnish we'd daftly left in the well-deck would have got too hot under the two days of sun, and been ruined  but it was all okay, and the weather in Yelvertoft on our return was much cooler than we had experienced in St Albans. And, guess what - it was windy, too!

NB Lindsey Anne left on Monday, off for a short trip, which left us with a wider vista. All we need to do now is persuade Emma Jane to go for a cruise, and we'll have panoramic views! (only kidding, Jan and Ed 😀 ) As you can see, the water was quite wind-swept.






We must get the flue refitted, but the prospect's a bit scary and we keep postponing it. It's always the way with new jobs though, isn't it. Once we get into it I'm sure it won't be as bad as we envisage. We need a new mushroom for one of the vents, too. The central screw threads are worn, and the top keeps falling off. Midland Chandlers are out of stock until the end of the month so we'll have to Heath Robinson that until then. We've done that more than once before! 

Oh, on further consideration, have you ever used Gorilla Glue? That'd stick anything! That's been added to the Homebase shopping list, soon to be dealt with. We're needing wood and paint, too.



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Monday, August 03, 2020

The plan! We're very happy boaters.

After nearly two hours of driving into the wind, we stopped off twixt bridges 28 and 27. Life was too hot and too windy, we said. We'd have dinner here and move on later.

We're going back to the house on Saturday for three nights, to celebrate Grace's birthday with the kids. It'd be best to be back at the marina as soon as we can to give ourselves more time to "sort out stuff" and "pack".






Nope, change of plan. We'd have dinner and stay the night instead. The mighty, gusty wind was just too strong to bother with. The amazingly reliable weather forecast says that the wind will be lighter tomorrow morning, so we'll leave earlyish.

After dinner, the wind was even worse. I sat outside, drinking a leisurely pint while the hot - HOT, mind - wind blew around me. Then came the rain - big rain. Oh! And thunder! This is going to be fun!






We have a plan. Our experience of the past few days on the cut, travelling no more than about three hours or so away from the marina, have encouraged us to do it again, often. Often enough, in fact, to get all of the repair and maintenance jobs done that we had intended, prior to the Coronavirus, to do over the period of a long cruise. The long cruise is out of the question now. We don't intend to run the risk of becoming ill when we are days, maybe even weeks away from the marina. The likelihood of a second spike increases daily. We'll stay close.

So we'll trip down to Bridge 27 or the Welford Arm, work for a few days, then return to Yelvertoft - the simplest provider of water, waste disposal and shopping facilities. And since, it eventually becomes necessary to run the engine to charge the batteries when we are moored for days, we might as well use that engine running time to take us back to our home berth. And we'll do that weekly until there's no more to do. Time and effort very well spent. We're very happy boaters!


We were awake by 6:00 and away by 7:00 the next morning.

 The view from our window at 6:00 am

The wind had indeed abated, but the weather was now colder and cloudier, threatening to rain before we arrived back in the marina. It didn't amount to much. Now back in our berth, we have plenty of time to sort ourselves and the boat out, and drive down to St Albans in a leisurely manner.

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