"The poor old thing needs a wash."

It took me a few seconds of arm-pit sniffing, and an "Uh?" to Grace to make me realise she wasn't talking about me. We were part-way up Watford Locks, moored at the side of the pond above the second lock, waiting for a succession of  boats to pass on their way down.

It was Kantara she was talking about, and she wasn't wrong. I disguised my deep sigh by sniffing my armpits again. Washing our sixty-foot home doesn't come in my top fifty "really cool things to do on a narrowboat."

We were on our way down to Braunston, home of AJ Canopies with whom we've booked for them to replace several broken press-fasteners on our cratch cover.

We set out on Tuesday morning. The weather was summertime, and the living was easy. There were even fish jumping for the sake of those of us who know the song.

  

It's a long story involving a flight to Reykjavik, a potential drug mule and a knitted mouse, so I won't bore you with it here. Suffice it to say that we had Fluffy on board. It wouldn't be wrong to say he's seen better days, but he'd never seen one like this before.

The wait at the top of Watford Locks was far shorter that we'd expected. They've been extremely busy recently.

We moored in the early afternoon just up from Norton Junction. We were in no hurry. AJ Canopies were expecting us to be with them late afternoon on Wednesday.

I've lost count of the number of times we've moored opposite this ancient British Waterways works butty, or the two a little further down.

It's a very popular stretch of mooring, so we were lucky to get a space.

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