Landlubbers making the most of it

 Grace has finished the cratch board now, progressing from painting on the trellis...

…to  adding the leaves, and finally the rose buds and open flowers. It looks lovely! (The white marks on the windows are reflections of light through the trees behind me, not bird poo!) Now all she needs is a dry enough day to varnish it.

On Wednesday, desperate for a change of scenery, we visited Upton House again. We've been National Trust members since our first holiday together in 1974, and entrance to NT properties is free to us, so visits can be fairly casual and as frequent as we want. We've been to this one four times now in eight years. It's a lovely place to relax, enjoy the house or gardens - or both - have a picnic, soak up the sun and take in the views, and it was a great blessing to us yesterday.

The weather the next day was very wet, so the cratch board remains unvarnished.

It's a dog's tale

I've always wanted to see a play produced by the Mikron Theatre Company. They are one of five theatre companies (to the best of my knowledge, and according to Google) to be based on the canals, the others being the Puppet Theatre Barge, Alarum Productions, Bonnet and Belt Theatre Company, and Widgeon Theatre.

Imagine our delight when we read that Mikron would soon be performing in Welford, at the very end of the Welford Arm, right next to the Wharf Inn. I bought tickets straight away.

And we went last night, a fifteen-minute drive from Kantara. It would have been a trip of nearly four hours by boat, which we would have loved to have done, had I been able.

The play was brilliant, a comic history of  Cruft's dog shows since the first one in 1891; the competitiveness and the corruption, the fanaticism and the fakery - and the loss of a rescue dog called Gary. The players - four of them, each playing several roles - were first-rate singers and instrumentalists as well as actors. The audience were delighted by it all.

It was an out-door event on the green at the end of the canal. Their narrowboat Tyseley (built in 1936!) lay in the water behind the stage. The performance was due to start at 7:00 pm, and the rain started at around 6:00. By half-past, it had stopped, and Grace and I left the shelter of the car to take our seats. Well, we actually took our own picnic chairs, so we went to take our allotted places in the covid-safe seating arrangement. Apart from a few spots of rain, there was no more until about twenty minutes from the end, and it was beginning to get serious as the play drew to a close. But nothing spoiled our enjoyment. It was hugely enjoyable.

Fairies and baby gerbils?

First of all, let me tell you that there's a new addition to the Addendum Blog for readers of "Hints and tips for life with YOUR feet under water", entitled CAUTION!

(If you're not a reader, then you're missing out! Take a look at it now here.)

Okay, now I've got that off my chest...

It's feeling a bit like last year's lockdowns to me. I know it's not, but the fact that we can't cruise now (hernia) and that we don't really have anywhere to go, apart from localish shops, makes it feel like last June - not that that was a bad month; far from it. But I'm doing the same walks and the same rituals, and still writing the same book.

We have, however, made a good start on doing the various jobs that we'd like to get done before we cruise again - whenever that might be. Grace is working on the front cratch board.

The trellis is going to be entwined with roses to match those used on the cabin sides. Then we'll install the tunnel light and the horn onto the board. We've had to touch up the paint on the windows that stand on each side of the board. Rain got in somehow, and we had to remove and replace some rotten wood in the frames. The job should be finished by the end of tomorrow.

The local willow trees have been very productive. A friend, upon seeing a single flower lying on the pontoon, thought he'd seen a young gerbil! That has now been joined by countless friends.

They create quite a scene when they fall into the canal and drift into the reeds.

And these are the juvenile gerbils! (if you have a vivid imagination).

Carnage on pontoon C!

This is the average size of a juvenile male.

Fairies are a thing at the moment, too. All right, they're not really fairies, any more than the fluffy things are really gerbils - picky, picky! But they're what Grace and I have called thistledown since childhood. and they're about now, drifting aimlessly in their millions. They get everywhere; in your mouth, in the boat even when the doors and windows are closed, in the car, up your nose and in your eyes. They just love spiders' webs, and those are all over the place!

But this is what they look like when they're clean and tidy, and not consorting with spiders' webs.

Beautiful!