Stay home, essential travel only

Those of you who read this blog because it's usually about our life on board NB Kantara are going to be disappointed for... well, who knows how long? I mean, in any other year I could say with a fair amount of certainty that we'd be back on board in February or March, but the big C has demolished one's chances of being even half sure about anything beyond the next meal.

Suffice it to say that we went back to Kantara yesterday. We were there for less that an hour, picking up a handful of bits and things that we hadn't realised we'd need when we returned to the house last month. We were able to verify that the electric heater and the dehumidifier were working properly. Then we drove back, feeling just a tad guilty as we drove under several matrix signs on the M1 telling us to stay at home unless our journey was essential. My excuse for carrying on was that we couldn't stay at home because, in fact, we were not at home, but driving down the M1. Though a more intelligent response to these perfectly reasonable signs would be that we were "simply completing the process of moving home - an activity which is permitted under current regulations, constable".

We weren't stopped by the police.

So now our life has moved from the well-ordered, peaceful solitude of the boat to the utter chaos of the house, though it's not an overly noisy chaos. The home that we're being told to stay in simply isn't big enough for the amount of stuff that seven people have. (Well, five in fairness. Naomi and Eddie live pretty tidily in the totally separate annex.)

Our bedrooms belie the word 'room', because there's really not much room in them - though, fortunately, there are beds in each. Grace's studio has been renamed the box room because it's full of boxes - and stuff. The former box room is now the library and archive. The front room doubles quadruples as a day-time workplace, evening TV and dining room, home for a silly number of musical instruments, and an occasional recording studio. The dining room table has no space for dining, the living room five-seater sofa seats two - for eating and TV-watching. The hall, stairs and landing are holding areas for things on their way out and things on their way in. Plus the several things that have no idea where they're going. The loft is full. It became a little less full yesterday when I took the boxes of Christmas decorations out. But they're now in the living-room. Three cars sit on the front drive, but there are two parked on the street. There's a work van in another road. 

It's... interesting, challenging! And, perversely maybe, I love it. The house is really lived in. Three kids, two parents (us!) and two in-laws.

But we won't be sad to get back to living on the boat next year, and nor will Steve and Karolina when they move into their own house. The house space we four vacate will be considerable, but Jess is perfectly capable of gobbling up all of it, believe me. I'll let you know next winter.

Just keeping up

We certainly chose the right day to go out to Anglesey Abbey! Since then, we've had light rain, heavy rain, gusty wind, gale-force wind, Storm Caroline and the tail-end of Hurricane Epsilon. On the minority occasions when it's not doing that, it's beautiful.

But we've not been able to do a fraction of the work we'd wanted to do. I'd like to do another cleaning of the cratch cover; green algae is a pain. I'd like to pack the channel through which our stove chimney passes through the roof. Pack it with rock-wool, that is. And the paintwork would be better-off with a washing, waxing and polishing. It'd be better-off if we could finish the touching-up we started ages ago.

None of these jobs is essential, but it still irks us that we can't cross any of them off our ToDo list.

Jess is having a great time working at the Reykjavik Grapevine in Iceland. She's written 51 articles in the 7 weeks she's been there, travelled around a lot and really enjoyed the scenery. I'm not so sure she enjoyed the rather strong earthquake a few days back! She's just over half-way through her internship now, and she'll hate leaving.

NB Lyndsey Ann left the marina the same day that Jess flew to Iceland, and they arrived back yesterday. They had a good time, travelling when the weather let them and sitting out the rest. I can't deny I'm envious, but I still don't regret staying here in the marina. We weighed up the pros and cons of cruising, and the cons won.

Those wise readers who bought my "Hints and tips for life with your feet under water" , please note that there's a new post in the Addendum Blog - "Update to Chapter 1 – Hardware (bits and pieces)"

Those of you who haven't yet exchanged a mere £1.99 for the book, see what Towpath Talk had to say about it, and buy it here!

*******

This post is rather random, isn't it? Our life's a bit like that at the moment.

The marina was quite busy over the Bank Holiday weekend, with lots of craft on the move; largely non-residents paying a brief visit to their boats and taking them out for a spin, I think. We didn't venture out, though. We were committed to going back to the house on Monday - and trying to avoid the holiday home-going traffic - in order to take Jess to Luton airport at 4:30 am on Wednesday to board a flight to a three-month stay in Iceland.

Those days when the weather wasn't so good, the sunsets rewarded us for putting up with it.

Lindsey Ann and AtLast have both left their berths now, and once again our view from Kantara has widened, this time even more than before. We can now see "To infinity and beyond!" (Toy Story) (What do you mean, you haven't seen Toy Story??)

I picked up this poem from Facebook. We know Glascote Locks, and remember the slowness of the lock-filling process as we ascended the pair. This made us chuckle.

This post has become rather random, hasn't it? But I'll keep going. Our life's a bit like that at the moment. Random.

Our replacement burgee has arrived. Now all we need is the arrival of  weather that's consistently decent over a period of days; then we can go out on another paint touching-up trip and test it.

Why is it that we only see skies this friendly in the evening at the moment?

These ducks were rather alarmed to see me lying down and pointing my camera at them.

These wonderful fungi have popped up all over the place again, just like last year. I posted this photo in a few boaters' groups on Facebook, asking if anyone knew what they are. I mentioned that I hoped they were edible. I wish I hadn't now. It caused some controversy! A lot of readers mistook "Does anyone know what these are?" for "Can I eat these"? Okay, I did say that I hoped they might be a tasty addition to a plate of bacon, eggs and tomato, but I added to that "but I bet they aren't".

They're rather beautiful though, don't you think?

Back at the house on Monday afternoon - the M1 traffic was much better than I had anticipated - I found the garden looking fabulous. Well, fabulous in places, anyway...

And then came this morning - Wednesday. We drove Jess to the airport, and as I write she's settled in to the Reykjavik hotel room in which she is quarantining for a week, after which she'll move to other accommodation for the rest of her stay. The virus test she took as soon as she arrived in the town came up negative, but she has to take another one in a few days' time before she can go to work.

Jess has recently qualified as a copy-writer, and taken up an internship in an English-speaking magazine, Grapevine, and they've already given her assignments to do during her quarantine. Unsurprisingly, she's very excited about it all. After her quarantine week, she'll be in the Grapevine office full-time - though she'll be out and about a fair bit, too, finding material to write about. I'm not in the least bit jealous, I tell myself.

Meanwhile, it's pouring with rain here.

*******

It's not really the weather for it...

...but work has continued. Having had cold, windy, sometimes wet weather when Grace started on the Roses and Castles back in May (was it really that long ago?), she's had this incredible hot spell to contend with more recently. (How long does it have to last before it stops being a "spell"?) But, working only when the side of the boat is out of the sun, and the wind's not too strong (and it has been, often), she's finally completed one side. And we're very pleased with it!

The wooden panels on the inside of the side doors reflect the theme.

As do the panels inside the rear doors (difficult to photograph!).

We turned the boat around this morning, so that the unfinished side is against the pontoon, and Grace will finish that. When the weather allows.

Yesterday, Steve and Karolina and Naomi came to see us - our first meeting of Karolina - and we enjoyed a Sunday roast lunch at The Wheatsheaf in Crick, excellent as always. A walk along the canal under the shade of the trees followed, and an afternoon of enjoying the breeze on the well-deck. Meanwhile, Jess was bemoaning the prospect of returning home at the end of her week in Iceland. She's just landed, as I write.

Midnight in Reykjavik

 

She quite likes it there!

Heard that before somewhere?

Grace has a cold. Runny nose, very, very sneezy, couldn't sleep last night, but we are now back on Kantara. She simply doesn't DO colds. She so rarely has one that this one feels much worse to her than it would feel to the veteran of the cold. So she's really fed up at the moment.

Heard that before somewhere?

The really annoying thing is that we've had to cancel Michelle's visit, which was to be from tomorrow till Saturday. She'd already said that she wasn't concerned about catching the cold, since all of her co-workers have one, and she's next in line there. But now, the visit's quite out of the question for Grace's sake.

She started to feel unwell on Sunday as we were setting out from Yelvertoft towards Hitchin to see Said the Maiden in performance. She was at least able to enjoy their stunning hour-long set, but come Monday she had descended into that snuffly, blocked up, coughy condition we all loathe.

photo - Ellie Lucas

And this morning it's freezing. I stepped out onto the pontoon late last night, and found it dangerously slippery. It was more so this morning. The Bubble stove seemed to take longer to heat the boat. The gas-fired Alde had a bit of a fit the other night, so I need to test it today, to try to ascertain if there is some problem to be addressed. We'd like to be able to leave it on, on a low setting, throughout the night. Fingers crossed!

Jess is flying out to Iceland again on Thursday, for a long weekend's solitude in a land she loves. She tweeted this morning that it's warmer there today than it is in the UK. We're hoping it'll warm up again here soon. We'd like to take the cratch cover off and clean it, and to do a bit of protective paint touching-up, too, before winter. Looking back over past Novembers' blog posts, we've had those opportunities in past years. Toes crossed, too!

15th November 2014

10th November 2013

Sales of "Hints and tips for life with your feet under water" got off to a good start this week, but I'm thinking that November was probably not the best time to launch it. I'm a bit green in such matters. I'm sure book publishers know such things, but Kindle are happy for you to publish any time you choose, of course. Maybe spring would have been better, when cruising is more in the minds of those so-inclined.