Optimistic new year!

Like most of you, I'm totally pissed off with Covid having ruled my life to such an extent for the past couple of years. Admittedly, the not small matter of my hernia played its part last year, and we might well have taken Kantara out for a few weeks or more if that hadn't been restricting my activity. But mostly it's been Covid, the lockdowns, the scaremongering, the regulations, the dillying and the dallying. It's worn us down, and we're not going to let it any longer. The hernia's been fixed, I'm fit to go, so this year we'll be cruising. We'll visit Kantara next week, just to make sure she's still fit and well. Then we'll spend some weeks working on a reorganisation of the house, and then...

 ...we'll be off! We have no plans about where we'll travel. We'll just make it up as we go along. It'll be really good for us, and might even restore our sanity! Our mental health has never before been an issue we've been forced to think about. The tranquil beauty of the waterways is the best healer.

The crippling lethargy has put my latest writing project on hold. I ran into a few annoying problems but just didn't have the oomph to solve them. If the muse has deserted me meanwhile, then I may not even complete it, and it's certainly not a very high priority as I start this new year. I have bigger fish to fry! "Those who can" can wait.

My previous books have come to mind, however, and I thought I'd run a special New Year offer on all of them as I did over the Christmas period of 2020. I can't set the price lower that £1.77 - Kindle rules - so that's what I'm offering them at. Just £1.77 each; cheaper than a pint, but longer-lasting (though it has been pointed out to me that Wetherspoons sell a Ruddels ale for £1.50, but it's still finished fairly quickly!).

Take a look, and buy them here!

Please take a few minutes to write a review when you've finished.

I hope you've all had as good a Christmas as possible in the circumstances, and that 2022 will treat you well. Don't let it all get you down!

Catching up

I don't like letting this much time pass between blog posts, but then I don't like writing posts which really have little to say. I've been looking back over the blog's past years, and frankly I wouldn't follow it! I have to remind myself, though, that the main purpose of this blog is to be a record of this part of Grace's and my life together, for future reference. Something to remind us when our memories are even worse than they are now. So I'll continue, even if what I write is rather boring to those few readers I have. Sorry, both of you!

One thing the blog's being good for right at this moment is helping me to write a book about our life in Kantara. I've completed about a quarter of the first draft, and I'm quite pleased with the way it's going. Its working title is "Life with our feet under the water", and I'm going to publish it on Kindle initially, maybe Lulu, too. It'd be good to have it actually in real print on real paper in a real cover. 

I had a book on Lulu some years ago, "A Friendly Guide to Exam Success", which sold, I think, five copies. I'm still not sure if that was Lulu's fault simply because they don't attract many readers, or mine because the book was rubbish. (Lulu do claim to have published 1,791,413 books since 2002, but it doesn't say how many it's sold.) But I don't think the book is rubbish. It's biggest problem is that it'll appeal mostly to those kids who are regarded as swats, and i think they're a dying breed. And do they use Kindle? Do their parents? I've revised it, though, and I'll publish that on Kindle, too. There's nothing to lose, after all, and I reckon that Kindle probably has squillions more users than Lulu.

So, life on Kantara continues at a slow pace. We're really glad to be here again, though the icy, snowy weather we'd hoped we might get just hasn't materialised (if that's what weather does), and what we've had is wind, rain, and cold gloom, with fog and... well, some sun. Like today. A beautiful day starting with frost, continuing with almost totally clear skies. We went carpet hunting. Wow! We want to replace the carpet in the boat, but we'd like to keep what's on the wall up to dado height - which is pristine - and get carpet in an appropriate colour to replace what's on the floor - which isn't. We've now visited all of the carpet shops, big and small, in St Albans, Rugby and surrounding areas. And can we find such a carpet? No, we can't. Nothing like it. We're waiting for some samples to arrive in the post from manufacturers. When that fails, which I'm pretty sure it will, we'll have to do the far simpler, though more costly, thing, and replace the lot. This'll involve taking all of the bits and pieces off the wall - radiators, speaker grilles, switches - which was the biggest reason we wanted to avoid replacing the wall carpet in the first place. But that can wait until after the boat's been repainted in April.

Last night we went to Cineworld to see "Jupiter Ascending" in 3D.

1. "Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) was born under signs that predicted future greatness, but her reality as a woman consists of cleaning other people's houses and endless bad breaks. Caine (Channing Tatum), a genetically engineered hunter, arrives on Earth to locate her, making Jupiter finally aware of the great destiny that awaits her: Jupiter's genetic signature marks her as the next in line for an extraordinary inheritance that could alter the balance of the cosmos."

   

   
   
2. It was action-stuffed, the visual effects were amazing, the 3D was well used, the story was naff, and the whole thing seemed to switch between taking itself seriously and spoofing. I don't think the trailer represented it accurately, but I think I'm glad I saw it.
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Last Friday, we saw "Kingsman: The Secret Service".

"Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, whose late father secretly worked for a spy organization, lives in a South London housing estate and seems headed for a life behind bars. However, dapper agent Harry Hart recognizes potential in the youth and recruits him to be a trainee in the secret service. Meanwhile, villainous Richmond Valentine launches a diabolical plan to solve the problem of climate change via a worldwide killing spree."

That was great fun. Unapologetically spoofy, with Colin Firth hilarious as the James Bond-type agent, a creditable relative newcomer Taron Egerton doing a good job as the new recruit with baggage. Samuel L. Jackson lisped his way through brilliantly as the baddy.

I'm in the process of looking at this year's cruising. We'll definitely be out on the cut continuously for several months. We have it in mind to go to Llangollen, Liverpool and Leeds, then wend our way back to Yelvertoft by... well, any number of routes. An exciting prospect!