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!

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.

Lockdown day 1 - Current reality

I've met a number of boaters over the years who have told me how glad they are that they spend much of their time being separated from their spouse by the length of the boat. Typically, he takes the helm while she sits at the front knitting, reading, drinking G & T or tea, and trying to stop a couple of badly behaved dogs from jumping overboard. Fortunately for us, this is not the case with Grace and me. We stand together at the stern while we cruise, and share the whole experience. So the fact that we are now spending most of our time social-distancing together in the boat is not a problem.

Despite the weather.

Nonetheless, I do feel physically cramped on occasions, and feel the need to get out and go for a walk. So I braved the weather on Friday, and headed out for a good stride on one of the several possible local, circuitous routes. It was cloudy, but not raining, but... the wind! I got to the top of a bit of an incline on my way to the marina gate and stopped. Not voluntarily, mind, but physically brought to a standstill by an oncoming gust. It ceased, of course, as gusts do, so I took a few more hopeful steps. Then I was halted by another. This gave me sufficient incentive to consider the option of abandoning the walk, but the sudden and painful freezing of my hatless head (silly me, forgetting my trusty beanie) persuaded me in a split second. Had I continued, my cranium would have surely turned to ice, and I would have died of hypothermia before got to the gate. I turned around, and was blown back home.

I tried again the next day. It was still a bit blustery, but nothing like as cold, and the deserted canal and countryside under greening trees and a clear blue sky were a delight. Social distancing was implemented to the letter. I met Phil Achernar taking Oscar for a walk, and we stood several metres apart for our brief chat. After that, I met no-one.

Today, the sky's the same, but we have a Friday wind. I have my beanie at the ready, but I'm not likely to face those gusts again.

I am very impressed by the people of Yelvertoft village and the current residents of the marina who go there for shopping. A couple of recent visits to the tiny Co-op there revealed shoppers with sensible amounts of goods in their wire baskets, and shelves that are almost totally full. People were walking past stacks of toilet rolls. True, there was little in the pasta and rice section, but the lovely Irish lady at the till told me that daily deliveries continue, and they rarely find themselves short of a stock item. There's a lesson there to be learned by the rest of the world!

A Sunday morning may well find us either at Dagnall Street Baptist Church (top) in St Albans or Rugby Baptist Church (bottom), but this morning such gatherings were - and will remain for n weeks - out of the question, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic (Covid - the new C-word) so the two of us joined DSBC virtually by means of the internet. It was otherwise a normal morning service of about an hour's duration, but sound only, and a recording made during the week by Simon and Jonni, our minister and his associate. Hymns were provided by YouTube (joining in was encouraged). It was strange, but oddly moving. I look forward - don't we all? - to living a life that feels more normal, though I think the end of Covid will start a new reality - but these simple socially-distanced services will serve the church very well in the meantime.

Tomorrow, we're going on a Paracetamol hunt. This is not stockpiling or panic-buying, but simply us making sure that, should either of us go down with this flu, we have enough for our needs. I wonder how many empty shelves we shall find.

Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not...

...Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot,
   We'll weather the weather, whatever the weather,
   Whether we like it or not.
   (John Ruskin)

If I told you how strong the wind was last night, you probably wouldn't believe me, so I won't tell you. But whatever the weather, it's good here! It was a very noisy night, with the wind bouncing Kantara around a lot - well, that's what it was doing throughout the evening and when we went to bed, was doing when I woke up in the night, was doing when Grace woke up in the night, but, apart from those two brief awakenings, we slept well. We did wake for the dawn chorus. The opening bars from a beautiful avian voice I didn't recognise. Sadly, I'd recently deleted the Bird Nerd app from my phone. It would have identified it for me. My bet is on the Song Thrush, but the Nature Watch website tells me it could have been the humble Dunnock. It was a fabulous song, whichever it was.

(photos courtesy of Nature Watch)

I'd been postponing putting in a new bottle of gas. There are two in the front hold, and one had run out a few days ago. Since you don't want the second one to run out before the empty one is replaced, and since it's easy to forget it if you don't do the job straight away, and since the office is closed for the next three days, I had to do the job today. It's not usually a big deal. The full bottle is a bit of a weight (26 Kg) to manoeuvre into the hold through a hatch only just big enough and with the other bottle partly in the way. But it's do-able without too much fuss. Today, however - and this was the reason I'd been putting it off - the wind constantly threatened to knock me off the front deck. It failed, but it was a bit iffy.

I can't really write a blog post without mentioning the one thing that's dominating the news and everyone's conversation at the moment. It used to be Brexit (remember?), now it's Covid-19. We're not overly anxious about it. We're the wrong side of 60 according to somebody's statistics, but we're generally very healthy, and living here on the boat in the marina we stand far less chance than many of contracting the illness. At this time of year, there's not many people around. The number who actually live aboard has decreased over the years, so days go by without us meeting more than four or so people. So we pretty much keep ourselves to ourselves, we eat well, we take a few useful supplements, and we keep our alcohol consumption low - it's bad for the immune system. Oh, and we wash our hands frequently!

A downside to that is that we've decided not to go to Cineworld in Rugby to take advantage of the vouchers we have that would give us free seats for a couple of films. There are seven that we want to see, being screened over the next several weeks.

• Little Women
• Emma
• Dolittle
• Cyrano de Bergerac
• A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
• Military Wives
• Misbehaviour

 We'll have to wait for the DVDs. We may be over-reacting, but it'd be a risk we don't have to take. At least we're not stockpiling toilet rolls!