Lockdown day 48 - Revisit this day, May 8th 2016 - back after a long cruise

On that particular day, we'd been back for a week after a six-week cruise down through London, via Paddington Basin...

and Limehouse Basin...

then onto the Lea and Stort Navigations to Hertford...

and Bishops Stortford...

It was wonderful, one of my favourite journeys.

Back on the marina on May 8th, the weather was great and the atmosphere was holiday-like.

There's some serious DIY in progress here.

Boats were on the move...

and the skies were as amazing as usual.

This year, as then, swallows have returned to the marina, flying low over the pond late in the afternoon and catching the myriad newly-hatched flies. It's amusing to see how the experts catch each fly with just the tiniest of touches to the surface of the water, while beginners sometimes miss, make a great splash or catch a seed fairy in their beaks instead.

(photo from Unsplash.com - my camera's just not that good!)

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Lockdown day 46 - I amaze myself!

Ask Grace; I'm never short of something to say about... pretty much anything and everything. She may also add that what I say isn't always worth listening to and/or should have been thought through first. She might be right. She often is.

Today, however, I'm sitting in front of my laptop, Blogger open, and I can't find anything to say. Nothing to say! (apart from this) I am amazed. (I'm easily amazed) I haven't asked Grace for her thoughts on the matter.

I blame the lockdown.

So, photos only today. Mostly swans. People are scarce here. Water, boats and sky abound.

Note to self: sew patch on knee of jeans Nah!

Lockdown day 42 - Revisit this day, May 3rd 2019

I had another welcome reminder from Google Photos yesterday. We didn't do a lot of cruising last year, though it was probably more than we'll be getting this year, so the memories are still fresh. Still, I'll rarely turn down their offer of a revisit via my photos.

We're on the Grand Union, headed north. We left Marsworth Bottom Lock that morning.

From a greater distance, this really looked like a pile of narrowboats!

You know what that is, right?

The weather was pretty good, but there was an inclination for it to precipitate from time to time.

On to Soulbury Three Locks. There was no-one else there, not even in the pub, except for a man in the car park, on the phone, who looked for all the world like Vladimir Putin!

I didn't want to risk taking a photo of him.

Okay, that wasn't the most interesting little collection of photos, but I'll value them more and more as my memories get fuzzier. Blogography is great!

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Lockdown day 41 - Photojournalist? Nah!

I started this blog back in 2011 while we were looking at boats, looking for the one to buy, the one that called out to us. During that time I started to use my camera to record the process, and some of those found their way into the blog. It wasn't long, however, before the photos grew significantly in number per post, and became an important part of telling the story. I was now taking photos specifically with the blog in mind.

It made me feel something like a photojournalist, though that was far too grand a word for what I was doing. Yesterday, however, nearly nine years later, I came up with two words that are far more appropriate - Phoblographer and Blogographer. I'm not sure which to choose.

A sky like this, and it didn't rain!

The swan family visited me yesterday, but paddled off

before I could get my camera out and get a full-face view.

They've left their nest, I think, and the three non-viable eggs have been thrown out. One can be seen here in the reeds below the nest. Today I saw a moorhen on the nest, apparently tidying

it up and discarding detritus - ready for a pair of them to use?

This is the turning-point in my almost-every-daily walk.

NB Demesne has not long ago left her winter mooring in the marina,

and is moored up not far away, waiting for cruising restrictions to end.

I think I prefer Blogographer.

Lockdown day 40 - Five!

Well, I still haven't seen the new swan family but, thankfully, fellow moorer Sally Owen has taken some excellent pictures of them, shared them on Yelvertoft Moorers' Facebook page, and kindly allowed me to post them here.

So there are five cygnets. I think that the three eggs that remain in the nest must have been abandoned, but I hope to get up close today to have a look.

When we came back to Kantara in early March, we were expecting at some time to return to the house for a few bits and pieces that we'd not been able to pack into the car the day we returned. What we didn't expect was the pandemic that the Coronavirus became - who was expecting it? So we've been managing with a pretty limited... well, wardrobe for one thing. Now, however, we have the opportunity to receive a box of stuff from the house, put together by Jess and delivered by Steve, who is one of those relatively few fortunates who is still able to do his job. And his job next week will bring him up the M1, passing very close to us. Useful! Yesterday, Grace and Jess conversed on Messenger, Grace listing the things she'd like to have brought, and Jess looking for them and asking "This?"

It made me chuckle, but what struck me was, yet again, the weird and wonderful ways that modern communications technology is helping us all in this difficult Covid situation. Imagine being without it!

Okay, there were no answers given to my little quiz, but here they are now. The link between the recording of Bonny Tyler singing I'll put a spell on you and the 1970s children's TV programme - The Wombles

- is Mike Batt. I suspect not many people know the name, but you'll probably have heard his music. He's written many of Katie Melua's songs, and songs for Steve Harley, The Hollies, Art Garfunkel, Cliff Richard, Alvin Stardust and David Essex, to name but a few. And for the Wombles, too, an example of which is in my collection.

You may laugh all you want, but the Distill family are great fans of the Wombles, and have three of their albums. I'm a huge fan of Mike Batt, too, and have some of his CDs of him performing his own songs. I highly recommend that you listen - try here.

Let me know what you think!

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