A night to remember

Right across the nation, Guy Fawkes Night was severely restricted by the new lockdown. In St Albans, it meant that the normal mega-display in the city's Verulamium Park couldn't go ahead.

(Photos, Herts Advertiser)

But St Albans Cathedral, the organisers of this annual event for more decades than I can remember, were not dismayed. To replace the ticket money they normally take from the thousands who attend, they launched a crowdfund, which raised the money to fund fireworks and charity. And this is what they did.

"Instead of a ticketed event for thousands of people in Verulamium Park, we took inspiration from New York's approach to this year's 4 July celebrations and are planning an aerial display. This display will be visible from doorsteps across the city, without the need for people to leave their homes. We estimate that 55,000 people will be able to see the fireworks in St Albans, due to the positioning of the firing sites. It will also be live streamed on our YouTube channel."

And so it was that the Distill family (minus Jess, who's still in Iceland) stood out in the street at 6:00, wrapped up warm, drinks in hand, and watched the aerial firework display. And we weren't disappointed. Somehow, it felt more special to me than the mega-display in the park has ever done. And they were special! 

Afterwards, we sat around a fire in the garden and Naomi served us sausage and squash stew, washed down with wine or beer, followed by marshmallows toasted on the fire and sandwiched between chocolate biscuits. It was a great time of fun and chat and laughter, and we finally went indoors just in time to see the Ten O'Clock News and hear the good news of the US presidential election. Truly a night to remember!

This is where we came in

"We're leaving the marina today, going back to the house to ride out winter and the big C. Best wishes to all of you out on the cut."

I posted that on Facebook yesterday morning. And here I am twenty-four hours later, sitting at my dining table and looking out at the autumnal garden that seems to be calling out for a little attention.

It'll get it in the spring.

After our Christmas/winter stay in the house last year, we returned to Kantara on March 3rd. My first blog post when I got back started, "We awoke this morning in a very cold boat. 8° cold, in fact. No matter! We're here, come storm or coronavirus!" Shortly after came coronavirus. And lockdown. And we've come back to our house now because of... Lockdown! This is where we came in.

Shortly after I posted that, I read a lovely story from one of the boaters' groups on Facebook.

"A couple of days ago we were mooring up in Leamington. It was blowing a hoolie and I was struggling to pull the boat into the bank. (I'm a 6ft 3, 18 stone ex rugby player). Suddenly this Chinese student appeared; she was about 5ft nothing and couldn't have weighed more than 7 stone. Before I could say anything she grabbed the rope off me  hauled the boat in and held it there whilst we tied up. Then she disappeared as fast as she appeared, before I could even say thank you. I'd been well and truly owned!"

There's not a lot else to say at the moment. The house is in chaos because of us bringing back much of the contents of Kantara and adding it to our stuff  already here, plus Steve and Karolina's stuff, a lot of which is various furniture waiting for their extension to be completed. Ours has never been a tidy house, but this is something else! Jess returns from Iceland in a month's time, and then it'll be really funny! But it's good to be here to sit out the winter and the lockdown.

Be safe, be well, everybody.

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!

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Awesome Autumn

We were very much in need of time away from the boat - I'd never expected to say that. Last week, we consulted the weather forecast for this week, debated the accuracy of the forecast, which has been pretty poor lately, decided we'd take the chance, and booked to visit Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire. Yesterday was the day.

We didn't go in the house. It wasn't open, but we've been in before anyway. This day, we just wanted the space, the fresh air and the autumnal beauty. And we got that in profusion.

The sun was out, the temperature mild, we picnicked in the garden, and autumn was awesome!

Living in a ditch

I wouldn't say I'm bored, but the past couple of weeks haven't been particularly busy. Not physically, anyway. We got the front cratch board and window-frames painted, and they're looking so much better, and waterproof, too. But Grace is having to wait now until there's a meteorological window of opportunity to get the trellis and roses painted on the board. Time is needed to mark out the pattern, paint the trellis pattern, let the paint dry, paint the roses climbing up the trellis, let that dry, finish them, let them dry. There just might be such a window on its way, starting tomorrow. Maybe.

With no work to be doing on Kantara, we've both been spending a lot of our time writing. I am bound by marital law not to reveal the name or nature of Grace's work; mine is the novel I'm mentioned before. I've also been asked to contribute regularly to a new website for folk interested in boats, canals and rivers, so I've been crafting out a few articles for that.

www.livinginaditch.co.uk

It was launched just last week by Paul Massey on board Hannah the Narrowboat, and it's got off to a good start. Take a look at it now - okay wait until you've finished here. Perhaps you'll want to be a contributor!

Right, well, I didn't have a lot to say. You can go now. www.livinginaditch.co.uk

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Parallel universes

The theory of Parallel Universes (or alternative universes - the American Alternate Universes actually means "every other universe") is a theory to which I do not hold, great physicist as I am not. On the day the theory is proven, I shall eat my left foot, sock and shoe included. I shall, however, only do that in one of the other universes, not in this one.

Photo from forbes.com

But, scepticism aside, I've been thinking recently on this... In a parallel universe where the only difference from ours is that there is no coronavirus pandemic, what have we done, Grace and I? How much boating have we done? Where have we been? How badly sunburned did we get? (remember the heatwave, way back?) Did we get caught in flooding? How long did we spend moored up in unremitting wind and rain? (I'm sure you remember them.)

In this universe, we're already way past the amount of time we'd previously spent on a moored boat in one stretch. Our plans to go out regularly to touch up paintwork have come to nought because of  the several Storms with Names, and today's forecast doesn't suggest that's going to change in the foreseeable ten days - though I have my doubts that any meteorologists can actually see that far ahead, computers or no computers.

Had it not been for the virus, we would have been out on the cut for several extended cruises by now. So we would have experienced all of that weather as proper boaters, not the berthed versions we are now. But, as I've said before, although there are many out there happily cruising, we've not been inclined to take the risk of contracting Covid whilst parked out in the wild and windy moorings of the Peak Forest Canal, say.

But I know; one man's wisdom is another man's wussiness. I'm not ashamed, 😀

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