Landlubbers making the most of it

 Grace has finished the cratch board now, progressing from painting on the trellis...

…to  adding the leaves, and finally the rose buds and open flowers. It looks lovely! (The white marks on the windows are reflections of light through the trees behind me, not bird poo!) Now all she needs is a dry enough day to varnish it.

On Wednesday, desperate for a change of scenery, we visited Upton House again. We've been National Trust members since our first holiday together in 1974, and entrance to NT properties is free to us, so visits can be fairly casual and as frequent as we want. We've been to this one four times now in eight years. It's a lovely place to relax, enjoy the house or gardens - or both - have a picnic, soak up the sun and take in the views, and it was a great blessing to us yesterday.

The weather the next day was very wet, so the cratch board remains unvarnished.

It's a dog's tale

I've always wanted to see a play produced by the Mikron Theatre Company. They are one of five theatre companies (to the best of my knowledge, and according to Google) to be based on the canals, the others being the Puppet Theatre Barge, Alarum Productions, Bonnet and Belt Theatre Company, and Widgeon Theatre.

Imagine our delight when we read that Mikron would soon be performing in Welford, at the very end of the Welford Arm, right next to the Wharf Inn. I bought tickets straight away.

And we went last night, a fifteen-minute drive from Kantara. It would have been a trip of nearly four hours by boat, which we would have loved to have done, had I been able.

The play was brilliant, a comic history of  Cruft's dog shows since the first one in 1891; the competitiveness and the corruption, the fanaticism and the fakery - and the loss of a rescue dog called Gary. The players - four of them, each playing several roles - were first-rate singers and instrumentalists as well as actors. The audience were delighted by it all.

It was an out-door event on the green at the end of the canal. Their narrowboat Tyseley (built in 1936!) lay in the water behind the stage. The performance was due to start at 7:00 pm, and the rain started at around 6:00. By half-past, it had stopped, and Grace and I left the shelter of the car to take our seats. Well, we actually took our own picnic chairs, so we went to take our allotted places in the covid-safe seating arrangement. Apart from a few spots of rain, there was no more until about twenty minutes from the end, and it was beginning to get serious as the play drew to a close. But nothing spoiled our enjoyment. It was hugely enjoyable.

Fairies and baby gerbils?

First of all, let me tell you that there's a new addition to the Addendum Blog for readers of "Hints and tips for life with YOUR feet under water", entitled CAUTION!

(If you're not a reader, then you're missing out! Take a look at it now here.)

Okay, now I've got that off my chest...

It's feeling a bit like last year's lockdowns to me. I know it's not, but the fact that we can't cruise now (hernia) and that we don't really have anywhere to go, apart from localish shops, makes it feel like last June - not that that was a bad month; far from it. But I'm doing the same walks and the same rituals, and still writing the same book.

We have, however, made a good start on doing the various jobs that we'd like to get done before we cruise again - whenever that might be. Grace is working on the front cratch board.

The trellis is going to be entwined with roses to match those used on the cabin sides. Then we'll install the tunnel light and the horn onto the board. We've had to touch up the paint on the windows that stand on each side of the board. Rain got in somehow, and we had to remove and replace some rotten wood in the frames. The job should be finished by the end of tomorrow.

The local willow trees have been very productive. A friend, upon seeing a single flower lying on the pontoon, thought he'd seen a young gerbil! That has now been joined by countless friends.

They create quite a scene when they fall into the canal and drift into the reeds.

And these are the juvenile gerbils! (if you have a vivid imagination).

Carnage on pontoon C!

This is the average size of a juvenile male.

Fairies are a thing at the moment, too. All right, they're not really fairies, any more than the fluffy things are really gerbils - picky, picky! But they're what Grace and I have called thistledown since childhood. and they're about now, drifting aimlessly in their millions. They get everywhere; in your mouth, in the boat even when the doors and windows are closed, in the car, up your nose and in your eyes. They just love spiders' webs, and those are all over the place!

But this is what they look like when they're clean and tidy, and not consorting with spiders' webs.

Beautiful!

There's something of a cloud hanging over NB Kantara at the moment...

...and that's despite the bright sky (at last!)

The cloud is caused by my hernia. I had the telephone consultation last week, and the doctor booked me to see him in person next Wednesday. How long I'll have to wait for the surgery I don't know, but I do know that I'll have to be engaged in very little physical activity for at least six weeks after it's done. The bottom line is that we can fairly confidently say we won't be cruising this year -  the second year running.

(Real clouds drifted in as the day drew on.)

Many thanks go to the many previously herniated members of two boaters' groups on Facebook* for their helpful, sympathetic and often encouraging replies to my posts asking for their thoughts about the outlook for my boating life.

(*The Friendly Narrowboat and Waterways Group & Narrowboat and Canal Lovers Group)

Instead of cruising, then, Instead, we'll use the time getting all the outstanding jobs done so that Kantara is ready to go as soon as I'm ready. The jobs aren't too numerous, but some of them will be quite time-consuming.

• repaint the front cratch board (started yesterday)
• install the new horn and tunnel lamp
• pack the top of the flue jacket with rockwool
• paint the chimney inside the cabin
• strip and repaint the taffrail
• get the Thetford rinse pipe reconnected/replaced/repaired
• clean the cratch cover
• deal with paint damage on the port side of the hull.
• wash and wax the cabin (outside, of course).
• sandpaper the inside of the hand-grip along the length of both sides of the roof

That's all! Just those. (I was wrong. They are too numerous).

Today's sunset was phenomenal!

******

Water, water everywhere!

This isn't really May, surely? We've had appalling weather for several consecutive days; persistent heavy rain driven by very strong, gusty wind. Kantara's been pitching and tossing for hours on end, water's been sloshing against the hull, and we've been rocked to sleep at night. The BBC's forecast has been nonsense.

I have to say, though, that it's actually been quite entertaining in a perverse way, but it has stopped us from doing any of the work that needs to be done on the outside of the boat.

We were visited by the resident swans this morning. We'd had reports of their nest having had eight eggs, and that sort of number is what we've come to expect over past years, but there are only two cygnets this time.

 

The male seemed intent on drowning himself!

We overfilled our water tank. Put the hose into the tank, turned on the water supply, and forgot all about it. The first we knew about it was when we heard water pouring into the canal through the well-deck draining holes. I think we were so used to hearing watery sounds that we didn't register it straight away. In the flooding process, the tank's air vent pipe got water in a u-bend so that air could no longer be drawn into the tank to replace water being pumped out when taps were turned on, thus putting an excess load on the pump. The problem would have been easily solved if the vent pipe hadn't been in such a remote corner of the void under the deck, and if I wasn't looking after a hernia. So we gladly called in Colin "I hate boats!" Rowe to solve it. He also fitted a new stop-cock (or "cock-stop" as I inadvertently spoonerised it) because the original would no longer close fully. As always, the jobs were done quickly and efficiently, and with a good serving of laughter, too.

The problem we were left with was the possibility of dirt - always present on the well-deck - having been washed into the tank by the overflowed water.

"Aqua Tabs", said Colin.

Duly bought and deployed. Sad, isn't it? but the twenty mile return drive to Midland Chandlers in Braunston was almost exciting, despite - maybe because of - the weather!

                                                                (not Photoshopped!)