It was a wild and windy night, with the boat rocking about even in the sheltered yard mooring, but we survived it. In the morning we had our first chance to chat to Iain and Luisa – they had got back on Saturday OK, but we’d left them alone to do all the post holiday charging about, and getting over the shock of leaving sunny Spain to come back to an England in the grip of an early winter.
We’ve agreed to help at Crick again next year, which is great. Next weekend, we want to leave Sanity over the weekend while we help Graeme ease through the transition to being 30. It’s the first of the “Big 0” birthdays – twenty just isn’t the same, as it’s caught between 18 and 21, both much more important, but after thirty, it’s a succession of those decade milestones hurtling towards you at seemingly increasing speed. Anyway, Iain and Luisa have agreed to let us leave Sanity safely in the yard, with a shoreline connected, which saves emptying the freezer and turning it off.
They are so good to us.
At lunchtime we found a good medium length walk, onto the Middlewood Way at Higher Poynton Station, and then South to Poynton Coppice, through some woodland and so back onto the towpath and back to the yard.
The afternoon was a quiet one in the boat – we’re still waiting for parts for the domestic alternator, and for the TravelPower to come back. We bought a couple of books on Amazon, one of them a book of Aran and Guernsey patterns for small kids. Sheila has this spare Aran wool to use up so it looks like Daniel going to get an Aran sweater in a bit.
Today we started the day by pulling Sanity out of the yard and onto the shop mooring to get a pump out. We don’t want to run the engine whilst the alternators are off it, so it was an interesting exercise with ropes and tiller pumping. Whilst we were out, Ian and Peter pushed Nocturne across to the other side of the basin; she needs her heel test soon, and the other side is set up to do that.
After the pump out we worked Sanity back into Nocturne’s previous place – we just have to remember which side to step off at the bow to avoid hilarious accidents.
IWA has emailed us asking us to write to MPs yet again. The newly announced further cuts to the DEFRA budget may well affect BW, which is already struggling to fund the consequences of the summer's floods and the huge breach on the Mon and Brec Canal.
Janet Dean, our MP in Burton, has always been very supportive in the past, so this is what we wrote, via the website writetothem.com:
We corresponded earlier this year about the impact of the then budget cuts on British Waterways, and from your responses at that time I have no doubt that you are already sympathetic to the purpose of this letter. That purpose is to ask you to raise with the minister our extreme concern about the consequences of any further diminution of BW's resources consequent upon the latest round of DEFRA cuts.
Recent events on the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal show how foolhardy it would be, indeed how downright dangerous to the public safety it would be, to reduce still further the funds available to BW.
Surely the time has come to insist that BW is removed from the blight of this toxic Department and managed from, say, the Department for Culture Media and Sport, or the Department of Transport, either of which would be just as logical a home for the care of Britain's inland waterways?
Later in the afternoon, Austin and Liz Siviter turned up, just passing through. Austin has been on a boat painting course, and was justifiably proud of the roses which he’d painted on a pair of boards to cover the glazing in the cratch of Just Siviting.
We had a cup of tea with them, and then when they’d gone, I cut Sheila’s hair for the second time. I reckon I made a better job of it this time, though her hair has got a will of its own in terms of which way it wants to lie. When I complained about this, Sheila said cheerfully “Yes, that’s what my hairdressers have always said as well”.
Glad to know it’s not just my incompetence with the clippers.
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