Getting ready to move on

We gave Sheila's Mum a good send off yesterday at Altrincham Crem, with
a secular service taken by a specialist in such things which was very
moving and, unlike some such, also made space for those present with a
faith to engage in private prayer. We chose the music and readings, and
it all seemed very special to the person whose life we were
celebrating. I'd certainly recommend Steve Grant to anyone else in this
part of the world.

As always, minor domestic problems popped up at a stressful time.
Living on a boat doesn't remove all sources of stress, but at least
they are usually either straightforward, or completely unavoidable
(like the death of a parent, or worrying about the kids). The
straightforward one this time was that the shower pump, that pumps the
water out of the shower tray and over the side of the boat, decided to
stop working on Sunday night, fortunately just as Sheila finished
showering. Told Iain Bryceland about it, and he said "It'll be the
impeller - is this the first time it's gone?" Seems three years is good
on a liveaboard.

Took it apart this morning, and sure enough, what was a six blade
impeller is down to three. New one on order, so should be here in the
morning.

Apart from all this, there's not a lot to report - as might be
imagined, we've been having a quiet day to recover. The new connector
for the new phone hasn't turned up yet, but we seem to be getting a
half decent signal here anyway, so it's not yet a major problem, and
we've otherwise been pottering about. It should get livelier at the end
of the week, so more anon.

Catching up

As might be expected, it's been a busy week. We spent most of Thursday
over at Knutsford, starting on clearing the flat and meeting the man
who's going to take the funeral service on Monday. Sheila's Mum wasn't
religious, and when we said farewell to Sheila's Dad a few years ago,
she asked for a similar service for herself. The guy the undertaker
found met us for about half or three quarters of an hour in the
afternoon and was really good. He's not a humanist, he just tries to
ensure that the funeral represents what both the deceased and the
family wanted.

It's to be a mixture of appropriate music and some poetry (read by
Graeme and I), with a eulogy partly from Peter and Alastair, Sheila's brother and nephew respectively, and
the rest from himself. There will be time for contemplation, and those
attending who do have a faith will be invited to use that time for
private prayer. It's a huge comfort to be in such professional hands.

We took a trip into Macclesfield yesterday (Friday) with two aims in
view, one to stock up at Julian Graves, and the other to sort out our
mobile phones for the year.

Part of my diabetes management (and cooking mania) is to make this
seriously healthy breakfast which consists of home made muesli (sugar
free of course), stewed fruit and EasiYo DIY yogurt. The fruit
components come from JG, and it was time to restock with dried
apricots, dates, prunes and figs. They also do some fruit, nut and seed
mixes that are a great addition to the muesli.

The phone proved to be quite straightforward, as far as these things
ever are. As explained on the website, we connect to the net via an
iBook laptop and mobile phone using a Boaters Phone Company aerial on
the boat roof. Recently we've been using the Orange World deal which
gets unlimited downloads for 24 hours for GBP1. Since we mainly use
Vodafone, this has meant swapping an Orange SIM into phones originally
obtained from Voda, the best of which for the purpose wouldn't take it
as it was network locked. On the other hand, said phone is eighteen
months old, and some of the buttons are becoming erratic.

We therefore trotted into the Voda shop, upgraded the phone in question
to a Nokia 6234, and got them to unlock the old phone. Helpful staff,
fast service, what's wrong? Except, of course, the hassles of sorting
out a new phone, swapping the address book into it, buying some
ringtones (ever noticed how you get fewer and fewer actually on the
phone these days?) and then learning to respond to the new tones when
people ring up. Oh, and laying out GBP20 to Boaters Phone Company for a
new adaptor to attach the phone to the aerial downlead. These latest
phones don't have aerial sockets in the back, so BPC have come up with
an ingenious Velcro attached beast that's supposed to work with any
phone - I hope. More about that later, no doubt, after it's come.

Friday afternoon we pulled out of the yard and actually did a bit of
boating, just up the canal to High Lane, winded there, posted the
letter to BPC ordering this Velcro thing ands boated back to spend the
weekend on a mooring on the canal. This lets the guy whose mooring it
is, and who works for Braidbar, go into the yard to hook up to the
shoreline power supply so's his wife can do the week's laundry.

Sad but expected

Sheila's Mum finally passed away on Sunday morning, just under a month after being diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. If you have to die of cancer, it isn't a bad way to go. She had very little pain until the very end, and just slipped away after losing consciousness the day before. At 86 she was full of years, but it's still a blow, of course.

Must pay tribute to the care she received in Macclesfield General. Despite all the moans and worries about the NHS, it's still staffed by excellent people who really care.

We're in that strange limbo, now, planning for the funeral next Monday and dealing with all the detail of winding up a life, but still quite numb. Everyone here at Braidbar have continued to support us brilliantly.

Trying to think on to the future, we're going to ask for some more things to be done to Sanity - details later once we've agreed just what's to be done. Then we're going to the Save Our Waterways event at Macclesfield marina on 3 March. A fortnight after that Bosley locks will reopen, and we'll be off on our travels again.

On the lighter side, an example of Sheila's crochet has been posted on the web by Vena Cava, makers of synthetic whalebone. Pardon? I hear you say. Porthole doilies are the crocheted spiders web type things that lots of us put behind the glass. The problem is how to make them stay there. Until now we'd used curtain wire, the kind you use for net curtains, cut to a length to fit inside the porthole in a circle and threaded through the outside loops of the doily. Trouble is, it means the doily leans against the glass and gets wet with condensation at this time of year. The doily gets stained with mildew, and the inside of the plastic coated wire rusts.

Vena Cava make a stuff called Tripleflex, which is indeed an alternative to whalebone. A length of that threaded through gives a flat rim that grips the wooden porthole liner and keeps the doily off the glass. It can be seen at
http://www.venacavadesign.co.uk/Gallery/Other_uses_for_Vena_Cava_Corsetry_Materials.html

Blogging by email

The Brycelands made it back safely, and have just about recovered from
the jet lag three days later. They clearly had a great time, and New
Zealand sounds a great place to visit. It would be a great place to
live, if only it had canals!

We are now enjoying the retired life once more, or would be apart from
the concern about Sheila's Mum. It's one of those situations where one
can do very little except visit, try to get as much info out of the
hospital staff and wait for developments. Must say we've been very
impressed with the quality of care in Macclesfield General.

Working from the boat means I can only use the wi-fi broadband
connection by holding the laptop in the cratch of Sanity, so I'm
experimenting with posting this blog by email. This means that I can do
all the writing in the study, and then just go on line to send it.
We'll see how it turns out.

Looks like we have the prospect of a wet weekend ahead, so it's just as
well that we've sorted the wood supply (thank you Elanor and WRG for a
generous load of silver birch). Next task is to decide what jobs we
want doing to the boat, since we're making a longer stay here at
Braidbar than originally planned. Iain and Luisa have generously
arranged for us to be able top carry on borrowing the car to keep
visiting Mum. It's good to have such good friends - truly we are lucky
in our boatbuilder!

Doesn't time fly

Was speaking to Graeme on the phone last night and he wanted to know why I hadn't posted anything here for the best part of a week. I knew it had been a couple of days since I did, but he's right - it's been a long time. Partly this is because when we're not cruising, each day can seem quite similar to the last, so it's hard to find stuff to put up, and also partly because we've been to'ing and fro'ing to Macclesfield to see Sheila's Mum, and then just doing shopping and stuff on the other days.

In particular, on Friday we took the car to Marple to get some crochet cotton for Sheila, and to get some Budweiser Budvar beer, Sheila's favourite lager and available in cans from the Marple Co-op for some reason. We're well used to visiting Marple by boat, but it's odd to have to find it by road. Sheila needed the cotton to carry on making porthole doilies and curtain edging for Boat 100, the one the Brycelands are building for themselves. The other event of note was that confirmation of the Braidbar booking for the Crick Show on Spring Bank Holiday came through. All seemed well except the mooring details showed both Sanity and Shimshams, the two boats to be moored on the towpath, as 1.0 metres wide, which since they are both the usual 6 foot 10 inches was not quite correct. Sure enough, someone rang from the show organisers to check, and I was able to put them straight.

The other size related matter was an email from Cathy, our daughter-in-law, protesting that I had described her as 5 foot 2 in the caption to one of the photos on the website, when in fact she's 5 foot 5½. She was understandably upset, and may just have forgiven me by now!

Last weekend was quiet, too. Went out onto the towpath as usual, cleaned the boat on Sunday, visited Sheila's Mum who neither much better nor a lot worse, although she does seem quite weak and drowsy a lot of the time.

Last night we had Sheila's brother and sister-in-law round to the boat for dinner. It was a good evening, with food, wine and conversation all flowing steadily. Today we're in the final throes of preparing to welcome the Brycelands back home. Cleaned the house and car, made them a big pot of soup, took all the rubbish to the tip. Fortunately, the weather is a bit milder than it was last week, so the shock of the change from New Zealand won't be too much.

Busy, busy with a week to go

Sudden burst of activity today, with another customer visit (the Siviters to see Just Siviting), an extra trip to visit Sheila's Mum, and a search for brass machine screws.

After a normal start on a very frosty morning - check two lots of email, the answerphone and sort the post - I trotted off down the hill to get the paper (the Independent). Then it was fiddling about time until the Siviters turned up and had a look at progress on their boat. Now that we've finally got the hydraulics for the bow-thruster sorted (don't ask), it's coming along very well, and they seem very pleased. Gave them a cup of coffee/ red bush tea, and nattered for an hour or so. Then it was a quick lunch before going into Macclesfield to visit Mum. She seems comfortable enough, but very drowsy.

After that, we played find the engineering supplies shop in Macclesfield. It's called Delaney's, but they don't sell donkeys. They did, however, have the brass machine screws we wanted, as well as a set of road works outside the store. All sorted, we headed back to the yard for a brew (tea) and to undertake some more supplier chasing, for portholes this time. This is where Sheila earns her keep - she's much better on the phone than I am, whether it's schmoozing suppliers to deliver two days earlier than they really wanted to, or staving off the creditors until the Brycelands are back.

Heigh ho, less than a week to go now before they're back - it'll be strange to be back to our unemployed lifestyle again!

Sunny Monday

This is supposed to be the day of the year most likely to be taken off as a sickie, but no fear of that here. The whole weekend was notable for glorious weather, and we were able to spend some time cleaning the boat's interior with all the doors open for the first time this year. Very good for morale.

Sheila's Mum looked much more with it when we visited yesterday, so that's reassuring. We just have to wait now to see what the next move is medically. At least she seems reasonably comfortable at the moment.

Another quiet day at work, with a handful of queries about hiring, and some supplier chasing and ordering to do. This means I was able to spend a chunk of the afternoon splitting a lot of the wood Elanor brought the other weekend, with the aid of our own rocket (a Swedish device for driving into the end of a log and forcing it apart) plus the loan of a sledge hammer and felling axe from the yard. This should keep us in split wood for a few days at least.

One of the features of this job has been making a reacquaintance with Windows SP (we use a Mac). Have to say it's much more stable than the earlier versions I came to loathe, but you do have to keep the virus checker and other defences up to date. As a commercial site, Braidbar also suffers far more spam than we do, partly because I can afford to be ruthless with the nbsanity.net addresses, and reject anything that isn't addressed to a small number of users such as bruce, sheila and webmaster. In particular, mail addressed to info@ doesn't get through, and that seems to be the source of a lot of the Braidbar spam.

Heigh ho, soup and bacon sarnies tonight, I reckon - I've been cooking full meals during the weekend, and then we have simpler things after work during the week.

Sunny weekend

Gosh, it's good to see the sun again. After several days of cloud and cold wind, yesterday and today have been classic high pressure winter weather with sun and blue sky during the day and frost at night.

Visited Sheila's Mum yesterday - she's much as she was, but at least not in pain, particularly. Looked very drowsy though. Just hope it stays like that for her.

High spots of the last two days - my Blake's 7 DVD set came, so good service there. We pulled the boat out of the yard on Friday afternoon as last week, but this time went down the canal to Lyme View, where there's a good food pub, the Miner's Arms. Had a good meal there, though I succumbed to the temptation of the mixed grill, so spent the rest of the night feeling very full. Washed it down with a couple of pints of Old Speckled Hen. This used to be too strong to drink as a session beer, but they've reduced the strength of the draught version.

Today we came back to Poynton and moored on the widened section of canal, created by subsidence from the local coal mine, but known as "The Deeps" (which is ironic as it's no more deep water than the equivalent flashes are further north in Cheshire, where they are caused by salt mining). We had to be back to entertain Chris and Liz Birks, a nice couple who are having boat number 101 built, which they are calling Shimshams. They were about for a couple of hours, and generally very pleased with the way the boat is shaping up.

We'll close up the office shortly and go back to the boat to cook - spaghetti bolognese tonight, I think.

It's February, folks

One of those days which goes like a quickstep - slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. Early start to shuffle the boats in the yard and move a new one into the paint dock. Then a fair bit of quiet, Sheila trekked down to the PO/newsagent to get a paper while I held the fort in the office, browsing the web again for Blake's 7 stuff and waiting for the Siviters to come and see how their boat is progressing.

They turned up at lunchtime, so we took it in turns to lunch. All well from their point of view, but we're still waiting for a header tank to be delivered from Beta Marine (three weeks now). Finally got a series of calls from Beta, and looks like another solution is to be applied, trying to modify the tank we first thought of. The fitter is understandably not happy, especially as work on that end of the boat has been held up waiting for the thing.

Found some interesting stuff in Wikipedia about Terry Pratchett, including the rules for playing the fictional card game Cripple Mr Onion which mainly appears in Witches Abroad, but also appears in a number of other Discworld books.

Have just realised while sitting typing this that we've still not loaded the wood Elanor brought at the weekend onto the boat, and we're due to pull out of the yard for the weekend again tomorrow. Looks like that's Friday's activity sorted then. Maybe tomorrow 's weather wil be more encouraging :-0