Final stuff in Alrewas

2nd & 3rd April

Yesterday was a day for a very leisurely start, as we actually didn't have any commitments at all, but on the other hand, couldn't go anywhere because Sheila was seeing the physio today.

We needed to back onto the water point to fill the tank, and the night before I had had trouble lighting the fire in the Squirrel, so we wanted to check that the flue was clear.

Since when we finally emerged into the daylight there was a Canaltime on the water point, we started by peering down the chimney of the (unlit) stove. It wasn't too bad, in fact, but I took the baffle plate out from the firebox, and we deployed the boathook in chimney-scraping mode to knock what soot there was down into the grate.

Then I cleaned it all out and left it ready to relight. By this time the Canaltime was just moving off, so we started up and I backed Sanity through the bridge to water.

When we'd finished, we discovered that a boat, which had been tied rather awkwardly on the bend in front of our original mooring, had pulled forward to tie where we had been, so we settled for coming just through the bridge and mooring again.

The final job for the day was shopping for meat at Peter Coates – supplies of mince, stewing steak and chicken fillets were duly obtained, and packed into the freezer.

The new mooring, although less than 100 feet from the old one, didn't have such a good internet connection, and in fact it proceeded to give me a bit of gyp. I think the problem was that the modem was swithering between two alternate signals, one 3G and the other GPRS. It kept switching from one to t'other in mid download, getting the laptop confused and then falling over.

In the end I had to restart everything, and after that it more or less behaved itself.

After lunch it began to cool down rather, so I relit the fire with very little trouble. The rest of the day passed with doing stuff on the net and running a washload now that we had a full water tank again.

In the evening Elanor turned up with some new bow saw blades she had found for us – suddenly what had been the standard length of 24 inches has become hard to get. She'd run some to earth in Wickes, though, and brought us a couple, which should see us through to the warmer weather.

Today was another easy start, as Sheila's appointment wasn't until 11 o'clock. She went off to it leaving me pottering in the boat, dealing with emails, mostly, and lighting the fire with just a little bit of hassle. The real problem seems to be that all the wood we have left at the moment is rather green, and so reluctant to light. It's necessary to light the PureHeat ovals directly, which is never as easy as starting with sticks.

But I got it going in the end, whereupon the weather warmed up and we had to open the bow doors after a bit.

Sheila came back from the physio with good news – it's not arthritis in her shoulders, but subacromial impingement, a soft tissue problem which should be amenable to treatment.

After lunch I trolled round to Will Chapman's house, and we had a couple of hours looking at the stuff which needs to be done to generate the next round of SOW literature.

A veggie curry tonight, I think, then tomorrow we are away on the first stage of our summer cruise.