It's so good to have friends

12th & 13th October

I'd no sooner finished the catch up blog post and we'd had lunch than Quidditch turned up on her way back from Huddlesford to unload here at Alrewas before going back to her mooring at Wychnor.

We nipped out, windlasses in hand, and helped her down Bagnall Lock. We knew that Sheila's Sony Reader had turned up at Will and Jane's over the weekend, so we walked on down to the Alrewas moorings and helped her tie up, meeting up with Will's partner Jane as we did so. The cunning plan was to go on with them to their house and collect the parcel.

Will said, sure, fine, but come and have a drink with us in the Willie first. After that things got a bit out of hand. I'm tempted to say that that's the last I remember, but it wouldn't be strictly true, and anyway would make this post a bit short.

Not to put too fine a point on it, we spent the rest of the afternoon in the pub, nattering away to Jane and Will. Some of it was sharing thoughts about the Strategy Meeting, but a lot was catching up with good friends. What put the cap on it was Will suggesting that we should go back to the house, all right, but stay and have dinner with them.

By now that seemed an excellent plan, especially as it would involve some red wine. Sheila and I went back to Sanity (hah!) and got coats and a torch (so some evidence of still being able to plan ahead) then we went to Micklehome Drive via the Co-op to buy our contributions to the evening in the shape of chocs and, after an urgent phone call from Will, some onions. We already had a bottle of wine from the boat, you understand.

We then had an excellent evening. The Sony Reader was unpacked and checked out as far as we could in the absence of setting it up with a PC to upload books; it comes with some sample chapters, so we were able to admire it even so.

We didn't stop too late, for once, and tottered back to the boat by the light of a gibbous moon.

This morning I felt remarkably fit, all things considered, and trotted off to have my annual check out in the surgery. All was largely well there, so all I need now is my rescheduled hearing check and then a final appointment with the GP.

The rest of the morning was spent wrestling with the interface between the Sony Reader and my Mac. Neither calibre nor Adobe Digital Editions would agree that it was plugged in, though it was appearing as a drive on the desktop.

I won't bore you all with the various phases I went through, but just give the outcomes. To use calibre to upload books from a Mac to the Sony PRS-505, you need the latest version. Adobe Digital Editions will not authorise the Sony from a Mac, but it is possible, according to a thread on the MobileRead forum, to plug it into a Windows machine, authorise it through that using the same Adobe ID as you have on the Mac, and then you can read DRM controlled epub documents on the reader even though they've been loaded from the Mac.

It sounds a load of hassle, and hopefully eventually both Sony and Adobe will see the error of their ways, but on the basis of the first 24 hours experience, ebooks are the way to go for those of us living aboard. It's very easy to use the Reader once you've got the books in there, and I really believe that in the end it's going to make as much difference to reading habits as the iPod has to listening ones.

This afternoon has been a quiet time. Elanor looked in – she had a fall from a horse on Saturday, and was still feeling very sore today, so she's gone to get checked out at A&E. I'm sure she's going to be OK – she was wearing all the right protective gear - but it will be good to have that confirmed by the experts.

Tomorrow we'll take part in the Willie Walk, hopefully, and then set off towards Tamworth on Wednesday.