All sorts of stuff

27th & 28th November

I missed a vital item from last time – that afternoon, I had taken my courage, a pair of scissors, a comb and a water spray in both hands, and cut Sheila's hair again. Admittedly I kept dropping stuff, because it's quite hard to hold a comb, a pair of scissors and a water spray all at the same time, but Sheila said that just made it feel like a proper hairdressers; up to the point where I started wiping the comb on my trousers, which apparently isn't the usual practice in the better salons.

The thing is, it's now long enough since I stopped just using the clippers on her hair that the back needs shaping with a bit of layering, which is a serious advance in technique for me. I'm moderately pleased with the result, and no doubt will improve further as I gain confidence. Meantime, the advantage of doing it at this time of year is that Sheila can always blame the state of her hair on the fact that she's often wearing a woolly hat.

Yesterday I was up early to go to see the doctor at half eight. She was pleased with my state of health and BP, and so that's it until next March, hooray. We celebrated by taking Sanity down to the water point, filling the tank and then going on down the river section to Wychnor Lock to wind below. We've come back to the moorings just above the lock, where we will stay until various social events have been completed, then set off for points South next Wednesday.

They are undertaking some serious work on the boom which protects the river weir. There's a set of site huts, they've put a temporary boom above where the main one usually crosses the river, and hauled the main one out for maintenance.

The other bit of excitement is that we're are currently featuring in an article on the Daily Telegraph's website, on the link between green living and living aboard. The author, Jimmy Lee Shreeve has done a good job, we reckon, and we are grateful to Andrew Denny for advising him so well.

Another newspaper, this time a local one, gives the full story of the car in the cut at Fradley. Seemingly it was a hire car, and there are some interesting pictures of it being extracted. It looks as if they ran a chain through the open windows and lifted it by the roof with a Hiab on the back of a tractor, so I don't suppose it will be good for much other than scrap now.

Today we had a very lazy start, then went for an amble down the towpath to look at progress on aforesaid weir. We got back with a bit of time before lunch, so I did the routine engine checks. Because I'd been surprised at the low level of oil in the gearbox when I did the service the other day, I checked it again, and to my concern found that it had lost around half a litre in 50 hours running.

I sought advice on both the canals and Braidbar owners lists, and duly had some very helpful responses, as well as three phone calls from Braidbar. My grateful thanks to Captain Beeky and David Mack on the canals list, and Graham Johnson on Braidbar owners, but especially to Peter Mason at Braidbar.

Considering that Sanity is nearly five years old , and has 6000 hours on the clock (that's equivalent to 180,000 miles in a car), it's a testament to Braidbar's after sales support that they go to so much trouble.

In the event, it proved to be the simplest and cheapest cause, a slightly loose drain plug. It was tight enough to feel OK when the engine was cold, but after I'd run the engine up to temperature and ran my hand under the gear box, there it was oozing hot oil.

I've tightened it up, and will check it again tomorrow.

Apart from that, we are off out tomorrow night to try out the new Indian and Bangladeshi restaurant here in Alrewas, the New Lodge, which used to be the Old Boat. This is the first phase of a protracted celebration of Sheila's birthday – I'll let you know how it all goes.