Some walking and some good food

17th & 18th November

The manual change over fitting in the gas locker had its first trial the night before last. I was busy cooking lasagne for the three of us, Elanor having joined us, when the flame dwindled and died. I nipped out, opened the gas locker lid and turned the switch, and we were back in business. Very satisfactory.

Yesterday we had a relaxed start, which I was grateful for. I'd had another weird dream, this time about buying a flying broomstick from Pete Flockhart at Tradline. It actually worked, but you had to balance it on your shoulder and then lift your legs off the ground into a cross legged position. Like I say, weird, so I was quite glad to take a bit of time to return to what passes for mental equilibrium in my case.

By arrangement, I went round to Will and Jane's for ten o'clock. They were only just getting going themselves, so I had time to borrow Jane's Windows machine to sort Sheila's Sony Reader with regard to being authorised for reading books with Adobe Digital Editions DRM (Digital Rights Management). It's the one thing you can't do for the Reader with a Mac. Once authorised, you can then transfer the relevant books from the Mac to the Reader and it will show them, but you can't do the initial bit.

Just as I'd finished, Will emerged from his room, and we went off to visit the new butchers in Barton Turns Marina. It's very good, indeed excellent, at least as good as Coates here in Alrewas, and a bit cheaper into the bargain.

Back at the boat I played with the Reader – you can't use calibre to do the transfers, but you can just move them into the relevant folder on the Reader in the Mac's Finder, so that's all right.

We'd invited Will and Jane for dinner, so just for a laugh, I decided to make a bread pudding. I'd never done this before, but had a recipe in one of my books, and it was very straightforward, once we'd got all the ingredients assembled. I went into the village to get them, got back and realised I'd forgotten the eggs, so Sheila volunteered to trek in again.

The meal was well received, especially the bread pud, served with crème fraiche in the cause of dietary control. We had a good old natter and laugh, and finally broke up around midnight.

On that basis, it's a wonder we were so bright this morning, but we were, and so was the weather.

Before going out for our Tuesday walk, I had a curious encounter with T-mobile's customer services. My 18 month contract for mobile broadband with them came to an end yesterday. Since I'm presently paying £29 per month, I called customer services to see what deal they would offer to keep me on board.

The answer was - none. They are only prepared to give me the existing deal with my Huawei E220 modem. When I said that meant I would be taking my custom elsewhere, the adviser just said "Sorry about that". Guess they haven't heard of the concept of market saturation, or indeed, the need for active sales effort in a recession.

So I'm in the market for a new deal. It looks like a choice between Vodafone and 3; 3 are more flexible, but I'm uneasy about the scope of their coverage. On the other hand, they also offer what looks like a neat wireless router that takes a Huawei modem, for just under £70.

The walking party has finally given up on the William IV, and now starts from the George and Dragon. They've renamed themselves the Village Walkers, and we had a cheerful plod around one of the drier routes, before going into the George for lunch.

Must say, they are taking advantage of the Willie's downfall very skilfully. They've got a good and varied menu, with a lot of home cooked stuff, and decent beer, all at a very fair price.

Deservedly, the pub was very busy, so we had a bit of a wait for our food, but since the walkers alone came to 22 bodies, and we were by no means the only folk eating, it was understandable. They may well get slicker as they adjust to the extra demand.

Having had a leisurely lunch, we've come back to the boat for a quiet afternoon and evening. Tomorrow, we'll wind and head off towards Fazeley for the weekend, before coming back here for Thursday, when I've got what will hopefully be the final GP appointment of the autumn.