Starting our celebrations of Sheila's birthday

29th & 30th November

It's been a busy couple of days, and I'm in that happily tired state that makes it difficult to do much other than sit and read the paper, so this may well be a shortish post!

Yesterday was cold and misty, and stayed that way all day. I doubt if the temperature got much above freezing all day.

After a routine trip to the shops, I checked the state of the gearbox oil and was reassured to find it still well filled. The next job is to clean all the oil out of the engine bilge. Regular readers will know that I usually use cheapo disposable nappies to soak up liquids from the bilge (two or three quid for 20, usually) but even the very basic ones now use systems that only absorb water, not oil.

For the moment I'm using newspapers – putting some layers down there to soak it up, and then removing them after a couple of days. I don't want to do this on a regular basis, though, (fire risk and all that) so I may actually have to get some oil absorbing mat like that nice Tony Brookes recommends.

We had a quiet morning otherwise. Waterways World presently have a poll running about charging continuous cruisers more for their licence. When I looked, it was 72% in favour of doing so, so Sheila and I voted, and I alerted the canals list and the Braidbar Owners list to its existence.

At time of writing, it was 60% against charging us more, so which is reassuring.

The other project, after we'd changed the bed and pondered the sad state of the sheets we were putting on, was to track down some new ones online. Our bed is four foot wide, so many of the usual sites like Marks and Sparks and John Lewis don't cater for us. In the end I googled "four foot fitted sheet" and found some on Amazon.co.uk, would you believe.

Well, we do read in bed quite a lot, so it seems appropriate somehow. In fact, they come from an associated trader, Textiles Direct. I've ordered a couple to see what they are like; at less than six pounds each, I'm not expecting luxury, but by the same token, if we get only a year's wear out of them we won't complain.

The alternative were some seriously luxurious Egyptian Cotton ones from Macmillan, at £75 each.

Elanor rolled up at six, and we went to the New Lodge for our meal. It was very good indeed, well cooked, good service, tasty food. The heat ratings were about what I'd expect, but that doesn't really help anyone else, I realise. Sensitivity to chilli is such a personal thing, but their medium curries were no hotter than average, certainly not as hot as those you'd get in the Black Country, say.

Today we made a leisurely start, and Elanor and I went over to her house to feed the cats and swap books over. Elanor looks after half our library, and every once in a while we change the books around. It takes a bit of bother, but does mean that we have time to forget about old favourites and then rediscover them.

The main hassle is keeping a spreadsheet up to date, so that we keep track of what we've got at each end, and can easily let Elanor know which books we want next. Truly, our lives would be so much more problematic if it wasn't for our wonderful daughter!

On the way back to the boat, we called at Morrison's and bought stuff for a party lunch. By the time we got back to Alrewas, Graeme, Cathy and Daniel had arrived and were busy chatting to Sheila. Daniel's now 18 months old, and his personality becomes more apparent every time we see him.

He remains a generally cheerful little chap, always happy to see folks and to have fun with them. There's just the first sign of a clash of wills between him and his parents emerging, but I've no doubt that they'll all cope with the Terrible Twos in due course.

The afternoon was spent nattering, duck feeding and all the other stuff you do at a family party like this. The kids have given Sheila a day out at a falconry centre for her present, which is a really neat idea. She'll be able to book it to suit herself during the next year, so I'll let you all know how it goes in due course.

As always, this has turned out to be just as long as my usual posts; the trick is to con yourself that you are just going to do a short one when feeling tired, and then let the fingers take over.