Frosty days

6th & 7th January

It was a very very cold night, Monday/Tuesday, enough to disturb sleep somewhat. We had heavy frost on the inside of the Houdini, and the galley clock, which is a bit sensitive to the cold, was seriously confused. I'm waiting for the promised thaw before taking it apart to reset the hands to their right relationship.

It was a struggle to warm the boat first thing, and running the engine in gear made very little difference to the ice clinging to the side of the boat.

In these circumstances, walking around the boat causes weird grinding noises – the boat rocks, and the ice edge rubs up and down the side of the hull.

All this had an upside, of course; the Tuesday morning walk was a fabulous experience in clear frosty conditions. By the time we set off, there were a couple of brave boats on the move, though they can't have been doing their blacking any good.

We had a really good meal in the George and Dragon, too. With less pressure on the staff, and by admitting my problem to Ruth the landlady, we were able to get an order in in good time, and were eating within 15 minutes of getting sat down.

We had a quiet afternoon after all the excitement of the past couple of days. Elanor brought back our washloads, so we are now in a position to hang on here into the weekend if necessary. The forecast is for a thaw during the weekend, though the price we shall pay is rain and wind.

Last night started cold, but warmed up as it went on. This morning we had another run in with the Eberspacher, curses, curses. It started up just fine, but I flushed the loo as it got going, and the combination of the macerator, the water pump and the Eberspacher must have knocked the voltage down to below what was acceptable to the picky thing, and it cut out.

This meant me throwing my clothes on, moving the bike out onto the stern and lifting the board over the battery bank to remove and replace the fuse, thus resetting the heater. As well as swearing never to fit an Eberspacher again (Webastos just don't seem to be so picky), it has also caused us to review whether the bike is really earning its keep.

It's very handy on lock flights, no doubt of that, but do we do enough such flights to justify the hassle it causes accessing the engine bay? It's a hard one – Sheila gets more use out of the bike than I do, and I'm the one who has most cause to curse it, as this morning. We've each been trying to give way to the other, Sheila saying we should sell it, and me going no, you find it useful.

I think we're moving towards letting it go, so Sanity may well have a notice BIKE FOR SALE, £50, once we've had a chance to clean it up.

Later in the morning, I trolled round to Will's, collected the new accumulator and used Jane's PC to authorise my Sony Reader. All went well, until I got back to the boat and realised my boat keys were no longer in my pocket.

There followed an episode of that peculiar panic that strikes when you lose your keys: much hunting every where, call Will so he could do the same, but no keys.

I set off to walk back along my route, and had got as far as enquiring in the Co-op if I'd dropped them there when buying the loaf of bread, when I had another vision, this time of me using my keys first thing to unlock the padlock on the slide to be able to lift the bike out.

I called Sheila, who was still on the boat, and she couldn't find them in the engine room, but then neither could she find the padlock either...

Yup, in my haste to deal with the Eberspacher, I'd left both keys and padlock out on the roof next to the slide. For several hours.

It's going to be a few weeks before I can complain about Sheila's habit of leaving her keys lying around in odd places on the boat: at least she doesn't normally leave them outside.

We've had a quiet afternoon again: a brief walk just to get out and about, and watching the '71 Morecambe and Wise. That's one of their best, with Shirley Bassey in Eric's boots and the Andre Previn sketch: "I'm playing all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order."

We've seen no traffic past at all, which is a shame. The ice is now quite soft, and if it had been broken up a bit more, we'd have a decent chance of getting up to Fradley tomorrow. As it is, we'll have to see. Wherever we are tomorrow night we're liable to be frozen in again until Sunday, probably, when it's due to be wet and windy.

Watch this blog for further bulletins.