Settled at Penkridge for the weekend

16th & 17th January

We made a prompt start yesterday, and in just under two hours boating were in Penkridge. We crossed with just the one boat, Epinone, at Shutt Hill Lock.

After a trip to the very useful shops here, we had lunch, and then I worked on the fender whilst Sheila did some proof reading. I made a break in this merry session by calling BW's Customer Services desk to ask why I hadn't had a reply to my email of Thursday 8 January. (They claim to respond to all emails within five working days.)

The woman I spoke to was very pleasant, but couldn't offer any explanation for the non-response. The situation I was enquiring about is quite silly. During last year, we changed our bank accounts, and the new bank transferred all the direct debits as usual, including the one for BW to collect our licence fee.

The new licence disks arrived in good time before Christmas, but they've not taken the cash from my account. Naturally, I don't want to risk losing my prompt payment discount, so I'd emailed to ask what was going on. Since the BW IT system was out of action when I spoke to them, the woman undertook to call me back, which indeed she did today.

Admittedly, she'd lost track of what the problem was, so we didn't get much further forward, but she's promised to call back again during the week.

We shall see...watch this space.

Meantime, I finished the fender yesterday, so that can be fitted when I've a moment and some decent weather: it's blowing up for the forecast storm at the moment, so no chance of it until tomorrow at the earliest.

Today we made a leisurely start – Graeme wasn't due to collect Sheila until lunchtime, so we were able to potter about, Sheila finishing her packing and things, me going out to buy a paper and then reading it. Graeme turned up in good time, and they went off after lunch. I've had a fairly lazy afternoon, playing with stuff on the laptop and reading.

I've had an interesting exchange with Adam on his Debdale log about the idea of following up boat reviews after a year or so to see how things work out, especially where the boat has unusual features. This led him to challenge me to say what we'd do differently on Sanity, and to give more background to our early days on the boat, before I started this blog.

It'll certainly give me something to write about whilst Sheila's away, and keep me occupied now that the fender is finished. In the meantime, for those interested in Sanity's build and pictures thereof, there's always the static website, of course.