Sitting out some wet and windy weather

25th & 26th March

It's been a wild and windy couple of days, though things are looking better as I type this. It means there's not so much to report boating wise, as we've stayed hunkered down in Sanity apart from necessary trips out.

Yesterday we had a lazy start, despite waking early, and loafed in bed until well after half seven. When we did finally emerge, I ambled down into Alrewas for a paper, and to drop off a repeat prescription request at the surgery. I went the long way round, walking along to the Wharf Bridge. There are indeed still 48 hour mooring signs all along from Bagnall to Alrewas Lock.

There were a few boats at the nearer end, by the Bowling Green, but then nothing until the far side of the water point, where a solitary Canaltime sat in the place of the usual string of regular moorers.

Back at the boat, I checked again the email that Jane Howarth had forwarded to me, in which Chris Thompstone of BW West Mids claimed that the signs were to be taken down last week. I emailed the Secretary of the local IWA Branch to pass on my views, on the assumption that the Branch would be actively involved in discussions about the right level of mooring control. I haven't had a reply as yet, but I guess he's a busy man; the Branch has a very active programme of social events and talks to keep organised...

It remained a day for computer type activity, with the wind howling outside, so I turned to and wrote the next post for the Building Sanity Again blog, this time on Communications. I also made a start on organising some of the falconry photos for mounting on the static website, but had to take a break from it, as I was becoming boss eyed with all the screen time. I'll carry on with those as fast as I can, though.

Elanor stopped by on her way home from work, and had a meal with us, which was great. She dropped off a load of post, but then called again from home to say that a) she'd forgotten to take our Seasearcher magnet away with her (she's borrowing it for the weekend's BCN clean up) and b) we had a little parcel from UKgeocaching.

This parcel would be the Trakabulldog trackable item I'd ordered, so it seemed like a good idea to get it from her.

Accordingly, she called by on her way into work this morning, which meant we had to be up and about a bit more promptly. The Trakabulldog, strictly speaking a geocoin, works like a Travel Bug, that I think I've mentioned before.

Basically, you release it into the wild by leaving it in a geocache, with a mission, and then folks collect from one cache and drop it off in another, logging its movements on a dedicated webpage as they do so.

We're going to attach a model narrowboat to this one, and so we've called it Little Sanity. Its mission is to visit as many caches alongside navigable inland waterways as possible.

We'll be at Shobnall Chandlery during the weekend, so will hopefully acquire the model boat then.

The rest of the morning was taken up with me visiting the surgery for a blood test, and then we both went to see our dentist, Ehsan Rana for routine checks and a scale and polish.

That all went fine, so we bought some bread and a couple of pasties from Coates the Butchers to celebrate. The weather, which had been great, decided to play a little trick on us on the way back to the boat, and absolutely tipped down a mixture of stinging hail and penetrating rain.

The main challenge was to get the pasties back to the boat without them becoming soaked, which we just about succeeded in doing, at cost of getting drenched ourselves.

We've spent the rest of the day onboard again, chilling out, Sheila doing some proofreading, me catching up with the paper and various bits and bobs that came in the post. Sheila's also brought the financial stuff up to date, so we're both feeling quite virtuous.

Tomorrow we'll head down into Burton, to see if we can get a refund on the leaking water pump we bought from Shobnall, and to get some cans of Pedigree from the Marston's Brewery Shop.

Then it'll be an amble back here for the Tuesday walk and my second trip to the surgery a week tomorrow for my blood test results. After that, we'll head into the wilds of the BCN, aiming to be at Norton Canes by Easter weekend, so that Sanity can go on the dock in the week following.