A sociable evening, and then onto Fazeley

4th & 5th April

It's going to be a shorter blog today, for two reasons which will become apparent as I go on.

Yesterday we had a promptish start on a bright and breezy day. Whilst Sheila topped up the water tank, I nipped into the village to get a paper and some final bits and pieces for dinner. I wasn't on my best form, as I'd had a pretty broken night with what felt suspiciously like the onset of Elanor's cold. (First reason – I'm a bit dopey with it.)

Once filled up with water, we made good progress up to Fradley, where we made a brief stop to dump a lot of rubbish and recycling. Then it was the left turn onto the Coventry, and the pleasant cruise to Whittington. If you except the bit near Streethay that's right alongside the A38, this is one of the best parts of the Coventry Canal, we reckon.

On the way, we saw our first ducklings of the year, another sign that Spring is now definitely with us, and some recompense for the racket the amorous ducks are making outside the boat for half the night.

Just before reaching Streethay, we had to pull in to clear the prop. A bit of fishing line had wrapped itself round the propshaft, and was collecting a lot of weed to itself.

We got to Whittington just in nice time for lunch, and then spent part of a brilliant afternoon cleaning up the boat. I've commented before that having folk in for dinner has this handy side effect that we feel prompted to give Sanity a bit more than just a quick lick and promise. The new mini vacuum cleaner continues to be excellent for this, enabling us to get dust and muck out from a load of nooks and crannies.

After having a shower, I set to to prepare our repast. This was going swimmingly – roast chicken fillets in a mushroom and onion sauce with new potatoes and broccoli, followed by fresh fruit salad and crème fraiche.

The sauce was under way, the spuds prepped, and I was working on the broccoli florets when my chronic mix of impatience and cack-handedeness caught up with me again. The broccoli was wrapped in that stupid tough cling film. The first crown came out reasonably easily, but the second resisted arrest valiantly, and when I resorted to trying to slice the film open with the veg prep knife I only succeeded in stabbing myself in the finger.

The palmar side of the middle phalange of my left index finger, to be exact. There was quite a lot of blood almost straight away, but very little pain.

A quick rinse under the tap, and Sheila sprang into action, first with a big plaster, then, when it continued to leak, a firm wrapping with zinc oxide tape over the top. This brought things under control, and Sheila took over cooking the meal, whilst I sat around giving instructions.

Next time, I'll skip the self-mutilation bit, and just announce that it's She's turn to cook, I think. (Second reason – typing's a bit tricky with one of the three fingers I use out of action.)

Despite this little panic, we had a great evening with Des and Gill, with lots of Braidbar and other canal gossip, and roaming off onto bell ringing and other such subjects. Des also leant me his primer about making websites with CSS, so I really must get on with the revamp of the nbsanity site.

Today was another glorious morning. We had a great run to our usual shopping mooring at Sutton Road Bridge. They are busy erecting another retail outlet of some sort just over the hedge, but it's still possible to get through to the existing shopping areas.

Amongst other stuff, we bought some Steristrips in Boots, and the plasters have been replaced with them. The cut is actually healing remarkably well, but it'll do better for being more open to the air.

Tomorrow we'll go to Fazeley Mill Marina for diesel and a pump out. After that we're not sure how we're going to kill the bit of time we have in hand before heading for Norton Canes. But it will not involve me and sharp knives if Sheila has anything to do with it.