Quiet Sunday, busy Monday

25th & 26th October

Yesterday was the day for which the motto is “fall back”. In our case we took that to mean “fall back into bed” and had an even lazier start than usual. After we’d eventually got up, I ambled down to the paper shop for an Independent on Sunday. On my way back, I met Graham and Beryl Johnson just setting off on a similar expedition.

We had a bit of a natter; Graham confirmed that he is willing to come and take photos of Sanity Again’s shell being craned in, and he has even offered to go to Tim Tyler’s yard first thing in the morning and take some shots of it being loaded onto the trombo.

Truly, Braidbar owners are a great bunch.

The rest of the morning was spent in a laid back fashion. Sheila has taken over the iBook as her personal machine, and has gone back to doing some proof reading for Project Gutenberg Canada. I found that Amazon are selling HP colour cartridges quite cheap and, having ordered one, took the opportunity to sort out my wish list in anticipation of Christmas.

As Graeme commented (note the spelling; we are talking now about the son, not the owner of Priscilla), it seems a bit early, but last year when I left it later I was told that people had already decided what to get me.

After lunch we took ourselves out for a short walk. Fortunately I had remembered to put the phone in my pocket for once as we had calls from both Elanor and Graeme whilst we were out. Sheila also popped into the Trading Post to buy a bottle of meths, having to endure only a couple of jokes along the lines of “Don’t drink it all at once” in so doing.

She actually wanted it for cleaning both the keyboard of the iBook and the Bluetooth keyboard that we use with it. This proved extremely successful and a good deal cheaper than buying branded keyboard cleaner.

This morning we managed an early start and by eight o’ clock we were manoeuvring Sanity out of the mooring. The cunning plan was to use the centre line and stern line to get her in the right position to pivot round. It would have worked except that, as I suspected, all the running the engine in gear had created a reef of silt halfway down the boat. Our manipulation meant that the stern was sitting nicely on this reef when Sheila came to drive out.

She used the short shaft to nudge the stern across and then for once it was a case of piling the power on to dredge our way out.

After watering, we set off for Macclesfield. I think I’ve commented earlier on the number of Jays around this year and we saw yet more all over the place this morning. We also saw a great many dead leaves, and it took about three and a half hours to get to Gurnett Aqueduct, so often did Sheila have to chuck back to clear the prop.

In addition, it being half term, there are lots of hire boats about, many of them puzzled as to the problems they keep having with maintaining drive. I don’t know if the hire yards warn them about the affinity waterlogged leaves have for a turning prop, but they certainly should.

No matter, we were at Gurnett just in nice time for lunch, after which we walked into Macclesfield for me to order some new specs, now that I am eligible for the 30% discount for the over sixties.

On the way back, we had to repass some mini road works which were just starting when we were walking out. They’d just stopped as we got back there; it seems that the water main had been a bit closer to the surface than expected, as a thirty foot high fountain was now emerging from the excavation.

We’re planning a quiet evening; we may stay put tomorrow or else head back to Poynton. It all depends on the weather.