23rd & 24th December
There's not a lot to say today, apart from the festive greetings.
Sheila had an early Christmas present when she got a shower in the bungalow yesterday afternoon whilst we were having a last look round Sanity Again before the yard closed for the holiday.
We're still nursing our water supply, and hoping that there's enough of a thaw between now and the New Year to let us take Sanity down to the water point. It's a bit milder today, and the ice is becoming breakable; we'll just have to see.
So, here's wishing all of you a merry time over the holiday period, and I hope that 2010 brings you both what you want and what you need!
See you next year
Bruce and Sheila
Living in Sanity – it's no-mad life.
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Coping with the cold
21st & 22nd December
A frequent question asked about our lifestyle is “Isn’t it cold in the winter?”
The simple reply to this is “No”. But it must be admitted that the kind of weather we are having at the moment is more of a challenge than dealing with a heat wave. The main source of heat is, of course, the Squirrel stove and we’ve been keeping that well stoked, day and night so that the temperature never falls below freezing anywhere in the cabin.
We’ve also been running the central heating for a bit longer morning and evening, to keep the bedroom and bathroom reasonably warm. It will be seen from this that keeping the boat warm when the snow is on the ground involves a bit more thought and effort than just turning up a thermostat and maybe opening a few radiator valves.
This is one of the ways in which life aboard is inherently greener than life ashore, because you are so much more aware of the fuel you are burning.
The cut remains well frozen over, and we are beginning to be anxious about how long our fresh water supply will have to last. We have gone into full water conservation mode; we’ve stopped taking showers and from today we are flushing the toilet with canal water, kept in a bucket by the loo and dipped out from where the ice has melted at the stern of the boat near the engine’s skin cooling tank.
We’ve also ordered a couple of collapsible 8 litre water containers; hopefully they have arrived today, or will do so tomorrow. We’ll use those for drinking water, so that the main use for the water remaining in the tank will be for washing and washing up.
Yesterday, we called in at Braidbar on our way down to Poynton to shop, just to check that we weren’t expected to tow the new shell. Peter told us that he had planned to leave the shell at High Lane if it arrived, but in fact had just been informed that, although it was ready to move, the crane was booked to lift it and North Cheshire Cruising Club had agreed to keep it until the New Year, the Trombo driver was not prepared to attempt the trip, rather to everyone’s relief.
We’ve provisionally been booked to do the tow on 4th January.
Peter offered to give us a lift down to Poynton, as he was going down himself to collect the butties for the guys’ mid morning break. These are normally delivered in a very small light van and there was no chance of it making it up the hill to the yard in the snow.
Just as we were setting off, we found a couple with a Jaguar trying to push it up the hill as it slithered around on the hard packed snow. These turned out to be Braidbar customers coming to discuss their order. After a lot of pushing and shoving by ourselves, the Braidbar workforce and two guys from a Treeworks wagon which was on its way down from their base just below Lyme Park, we got the car straightened up so that it could turn into the public car park lower down.
That was about all the excitement for the day, if you don’t count Peter driving down Anson Road, which is a steep hill currently well covered in hard packed snow and ice. Peter worked in Canada at one stage in his career, and has lost none of the driving skills he acquired there.
We got a good shop done, including a nice piece of beef for Christmas Day. The bus back was only about ten minutes late, which was really quite remarkable under the circumstances.
We’ve had a very quiet day today, with a relaxed start and a gentle walk down the hill to get a paper. After lunch, I went and took some photos of the seasonal scene:
Sanity ice bound at Poynton
Peter and Jan made it across in the afternoon for a present exchange and stayed for a cup of tea. We’re now looking forward to a quiet night; tomorrow we’ll do another shopping trip and in the afternoon a visit to the yard to check on progress.
I’ll post about that on the other blog tomorrow, and then again here on Thursday. After that, I’ll probably take a break from both blogs until the New Year, unless we have some drama to report.
A frequent question asked about our lifestyle is “Isn’t it cold in the winter?”
The simple reply to this is “No”. But it must be admitted that the kind of weather we are having at the moment is more of a challenge than dealing with a heat wave. The main source of heat is, of course, the Squirrel stove and we’ve been keeping that well stoked, day and night so that the temperature never falls below freezing anywhere in the cabin.
We’ve also been running the central heating for a bit longer morning and evening, to keep the bedroom and bathroom reasonably warm. It will be seen from this that keeping the boat warm when the snow is on the ground involves a bit more thought and effort than just turning up a thermostat and maybe opening a few radiator valves.
This is one of the ways in which life aboard is inherently greener than life ashore, because you are so much more aware of the fuel you are burning.
The cut remains well frozen over, and we are beginning to be anxious about how long our fresh water supply will have to last. We have gone into full water conservation mode; we’ve stopped taking showers and from today we are flushing the toilet with canal water, kept in a bucket by the loo and dipped out from where the ice has melted at the stern of the boat near the engine’s skin cooling tank.
We’ve also ordered a couple of collapsible 8 litre water containers; hopefully they have arrived today, or will do so tomorrow. We’ll use those for drinking water, so that the main use for the water remaining in the tank will be for washing and washing up.
Yesterday, we called in at Braidbar on our way down to Poynton to shop, just to check that we weren’t expected to tow the new shell. Peter told us that he had planned to leave the shell at High Lane if it arrived, but in fact had just been informed that, although it was ready to move, the crane was booked to lift it and North Cheshire Cruising Club had agreed to keep it until the New Year, the Trombo driver was not prepared to attempt the trip, rather to everyone’s relief.
We’ve provisionally been booked to do the tow on 4th January.
Peter offered to give us a lift down to Poynton, as he was going down himself to collect the butties for the guys’ mid morning break. These are normally delivered in a very small light van and there was no chance of it making it up the hill to the yard in the snow.
Just as we were setting off, we found a couple with a Jaguar trying to push it up the hill as it slithered around on the hard packed snow. These turned out to be Braidbar customers coming to discuss their order. After a lot of pushing and shoving by ourselves, the Braidbar workforce and two guys from a Treeworks wagon which was on its way down from their base just below Lyme Park, we got the car straightened up so that it could turn into the public car park lower down.
That was about all the excitement for the day, if you don’t count Peter driving down Anson Road, which is a steep hill currently well covered in hard packed snow and ice. Peter worked in Canada at one stage in his career, and has lost none of the driving skills he acquired there.
We got a good shop done, including a nice piece of beef for Christmas Day. The bus back was only about ten minutes late, which was really quite remarkable under the circumstances.
We’ve had a very quiet day today, with a relaxed start and a gentle walk down the hill to get a paper. After lunch, I went and took some photos of the seasonal scene:
Sanity ice bound at Poynton
Peter and Jan made it across in the afternoon for a present exchange and stayed for a cup of tea. We’re now looking forward to a quiet night; tomorrow we’ll do another shopping trip and in the afternoon a visit to the yard to check on progress.
I’ll post about that on the other blog tomorrow, and then again here on Thursday. After that, I’ll probably take a break from both blogs until the New Year, unless we have some drama to report.
Labels:
Higher Poynton
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Baby, it's cold outside
19th & 20th December
The last couple of days have been an exercise in dealing with the cold weather. It’s been getting barely above freezing during the day, and seriously cold overnight, with temperatures around -6ยบ C. It’s in conditions like this that we become concerned for the well being of the water pump under the well deck, just forward of the hatch behind the cabin steps.
Although, to our knowledge, we’ve never had one freeze, it seems sensible to take precautions. Last thing at night, I unfasten the steps and swing them round, and remove the hatch cover, leaning it against the steps. This means that warmth from the Squirrel stove, which we aim to keep in overnight, is reflected onto the pump and the pipework which runs along the aft side of the water tank.
The ice on the cut is getting quite thick, so we are taking care to manage our water supply in the hopes of it lasting until we are able to get out to the water point again. As a result of the continuing cold spell, which is forecast to last right up to Christmas, we have reluctantly decided that it would be foolish to try to go over to Lincoln for the day on Christmas Eve.
The pleasure of the trip would be spoiled by our anxiety about getting home, and about the boat surviving the day without us there. People who leave their boats in the winter normally take some steps to protect them from the effects of frost, but that’s not practical for us in our present circumstances.
This morning we woke to find there had been a serious fall of snow overnight and the ducks were staggering and slipping around in it on top of the frozen water. Both yesterday and today we had had the entertainment of throwing out lumps of stale bread to them. There then follows a sort of ducky ice hockey, wherein one bird will grab a piece of bread and slither off with it, desperately trying to break a piece off before the rest of the pack lands on him or her and it goes flying.
The plan today was for a visit by Peter and Jan to share soup and sandwiches with us and exchange Christmas presents. We therefore made a prompt start, first of all cleaning the boat and then making the soup and rolls.
I had made a start on preparing chicken stock yesterday by boiling the dismembered carcass of a chicken with some herbs, onion, celery and carrot. This morning I fished the corpse out and stripped the remaining meat off it, and then liquidized the veg with my Bamix wand. I then put the pan back on the stove and added chopped leeks and an onion and boiled it all up thoroughly.
Meanwhile, Sheila made two sets of bread dough from those handy kits, one for granary mini baguettes and the other for parmesan and sun dried tomato rolls. No sooner had we got these set to rise than the phone rang; we were not entirely surprised to hear Peter announce that the road conditions around Knutsford were too bad for them to make the journey.
We have to hope that they will be able to get across on Christmas Eve, otherwise the present exchange will have to wait for the warmer weather tentatively forecast for the last week of the year. Meanwhile, we have had a quiet day sitting snugly in the boat whilst the snow drifted down outside.
After lunch we used the excuse of taking two bags of rubbish to the skip to make a foray into the wintery scene. We were by no means the craziest people in view; a group of anglers were just finishing a competition match as we did so. They had had to break holes in the ice in order to dangle their bait in the chilly water.
We also saw the coal boat Alton trying to get their pump out machine working. I don’t think they were successful in this, which may be a problem for those boats around here who were counting on them, as the Trading Post machine is presumably still out of action.
Alton finally crunched her way off up the canal; even the powerful Town Class motor was having difficulty, frequently having to go astern to get another run at the ice.
It’s been showing some signs of a thaw in the late afternoon, but I doubt if the ice will clear sufficiently for us to do the tow for Braidbar which is scheduled for tomorrow. We will probably plod down to Poynton instead as we have a parcel to post, the DVD player having sold on eBay.
The last couple of days have been an exercise in dealing with the cold weather. It’s been getting barely above freezing during the day, and seriously cold overnight, with temperatures around -6ยบ C. It’s in conditions like this that we become concerned for the well being of the water pump under the well deck, just forward of the hatch behind the cabin steps.
Although, to our knowledge, we’ve never had one freeze, it seems sensible to take precautions. Last thing at night, I unfasten the steps and swing them round, and remove the hatch cover, leaning it against the steps. This means that warmth from the Squirrel stove, which we aim to keep in overnight, is reflected onto the pump and the pipework which runs along the aft side of the water tank.
The ice on the cut is getting quite thick, so we are taking care to manage our water supply in the hopes of it lasting until we are able to get out to the water point again. As a result of the continuing cold spell, which is forecast to last right up to Christmas, we have reluctantly decided that it would be foolish to try to go over to Lincoln for the day on Christmas Eve.
The pleasure of the trip would be spoiled by our anxiety about getting home, and about the boat surviving the day without us there. People who leave their boats in the winter normally take some steps to protect them from the effects of frost, but that’s not practical for us in our present circumstances.
This morning we woke to find there had been a serious fall of snow overnight and the ducks were staggering and slipping around in it on top of the frozen water. Both yesterday and today we had had the entertainment of throwing out lumps of stale bread to them. There then follows a sort of ducky ice hockey, wherein one bird will grab a piece of bread and slither off with it, desperately trying to break a piece off before the rest of the pack lands on him or her and it goes flying.
The plan today was for a visit by Peter and Jan to share soup and sandwiches with us and exchange Christmas presents. We therefore made a prompt start, first of all cleaning the boat and then making the soup and rolls.
I had made a start on preparing chicken stock yesterday by boiling the dismembered carcass of a chicken with some herbs, onion, celery and carrot. This morning I fished the corpse out and stripped the remaining meat off it, and then liquidized the veg with my Bamix wand. I then put the pan back on the stove and added chopped leeks and an onion and boiled it all up thoroughly.
Meanwhile, Sheila made two sets of bread dough from those handy kits, one for granary mini baguettes and the other for parmesan and sun dried tomato rolls. No sooner had we got these set to rise than the phone rang; we were not entirely surprised to hear Peter announce that the road conditions around Knutsford were too bad for them to make the journey.
We have to hope that they will be able to get across on Christmas Eve, otherwise the present exchange will have to wait for the warmer weather tentatively forecast for the last week of the year. Meanwhile, we have had a quiet day sitting snugly in the boat whilst the snow drifted down outside.
After lunch we used the excuse of taking two bags of rubbish to the skip to make a foray into the wintery scene. We were by no means the craziest people in view; a group of anglers were just finishing a competition match as we did so. They had had to break holes in the ice in order to dangle their bait in the chilly water.
We also saw the coal boat Alton trying to get their pump out machine working. I don’t think they were successful in this, which may be a problem for those boats around here who were counting on them, as the Trading Post machine is presumably still out of action.
Alton finally crunched her way off up the canal; even the powerful Town Class motor was having difficulty, frequently having to go astern to get another run at the ice.
It’s been showing some signs of a thaw in the late afternoon, but I doubt if the ice will clear sufficiently for us to do the tow for Braidbar which is scheduled for tomorrow. We will probably plod down to Poynton instead as we have a parcel to post, the DVD player having sold on eBay.
Labels:
Higher Poynton
Friday, 18 December 2009
Three days to cover
16th, 17th & 18th December
I’m going to cover three days in this blog post so as to catch up, having missed doing one yesterday. On Wednesday I saw the GP in Poynton; it’s a big health centre that seems well run, and well used to dealing with passing boaters.
I’m happy to say that there’s probably nothing wrong with my skin, though I’m going to be seen again in the New Year once the scratch has healed. I was in and out of the doctor’s, and able to collect a prescription from the pharmacy just down the road, in a total of 45 minutes so that I could catch the 11.13 bus back to Higher Poynton.
In the afternoon, we pulled off the mooring, winded at the far end of the Deeps and filled the water tank. I then steered Sanity through some rather grotty sleet showers to Deer Farm Bend where we spent the night.
We made an early start yesterday morning and were pleasantly surprised to find space on the visitor moorings opposite the service block just after 9.00. We then had two shopping sessions in the morning and one in the afternoon, so that we are beginning to stock up for Christmas.
They are making steady progress with the improvement to the side of the canal by bridge 2. A lot of Armco piling has been driven and with luck it will mean an effective increase of usable mooring in this nice town. As we approached the work site we were bemused to see that two of the guys appeared to have Day-Glo orange shorts peeping out beneath their hi vis jackets.
The general effect was that Superman had been got at by the Health and Safety Executive. When we got closer, however, it transpired that they were wearing orange waterproof trousers with brown leather thigh waders pulled on over them.
I’m happy to report that our experience of shopping at White’s the butchers was further improved when we were recognised as having bought kangaroo rump there some weeks ago. Apparently we’d been charged for a kilo when we bought a pound of meat and they were pleased to give us £5.50 off our bill this time. An honest butcher indeed.
My physio appointment wasn’t until late afternoon, and we’d planned to stop overnight in Marple, coming back this morning. However, the forecast was for freezing conditions overnight and we didn’t want to get stuck there over the weekend.
Accordingly, when I got back from the physio just before 5.00 we set off into the snowstorm with the tunnel light blazing. (Actually, it went out after a bit owing to a dirty contact. Sheila, who was steering, was not amused.)
We got back to Poynton just after six, winded and stopped on the shop mooring overnight. Being by now tired, cold and hungry, we did the only obvious thing which was to retire on the Boar’s Head for a drink and a meal.
This morning, Sheila went off to buy the paper whilst I reversed Sanity onto the water point. I’d just finished watering and was starting to wind up the hose when she got back. We moved forward onto the shop mooring again and sought diesel and a pump out. The diesel was no problem, but the pump out pump was frozen, so having filled the fuel tank we tied Sanity outside the hire boat whilst we did our regular weekly visit to examine progress on Sanity Again.
After lunch, the pump was still not working, so we have returned to our mooring, and backed down onto it. This enabled us to use our own pump to transfer about half a tank into the septic tank provided for people to empty their toilet cassettes. This should at least see us through Christmas, and we can always repeat this procedure if need be. We are now relaxing with the stove well stoked and the prospect of a quiet day tomorrow.
I’m going to cover three days in this blog post so as to catch up, having missed doing one yesterday. On Wednesday I saw the GP in Poynton; it’s a big health centre that seems well run, and well used to dealing with passing boaters.
I’m happy to say that there’s probably nothing wrong with my skin, though I’m going to be seen again in the New Year once the scratch has healed. I was in and out of the doctor’s, and able to collect a prescription from the pharmacy just down the road, in a total of 45 minutes so that I could catch the 11.13 bus back to Higher Poynton.
In the afternoon, we pulled off the mooring, winded at the far end of the Deeps and filled the water tank. I then steered Sanity through some rather grotty sleet showers to Deer Farm Bend where we spent the night.
We made an early start yesterday morning and were pleasantly surprised to find space on the visitor moorings opposite the service block just after 9.00. We then had two shopping sessions in the morning and one in the afternoon, so that we are beginning to stock up for Christmas.
They are making steady progress with the improvement to the side of the canal by bridge 2. A lot of Armco piling has been driven and with luck it will mean an effective increase of usable mooring in this nice town. As we approached the work site we were bemused to see that two of the guys appeared to have Day-Glo orange shorts peeping out beneath their hi vis jackets.
The general effect was that Superman had been got at by the Health and Safety Executive. When we got closer, however, it transpired that they were wearing orange waterproof trousers with brown leather thigh waders pulled on over them.
I’m happy to report that our experience of shopping at White’s the butchers was further improved when we were recognised as having bought kangaroo rump there some weeks ago. Apparently we’d been charged for a kilo when we bought a pound of meat and they were pleased to give us £5.50 off our bill this time. An honest butcher indeed.
My physio appointment wasn’t until late afternoon, and we’d planned to stop overnight in Marple, coming back this morning. However, the forecast was for freezing conditions overnight and we didn’t want to get stuck there over the weekend.
Accordingly, when I got back from the physio just before 5.00 we set off into the snowstorm with the tunnel light blazing. (Actually, it went out after a bit owing to a dirty contact. Sheila, who was steering, was not amused.)
We got back to Poynton just after six, winded and stopped on the shop mooring overnight. Being by now tired, cold and hungry, we did the only obvious thing which was to retire on the Boar’s Head for a drink and a meal.
This morning, Sheila went off to buy the paper whilst I reversed Sanity onto the water point. I’d just finished watering and was starting to wind up the hose when she got back. We moved forward onto the shop mooring again and sought diesel and a pump out. The diesel was no problem, but the pump out pump was frozen, so having filled the fuel tank we tied Sanity outside the hire boat whilst we did our regular weekly visit to examine progress on Sanity Again.
After lunch, the pump was still not working, so we have returned to our mooring, and backed down onto it. This enabled us to use our own pump to transfer about half a tank into the septic tank provided for people to empty their toilet cassettes. This should at least see us through Christmas, and we can always repeat this procedure if need be. We are now relaxing with the stove well stoked and the prospect of a quiet day tomorrow.
Labels:
Deer Farm Bend,
Higher Poynton,
Marple
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Boating in the dark
No post today - we are still boating at 1700!
All is well, just a bit complicated.
I'll explain tomorrow.
All is well, just a bit complicated.
I'll explain tomorrow.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Getting busier
14th & 15th December
We’ve had a mixed couple of days, though much more good than bad. Yesterday, we did one of our trips down to Poynton and both topped up the food stocks and looked for some of the final presents we need for the forthcoming Saturnalia.
This bit wasn’t entirely successful in that we didn’t actually find any of the presents we were looking for, but overall it was still a successful trip. Taking the bus back meant that we arrived just before lunch, so that everything was packed away before we settled down to soup and sandwiches.
Graeme and Cathy have asked for iTunes vouchers, and we thought it might be possible to pick those up at the checkout in Morrison’s. There was indeed a pack of vouchers there but unfortunately the checkout operator wasn’t sure how to ring them up and had to call the supervisor.
There then followed a surreal ten minutes whilst the supervisor firstly tried to check out the pack of vouchers, didn’t manage to do so and disappeared off with them to get advice. She failed to return, leaving us standing there with the checkout queue lengthening behind us and the operator occasionally wittering gently to himself.
In the end we paid the bill for our groceries and left without the vouchers. Although irritated, we weren’t too worried as we knew we could buy them online through the iTunes store and even print them out on our own printer.
That is, we thought we could, but there was a problem with the connection to the store and it kept rejecting my credit card. I’ve had an e-mail exchange with a nice guy somewhere in the world (from the tone of his e-mails I suspect California), and the glitch was sorted by lunchtime today. Looking at the discussion forums, this seems to be not uncommon with iTunes v9 so if it happens to you just get straight on to Apple support.
Yesterday afternoon passed quietly after all this excitement. I spent a bit of time dealing with the iTunes complaint, e-mailing a complaint to Morrison’s, for which I’ve had an apology, and buying the DAB radio for Sanity Again.
My health has been a bit of a theme today. The good news is that my shoulder is loads better, and I’m hopeful that my next physio appointment will be my last. However, a large mole that I’ve had on my cheekbone for donkeys’ years was really itching yesterday and when I got up this morning it had started bleeding.
I think that I’d probably scratched the itch in the night and caused the bleeding, but with all these scary leaflets around concerning the dangers of skin cancer, especially for folk like us who spend a lot of time outdoors, neither Sheila nor I felt very happy about it. Moles that suddenly change their behaviour are one of the things that could be bad news.
So I used the internet to check on the nearest GP surgery and walked down there. I’ve got an appointment to see a GP tomorrow morning, which isn’t bad for a walk in to a strange surgery. Needless to say, the mole has promptly settled down.
We popped in to the boatyard today, just to check for post, and found that the chairs for Sanity Again had arrived a day early. Susan promptly made us a cup of coffee whilst we checked that all the packages were there, which they were.
During this, the couple who are buying Braidbar number 123 turned up to sign their contract, so it was pleasant to have a chance to meet them and have a chat about common interests (partly toilets).
We’re looking forward to a quiet evening and then a busy few days. Tomorrow is my GP appointment and a visit to the Post Office to despatch Christmas parcels, then on Thursday it’s into Marple for shopping and physio. Friday we’ll be back at Poynton to check out progress on Sanity Again (lots of it this week) and then on Monday we are towing the shell for number 121.
We’ve had a mixed couple of days, though much more good than bad. Yesterday, we did one of our trips down to Poynton and both topped up the food stocks and looked for some of the final presents we need for the forthcoming Saturnalia.
This bit wasn’t entirely successful in that we didn’t actually find any of the presents we were looking for, but overall it was still a successful trip. Taking the bus back meant that we arrived just before lunch, so that everything was packed away before we settled down to soup and sandwiches.
Graeme and Cathy have asked for iTunes vouchers, and we thought it might be possible to pick those up at the checkout in Morrison’s. There was indeed a pack of vouchers there but unfortunately the checkout operator wasn’t sure how to ring them up and had to call the supervisor.
There then followed a surreal ten minutes whilst the supervisor firstly tried to check out the pack of vouchers, didn’t manage to do so and disappeared off with them to get advice. She failed to return, leaving us standing there with the checkout queue lengthening behind us and the operator occasionally wittering gently to himself.
In the end we paid the bill for our groceries and left without the vouchers. Although irritated, we weren’t too worried as we knew we could buy them online through the iTunes store and even print them out on our own printer.
That is, we thought we could, but there was a problem with the connection to the store and it kept rejecting my credit card. I’ve had an e-mail exchange with a nice guy somewhere in the world (from the tone of his e-mails I suspect California), and the glitch was sorted by lunchtime today. Looking at the discussion forums, this seems to be not uncommon with iTunes v9 so if it happens to you just get straight on to Apple support.
Yesterday afternoon passed quietly after all this excitement. I spent a bit of time dealing with the iTunes complaint, e-mailing a complaint to Morrison’s, for which I’ve had an apology, and buying the DAB radio for Sanity Again.
My health has been a bit of a theme today. The good news is that my shoulder is loads better, and I’m hopeful that my next physio appointment will be my last. However, a large mole that I’ve had on my cheekbone for donkeys’ years was really itching yesterday and when I got up this morning it had started bleeding.
I think that I’d probably scratched the itch in the night and caused the bleeding, but with all these scary leaflets around concerning the dangers of skin cancer, especially for folk like us who spend a lot of time outdoors, neither Sheila nor I felt very happy about it. Moles that suddenly change their behaviour are one of the things that could be bad news.
So I used the internet to check on the nearest GP surgery and walked down there. I’ve got an appointment to see a GP tomorrow morning, which isn’t bad for a walk in to a strange surgery. Needless to say, the mole has promptly settled down.
We popped in to the boatyard today, just to check for post, and found that the chairs for Sanity Again had arrived a day early. Susan promptly made us a cup of coffee whilst we checked that all the packages were there, which they were.
During this, the couple who are buying Braidbar number 123 turned up to sign their contract, so it was pleasant to have a chance to meet them and have a chat about common interests (partly toilets).
We’re looking forward to a quiet evening and then a busy few days. Tomorrow is my GP appointment and a visit to the Post Office to despatch Christmas parcels, then on Thursday it’s into Marple for shopping and physio. Friday we’ll be back at Poynton to check out progress on Sanity Again (lots of it this week) and then on Monday we are towing the shell for number 121.
Labels:
Higher Poynton
Sunday, 13 December 2009
A productive weekend
12th & 13th December
We’ve had another couple of quietish days, mostly occupied with doing things in the boat. I won’t take up space with accounts of going for the newspaper and the like, but will try to focus on matters of interest.
The main achievement yesterday was in registering a Seller’s account on eBay, something which is harder to do than you might think if you live on a boat. I’d tried to do it last weekend, because we wanted to sell a personal DVD player. I’d got most of the way through sorting it out when the site demanded that I give a landline phone number for them to ring with a four digit code.
Apparently they do this in order to check that you are in the UK (not sure why), but of course it makes life very difficult for those of us who only have mobile phones. During the week we pondered alternatives such as using Graeme’s phone and getting him to text us the number but it all just seemed too complicated.
Then yesterday I thought of the localphone website; we’d come across them in the context of their sister site that gives a way of dialling 0800 numbers from a mobile via a landline number. Their main business is in providing cheap overseas phone calls by selling you a geographical number in the UK and linking it to a phone number you want to call in another country.
You then pay the cost of dialling that local number (the cost of this from a mobile would normally be included in your call bundle, of course) and then a very reasonable rate for the overseas connection. However, what they will also do is sell you a geographic number in the UK which you can forward to any other number you like anywhere in the world, including your own mobile number.
For the sum of 75 pence to set it up and 25 pence per month for the use of the number, this means that we now have just such a landline number that we can either forward to one of our own mobiles or point to an overseas number that we want to call.
The upshot is that we now have an auction running on the spare DVD player; not that it’s actually attracted any bids yet.
After all this excitement, we went for a very pleasant stroll along the towpath in the bright winter sun.
Today’s principal activity has been sorting the family calendar and printing our personal Christmas cards. The calendar’s actually been in production for a couple of weeks; it’s an Excel workbook with a sheet for each month, an appropriate photo at the top and the grid of days beneath. Today saw us putting the final touches to it and printing four of the five copies we need.
Only things is, we’ve run out of 160 gram card and will need to get some more tomorrow to print the last one.
I also used the page layout function of Pages, the Macintosh equivalent of Word, to create a Christmas card using a photo I took in the snow in January of Tixall Gatehouse.
After lunch, we took another walk, this time with a little more purpose (not that there’s anything wrong with just going for a stroll) in taking our recycling down to the tip.
We came back through the canal side car park so as to have an excuse to cross the towpath bridge over the end of the boatyard and have a quick gloat over Sanity Again. In doing so we noticed a car in the car park which had a pair of reindeer horns attached to the top of the windows.
Presumably this is the latest seasonal must have for your motor; I wonder how many of those men using them will be aware of the traditional meaning of “being given a pair of horns to wear”. Come to think of it, in view of the notoriously disruptive impact of office parties on relationships, there may be more ironic humour in this than was first apparent.
We’ve had another couple of quietish days, mostly occupied with doing things in the boat. I won’t take up space with accounts of going for the newspaper and the like, but will try to focus on matters of interest.
The main achievement yesterday was in registering a Seller’s account on eBay, something which is harder to do than you might think if you live on a boat. I’d tried to do it last weekend, because we wanted to sell a personal DVD player. I’d got most of the way through sorting it out when the site demanded that I give a landline phone number for them to ring with a four digit code.
Apparently they do this in order to check that you are in the UK (not sure why), but of course it makes life very difficult for those of us who only have mobile phones. During the week we pondered alternatives such as using Graeme’s phone and getting him to text us the number but it all just seemed too complicated.
Then yesterday I thought of the localphone website; we’d come across them in the context of their sister site that gives a way of dialling 0800 numbers from a mobile via a landline number. Their main business is in providing cheap overseas phone calls by selling you a geographical number in the UK and linking it to a phone number you want to call in another country.
You then pay the cost of dialling that local number (the cost of this from a mobile would normally be included in your call bundle, of course) and then a very reasonable rate for the overseas connection. However, what they will also do is sell you a geographic number in the UK which you can forward to any other number you like anywhere in the world, including your own mobile number.
For the sum of 75 pence to set it up and 25 pence per month for the use of the number, this means that we now have just such a landline number that we can either forward to one of our own mobiles or point to an overseas number that we want to call.
The upshot is that we now have an auction running on the spare DVD player; not that it’s actually attracted any bids yet.
After all this excitement, we went for a very pleasant stroll along the towpath in the bright winter sun.
Today’s principal activity has been sorting the family calendar and printing our personal Christmas cards. The calendar’s actually been in production for a couple of weeks; it’s an Excel workbook with a sheet for each month, an appropriate photo at the top and the grid of days beneath. Today saw us putting the final touches to it and printing four of the five copies we need.
Only things is, we’ve run out of 160 gram card and will need to get some more tomorrow to print the last one.
I also used the page layout function of Pages, the Macintosh equivalent of Word, to create a Christmas card using a photo I took in the snow in January of Tixall Gatehouse.
After lunch, we took another walk, this time with a little more purpose (not that there’s anything wrong with just going for a stroll) in taking our recycling down to the tip.
We came back through the canal side car park so as to have an excuse to cross the towpath bridge over the end of the boatyard and have a quick gloat over Sanity Again. In doing so we noticed a car in the car park which had a pair of reindeer horns attached to the top of the windows.
Presumably this is the latest seasonal must have for your motor; I wonder how many of those men using them will be aware of the traditional meaning of “being given a pair of horns to wear”. Come to think of it, in view of the notoriously disruptive impact of office parties on relationships, there may be more ironic humour in this than was first apparent.
Labels:
Higher Poynton
Friday, 11 December 2009
Pottering on
10th & 11th December
It's been a quiet couple of days, and it's also one of those Fridays when both a Building Sanity Again post and one here is due. I've concentrated my efforts over on the other side, therefore.
Yesterday we went down to Poynton, shopped and walked back (we were feeling energetic) and then did bits and pieces in the boat.
Today we've spent a lot of time in the yard, taking photos and talking to Peter about Sanity Again. We also coincided with a visit from the Coopers, whose boat The Shouting End is the one before ours, and is now well on. It was good to meet up with them and have a natter.
This afternoon we've been down to the waterpoint to top up the tank and collect a parcel of dried fruit and stuff from Julian Graves. It had arrived without my name very prominently upon it, so the guys had opened it, but had very honestly refrained from sampling the goodies.
We're looking forward to a quiet weekend, with some better weather for getting out and about.
It's been a quiet couple of days, and it's also one of those Fridays when both a Building Sanity Again post and one here is due. I've concentrated my efforts over on the other side, therefore.
Yesterday we went down to Poynton, shopped and walked back (we were feeling energetic) and then did bits and pieces in the boat.
Today we've spent a lot of time in the yard, taking photos and talking to Peter about Sanity Again. We also coincided with a visit from the Coopers, whose boat The Shouting End is the one before ours, and is now well on. It was good to meet up with them and have a natter.
This afternoon we've been down to the waterpoint to top up the tank and collect a parcel of dried fruit and stuff from Julian Graves. It had arrived without my name very prominently upon it, so the guys had opened it, but had very honestly refrained from sampling the goodies.
We're looking forward to a quiet weekend, with some better weather for getting out and about.
Labels:
Higher Poynton
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Quiet days and better weather (and a burglar alarm)
8th & 9th December
The high spot of Monday evening was solving both the cryptic and concise crosswords in The Independent. This gave us a sense of achievement and some feeling of reassurance that dementia has not yet made much inroads into our cognitive ability.
The night before last we spent on the hire boat mooring as previously related, thus avoiding returning to our own mooring in a tricky cross wind. We should perhaps have made the attempt, since we were woken at quarter past three by a burglar alarm going off.
Investigation showed that it was one of the Braidbar alarms, so I dialled 999 and reported it. They said they would assign it level 1 priority for immediate investigation, and thus reassured we went back to bed. Inevitably, it took quite a while to get back off.
In the morning, after nipping off to get a paper, we consulted one of the Braidbar joiners about some minor maintenance we’re going to have done on Sanity before handing her over to whoever buys her. (They hadn’t heard anything from the police, incidentally, but then neither was there any sign of a break in.)
We were all sorted by lunchtime and, as the weather continued fine, popped back onto our home mooring after eating our butties. We had some minutes of panic when we were preparing to move, as one of Sheila’s newly completed fenders had deserted the ship. I had tried creating a hanging loop for it with a short splice, but it hadn’t been up to the job.
Fortunately for my self esteem, I spotted the fender floating between the next boat in front of us and the bank just as we were about to leave.
We had to do a bit of cleaning up when we got back, as it was apparent the Canada Geese had been taking advantage of our absence to hang about on the mooring.
There’s not much more to report from yesterday, except an unusual request, via a comment on the last post, from a nursing student asking about providing care to a live aboard boater. She had an exam question coming up about it, so it’s noteworthy that the NHS obviously recognises the needs of us boaters.
The weather today has shown a very pleasant change with much less cloud, sunny intervals and a light breeze. We haven’t done a huge amount after the exertions of the last few days, but did fit in a short walk and a call in at the boatyard.
The Chancellor having confirmed that VAT will return to 17.5%, we needed to order the saloon chairs from IKEA this month. Out of courtesy, we checked with Susan Mason that they will be able to store the flat packs for us in the bungalow at the yard.
We also had a chat with Peter about Sanity Again, but I’ll talk about that in my regular post on the other blog on Friday.
We’re looking forward to a few days of better weather and a chance to get more exercise, but have no plans for further boating trips at the moment.
The high spot of Monday evening was solving both the cryptic and concise crosswords in The Independent. This gave us a sense of achievement and some feeling of reassurance that dementia has not yet made much inroads into our cognitive ability.
The night before last we spent on the hire boat mooring as previously related, thus avoiding returning to our own mooring in a tricky cross wind. We should perhaps have made the attempt, since we were woken at quarter past three by a burglar alarm going off.
Investigation showed that it was one of the Braidbar alarms, so I dialled 999 and reported it. They said they would assign it level 1 priority for immediate investigation, and thus reassured we went back to bed. Inevitably, it took quite a while to get back off.
In the morning, after nipping off to get a paper, we consulted one of the Braidbar joiners about some minor maintenance we’re going to have done on Sanity before handing her over to whoever buys her. (They hadn’t heard anything from the police, incidentally, but then neither was there any sign of a break in.)
We were all sorted by lunchtime and, as the weather continued fine, popped back onto our home mooring after eating our butties. We had some minutes of panic when we were preparing to move, as one of Sheila’s newly completed fenders had deserted the ship. I had tried creating a hanging loop for it with a short splice, but it hadn’t been up to the job.
Fortunately for my self esteem, I spotted the fender floating between the next boat in front of us and the bank just as we were about to leave.
We had to do a bit of cleaning up when we got back, as it was apparent the Canada Geese had been taking advantage of our absence to hang about on the mooring.
There’s not much more to report from yesterday, except an unusual request, via a comment on the last post, from a nursing student asking about providing care to a live aboard boater. She had an exam question coming up about it, so it’s noteworthy that the NHS obviously recognises the needs of us boaters.
The weather today has shown a very pleasant change with much less cloud, sunny intervals and a light breeze. We haven’t done a huge amount after the exertions of the last few days, but did fit in a short walk and a call in at the boatyard.
The Chancellor having confirmed that VAT will return to 17.5%, we needed to order the saloon chairs from IKEA this month. Out of courtesy, we checked with Susan Mason that they will be able to store the flat packs for us in the bungalow at the yard.
We also had a chat with Peter about Sanity Again, but I’ll talk about that in my regular post on the other blog on Friday.
We’re looking forward to a few days of better weather and a chance to get more exercise, but have no plans for further boating trips at the moment.
Labels:
Higher Poynton
Monday, 7 December 2009
Passing the time away
6th & 7th December
It’s been a quiet two days, again. Apart from anything else, the weather, which has not been quiet, has discouraged us from much off-boat activity. This is not to say that we’ve got nothing done, but I can’t really claim that it is of huge interest.
Yesterday, we spent a fair bit of time cleaning the inside of the boat, and then after lunch I boated down to Deer Farm Bend where we spent the night.
Today, we went on into Marple with the wind coming and going but never really causing a big problem. I had a good session at the physio, and we got a lot of shopping done.
We had thought about going on up to Bugsworth and Whaley Bridge, but the continuing gloom of the weather forecast has dissuaded us. Instead, Sheila steered us back to Poynton where we watered and collected some post from Braidbar.
They are slowly getting on with the work on the towpath edge at Marple, but there was not a lot happening today. They’ve dug out all the rock and it looks ready for rebuilding the wash wall. There were blokes on site, but the gaffer spent his time sitting in the site hut and the other men seemed to pass the entire morning lurking in the crew cab of their pickup. (And no, the weather wasn’t that bad; a WRG team would certainly have been out grafting in it.)
Presumably there had been some logistical failure, such as forgetting to bring the shovels so that they were having to lean on each other until a supply could be procured. I note that this work seems to be being done by a local contractor, so I just hope that it is a fixed price contract rather than being charged by the day. With BW, you can never be sure.
Meantime, their workboat was sitting on the wharf for the service point, rather than tied alongside BW’s own workboat on the BW yard. It appeared to have been there all weekend, so the service point is virtually unusable for the time being.
It’s been a quiet two days, again. Apart from anything else, the weather, which has not been quiet, has discouraged us from much off-boat activity. This is not to say that we’ve got nothing done, but I can’t really claim that it is of huge interest.
Yesterday, we spent a fair bit of time cleaning the inside of the boat, and then after lunch I boated down to Deer Farm Bend where we spent the night.
Today, we went on into Marple with the wind coming and going but never really causing a big problem. I had a good session at the physio, and we got a lot of shopping done.
We had thought about going on up to Bugsworth and Whaley Bridge, but the continuing gloom of the weather forecast has dissuaded us. Instead, Sheila steered us back to Poynton where we watered and collected some post from Braidbar.
They are slowly getting on with the work on the towpath edge at Marple, but there was not a lot happening today. They’ve dug out all the rock and it looks ready for rebuilding the wash wall. There were blokes on site, but the gaffer spent his time sitting in the site hut and the other men seemed to pass the entire morning lurking in the crew cab of their pickup. (And no, the weather wasn’t that bad; a WRG team would certainly have been out grafting in it.)
Presumably there had been some logistical failure, such as forgetting to bring the shovels so that they were having to lean on each other until a supply could be procured. I note that this work seems to be being done by a local contractor, so I just hope that it is a fixed price contract rather than being charged by the day. With BW, you can never be sure.
Meantime, their workboat was sitting on the wharf for the service point, rather than tied alongside BW’s own workboat on the BW yard. It appeared to have been there all weekend, so the service point is virtually unusable for the time being.
Labels:
Deer Farm Bend,
Higher Poynton,
Marple
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Busy Friday, quiet Saturday
4th & 5th December
We’ve had a busy day yesterday and a quieter day today. On Friday morning we tried a new order of events. Last week I’d planned to go and get the newspaper after we’d done our visit to inspect progress on Sanity Again, but we spent so long doing that that it was lunch time by the time we’d finished, and too late to get a paper. Sheila’s neat idea this week was that I should go and get the paper first and then she met me at the yard with my camera.
This worked well, as I was only ten minutes early at the rendezvous, which gave me ten minutes to stand on the towpath bridge and gloat over the prospect of the new boat.
I’ve given an account of that visit on the other blog and posted some more pictures on Flickr.
We didn’t take quite so long this time, so had time to get on with some housekeeping jobs before lunch. This boat work continued after lunch and with pauses for IT stuff and the like took up the rest of the afternoon. It included leaving the mooring to get water, diesel and a pump out, the latter two of which we seem to need about every fortnight at the moment.
Today we made a leisurely start on a rather better day, weather wise, than we’ve seen for a bit, although we’ve still been plagued by sudden showers. We had quite a lazy morning, frankly, but did go out for a walk in Lyme Park after lunch.
The forecast for tomorrow is pretty good as well, but less so for Monday when I have my next physio appointment in Marple. We may well boat part of the distance tomorrow, and overnight at Deer Farm Bend. Depending on the weather we may then go on to Bugsworth for Tuesday night. This could make for difficulties getting an internet connection on Monday, so don’t be surprised if my next post is a day late.
We’ve had a busy day yesterday and a quieter day today. On Friday morning we tried a new order of events. Last week I’d planned to go and get the newspaper after we’d done our visit to inspect progress on Sanity Again, but we spent so long doing that that it was lunch time by the time we’d finished, and too late to get a paper. Sheila’s neat idea this week was that I should go and get the paper first and then she met me at the yard with my camera.
This worked well, as I was only ten minutes early at the rendezvous, which gave me ten minutes to stand on the towpath bridge and gloat over the prospect of the new boat.
I’ve given an account of that visit on the other blog and posted some more pictures on Flickr.
We didn’t take quite so long this time, so had time to get on with some housekeeping jobs before lunch. This boat work continued after lunch and with pauses for IT stuff and the like took up the rest of the afternoon. It included leaving the mooring to get water, diesel and a pump out, the latter two of which we seem to need about every fortnight at the moment.
Today we made a leisurely start on a rather better day, weather wise, than we’ve seen for a bit, although we’ve still been plagued by sudden showers. We had quite a lazy morning, frankly, but did go out for a walk in Lyme Park after lunch.
The forecast for tomorrow is pretty good as well, but less so for Monday when I have my next physio appointment in Marple. We may well boat part of the distance tomorrow, and overnight at Deer Farm Bend. Depending on the weather we may then go on to Bugsworth for Tuesday night. This could make for difficulties getting an internet connection on Monday, so don’t be surprised if my next post is a day late.
Labels:
Higher Poynton
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Marple under mildly difficult circumstances
2nd & 3rd December
We made a prompt start yesterday on our delayed trip to Marple. The weather, although dry and reasonably calm, was bitterly cold. Sheila had prepared for this by wearing fleece lined trousers and a fleece gilet under her usual fleece jacket. I was very happy to leave her on the back by herself for much of the time.
On arrival at Marple we found, as Caxton had warned us, that the work on the towpath edge just to the west of bridge 2 meant that little mooring was available; furthermore, the BW work boat was tied on the service block wharf whilst it unloaded some huge boulders. Sheila had handed over to me for mooring, so it fell to me to wind in the junction and then reverse up the Upper Peak Forest to a mooring on the towpath opposite the marina.
It’s never very deep just there, and there are no rings, but we were able to get reasonably close and we drove two substantial pins into the rather muddy towpath.
There followed the routine of shopping, getting back to the boat for a coffee and a warm, and then shopping again. We had planned to treat ourselves to a haggis in belated recognition of St Andrew’s Day but Whites the butchers was closed.
I then did my share of steering in the cold, similarly attired. Back at Poynton, we followed The Big Boat to the winding hole and winded just after her. She went on back to Skye’s mooring (which she seems to be using all the time now) and we waited just a few minutes for fellow Marineville moorer Carbis to finish watering, and then replaced her on the water point.
I took the opportunity of collecting our post from the yard, which included a new toilet seat. Back on the mooring there was just time for the straightforward task of swapping loo seats before I had a shower and cooked dinner.
Those with experience of DIY will recognise the implicit irony in the foregoing statement.
Sure enough, I was just putting one of the fixings onto its thread when it slipped from my fingers and fell into the back area of the porcelain. This wouldn’t have been a problem as it only meant removing the ply board from behind the toilet to get access, which involved taking out four small screws. However, as I lifted this piece of ply clear it fouled the power supply to the macerator and pulled the cable out of its isolator box.
I won’t go on, it’s too painful to recall, and it only took another half hour to sort it all out.
Today is Sheila’s natal day so we’ve had a quiet day after she’d opened her presents this morning. We’re going out for a meal tonight. The weather hasn’t been good enough to allow for more than a brief sally out with the recycling this afternoon. We’ve both been doing our proofreading bit and Sheila has continued to work on the set of coasters she is crocheting for Sanity Again:
Tomorrow we will make our weekly visit to the new boat and I’ll upload a fresh set of pictures as well as doing a post on the other blog.
We made a prompt start yesterday on our delayed trip to Marple. The weather, although dry and reasonably calm, was bitterly cold. Sheila had prepared for this by wearing fleece lined trousers and a fleece gilet under her usual fleece jacket. I was very happy to leave her on the back by herself for much of the time.
On arrival at Marple we found, as Caxton had warned us, that the work on the towpath edge just to the west of bridge 2 meant that little mooring was available; furthermore, the BW work boat was tied on the service block wharf whilst it unloaded some huge boulders. Sheila had handed over to me for mooring, so it fell to me to wind in the junction and then reverse up the Upper Peak Forest to a mooring on the towpath opposite the marina.
It’s never very deep just there, and there are no rings, but we were able to get reasonably close and we drove two substantial pins into the rather muddy towpath.
There followed the routine of shopping, getting back to the boat for a coffee and a warm, and then shopping again. We had planned to treat ourselves to a haggis in belated recognition of St Andrew’s Day but Whites the butchers was closed.
I then did my share of steering in the cold, similarly attired. Back at Poynton, we followed The Big Boat to the winding hole and winded just after her. She went on back to Skye’s mooring (which she seems to be using all the time now) and we waited just a few minutes for fellow Marineville moorer Carbis to finish watering, and then replaced her on the water point.
I took the opportunity of collecting our post from the yard, which included a new toilet seat. Back on the mooring there was just time for the straightforward task of swapping loo seats before I had a shower and cooked dinner.
Those with experience of DIY will recognise the implicit irony in the foregoing statement.
Sure enough, I was just putting one of the fixings onto its thread when it slipped from my fingers and fell into the back area of the porcelain. This wouldn’t have been a problem as it only meant removing the ply board from behind the toilet to get access, which involved taking out four small screws. However, as I lifted this piece of ply clear it fouled the power supply to the macerator and pulled the cable out of its isolator box.
I won’t go on, it’s too painful to recall, and it only took another half hour to sort it all out.
Today is Sheila’s natal day so we’ve had a quiet day after she’d opened her presents this morning. We’re going out for a meal tonight. The weather hasn’t been good enough to allow for more than a brief sally out with the recycling this afternoon. We’ve both been doing our proofreading bit and Sheila has continued to work on the set of coasters she is crocheting for Sanity Again:
Tomorrow we will make our weekly visit to the new boat and I’ll upload a fresh set of pictures as well as doing a post on the other blog.
Labels:
Higher Poynton,
Marple
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Still snuggled down
30th November & 1st December
We changed our plans once more over the last couple of days, again in the light of the weather forecast. We’d planned to go to Marple today (Tuesday) having decided that Monday was going to be too cold and windy. However, we woke this morning to find some ice on the cut and a forecast giving strong wind and rain later in the day.
By contrast, the forecast for tomorrow is quite reasonable at least until mid afternoon, so we shall go then.
Meanwhile, yesterday had its interesting moments. We were nicely settled down pursuing our literary interests when Peter Mason rang to discuss the best location for the VHF antenna and the solar panels on the roof of Sanity Again. This is where our earlier research stood us in good stead. We had soon decided that a single large panel would work best, identified a possible unit, printed out the technical information about it and were able to go across to the yard for a discussion.
I’ll put more detail about this on the other blog on Friday; we’ve actually ended up with a different solar panel, because the manufacturer of our original choice, Kyocera, does not extend a warranty to mobile applications of their products.
I’m still researching the issue of the best co-ax connector for where the VHF antenna lead goes through the roof; it’s important that this is of the right quality or we shall lose transmission power and therefore coverage.
My discovery of a new, multi platform piece of software for formatting e books, Sigil, means that I have joined Sheila in the interesting exercise of preparing ebooks for use. Sheila’s contribution is as part of the Distributing Proofreading Team (in fact the Canadian branch) which prepares the text of scanned books for publication by Project Gutenberg.
Sigil comes in once Gutenberg has distributed the resulting text. It is very much still a work in progress, in fact its creator describes it as an alpha version, but even so it is reasonably stable on the Mac (that is, it doesn't fall over more than twice an hour). It allows you to take the HTML version of the Gutenberg text, tidy it up and output it in ePub format which is becoming the standard for ebook readers.
The aim is to be able to use it in WYSIWYG mode, but at present some of the tinkering has to be done in code view. Anyone with experience of producing web pages will find little difficulty in getting to grips with the variant of XML which is ePub.
The other thing to report is that on my way back from getting a paper and a loaf of bread, I found Caxton filling her water tank. I made myself known to Lesley and Joe and we had a good chat before they set off for Bollington and I went back to Sanity.
This afternoon has seen the weather deteriorate somewhat, though nothing like as much as forecast. Nonetheless, it is still very cold and we’ve been glad to keep busy inside the boat.
We changed our plans once more over the last couple of days, again in the light of the weather forecast. We’d planned to go to Marple today (Tuesday) having decided that Monday was going to be too cold and windy. However, we woke this morning to find some ice on the cut and a forecast giving strong wind and rain later in the day.
By contrast, the forecast for tomorrow is quite reasonable at least until mid afternoon, so we shall go then.
Meanwhile, yesterday had its interesting moments. We were nicely settled down pursuing our literary interests when Peter Mason rang to discuss the best location for the VHF antenna and the solar panels on the roof of Sanity Again. This is where our earlier research stood us in good stead. We had soon decided that a single large panel would work best, identified a possible unit, printed out the technical information about it and were able to go across to the yard for a discussion.
I’ll put more detail about this on the other blog on Friday; we’ve actually ended up with a different solar panel, because the manufacturer of our original choice, Kyocera, does not extend a warranty to mobile applications of their products.
I’m still researching the issue of the best co-ax connector for where the VHF antenna lead goes through the roof; it’s important that this is of the right quality or we shall lose transmission power and therefore coverage.
My discovery of a new, multi platform piece of software for formatting e books, Sigil, means that I have joined Sheila in the interesting exercise of preparing ebooks for use. Sheila’s contribution is as part of the Distributing Proofreading Team (in fact the Canadian branch) which prepares the text of scanned books for publication by Project Gutenberg.
Sigil comes in once Gutenberg has distributed the resulting text. It is very much still a work in progress, in fact its creator describes it as an alpha version, but even so it is reasonably stable on the Mac (that is, it doesn't fall over more than twice an hour). It allows you to take the HTML version of the Gutenberg text, tidy it up and output it in ePub format which is becoming the standard for ebook readers.
The aim is to be able to use it in WYSIWYG mode, but at present some of the tinkering has to be done in code view. Anyone with experience of producing web pages will find little difficulty in getting to grips with the variant of XML which is ePub.
The other thing to report is that on my way back from getting a paper and a loaf of bread, I found Caxton filling her water tank. I made myself known to Lesley and Joe and we had a good chat before they set off for Bollington and I went back to Sanity.
This afternoon has seen the weather deteriorate somewhat, though nothing like as much as forecast. Nonetheless, it is still very cold and we’ve been glad to keep busy inside the boat.
Labels:
Higher Poynton
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