Shopping, cleaning, and boating

22nd, 23rd & 24th April

We found ourselves on our own at Shobnall overnight, Wednesday to Thursday, only the second time that’s happened, but although it felt about exposed, we had no trouble at all. To our surprise, the batteries were still well charged in the morning, making us wonder if the street lights were bright enough to generate some juice in the solar panel.

We’d been thinking about the virtues of having our own oil extractor, or “sucky thing” as a certain boat builder of our acquaintance calls it, and I found a miniature, 1.5 litre one on the Machine Mart site, so ordered it. We don’t need it for changing the oil, but it will be very handy for drying out bilges and the like.

I know, more storage space = more stuff to store.

In compliance with this adage, we then went off on a very successful shopping trip, obtaining such things as a small set of kitchen scales, some Mr Sheen and a new watch from the Watch Hospital in Coopers Square.

We had an interesting example of why WH Smith’s is struggling, and Ryman’s thriving, in a search for a soft pencil eraser. In Smith’s, the assistant whom Sheila approached just gave some vague directions as to which aisle to look in; in Ryman’s we saw the woman on the till respond to a request for a single paint brush by calling another assistant over “John, just show this gentleman where the paint brushes are, will you?”

As I think it was Sir Stuart Rose said: “Succeeding in retail isn’t hard, you just give the customers what they want,” which includes good service, of course.

Back at the boat by 10, we set off for Branston, finding a mooring before the bridge without difficulty in the mid morning, the T-mobile signal being better there than by the water park.

In the afternoon, we did some boat cleaning; Sheila made cardboard masks to go round the portholes, and started cleaning them with Peek, whilst I had a go at washing Icelandic volcano dust off the roof and port side.

Then we quietly collapsed to enjoy the warm evening.

Yesterday we stayed put on the 48 hour moorings, and made an expedition to Morrisons for perishable supplies. A lazy morning followed, which I improved by taking some shots of Sanity Again and putting them up on Flickr.

In the afternoon, we co-operated on a blog post for Building Sanity Again, describing our impressions of her after the first three weeks on board.

Today, we made an early start to get back to Alrewas mid morning, when we’d have the best chance of getting a 70 foot mooring. It was a good run, with not much traffic about (we started at 7.30). Sheila pointed out a little grebe she’d spotted on the way down, and also recorded a pair of swans necking, and a magpie perched on some cattle.

We’d barely arrived and got tied up before our old Ownerships boat, Streamline, turned up, with Alan and Liz Rowbotham on board. We had a good old natter with them, and showed off Sanity Again, needless to say.

We’ve tied by the water point, and cleaned the ventilator mushrooms (Sheila) and the starboard cabin side (Bruce). Whilst engaged in this, Elanor turned up with our post, including the sucky thing. It is indeed a dinky little beast, scarcely large enough to be away from its mother, but entirely adequate for our purposes, and easily storable.

The rest of the day has been spent dozing in the sun, chatting to passing boaters and towpath walkers, and generally chilling out. Tomorrow, we’ll move up through Bagnall Lock to tie near Sanity; she needs one last engine service before we part with her.