Busy, dozy, busy, dozy

2nd & 3rd May

It’s been an odd couple of days in a way, the theme being contrasts. First off, the weather. April having been remarkably warm and dry a lot of the time, May has come in wet, cold and windy. I feel really sorry for those taking a boating holiday this weekend; it’s not been nice at all.

The other contrast is indicated in the title of this post; we’ve either been scuttling about or dozing quietly. (Not much change there, some might say.)

Yesterday, we made a lazy start, loafing in bed until nearly eight o’clock, then pottering about in the boat until it was time to start shopping again. Catching up on other blogs meant that I spotted the sad news from Nev Wells that it looks as if OwnerShips is in such a financial mess that it will have to be wound up.

Allen Matthews’s death exposed a degree of financial mismanagement that is really quite shocking. Some people had been expressing unease to me over the last few years, but there was never any solid evidence that things were going wrong. We are very saddened by the turn things have taken, and for the excellent staff like Dave Taylor whose jobs are now at risk.

We do most sincerely hope that a way through can be found; the scheme and business model are just as sound as they always were, and had Ownerships stuck to its knitting, as they say, all would be well.

Slightly stunned by the revelations, we went shopping, making two trips to Sainsbury’s before and after lunch, so that the cupboards and wine cellar are fully stocked once more. The rest of the day was spent on board, trying to keep warm. I’ve been avoiding lighting the fire as far as I can, so as to reduce the amount of cleaning to do before Crick, and we gave the Hurricane a good work out as a result.

Today we had a relaxed start again; the main task was to take Sanity for a last pump out at Fazeley Mill Marina. When we came to move her, however, we discovered that some birds must have been roosting in the tree above, because her roof was an awful mess. It took a deal of scrubbing to clean it up.

Having got her reasonably clean once more, we toddled round to the marina and pumped out. We’ve taken her back to the towpath by the junction, handy for the surveyor on Wednesday.

After buying a paper, we walked back to Sanity Again, arriving just in time for lunch. Afterward, I gave in to necessity, dug out some kindling and the chimney from the bow locker and fired up the Squirrel. Things are much more comfortable on board; hopefully, we’ll see a return to milder weather soon.

We’ve spent the afternoon dozing and proof reading. I did stir myself to revamp the home page of the fixed website. The development of Web 2.0 means that it’s both easier and better to use the blogs and Flickr to tell the world what we are up to, as it lets folk comment on stuff as it appears, so the old site has become an archive of our life on board Sanity.

Tomorrow, we’ll move Sanity Again to join Sanity by the junction, ready for Wednesday. Once that’s out of the way, we’ll probably go off to Kingsbury Water Park for a few days.