Carry on cleaning

Actually, more like washing, but it's the spring cleaning theme continuing. First thing this morning, as we were still staggering around getting up, I realised that the shoreline power had gone off, because the SmartGauge was showing the voltage falling back to 12.8 volts. Investigation discovered that the whole pontoon was off. It later transpired that the entire village had been down, thus demonstrating the superiority of life on board, as of course we had just switched seamlessly over to running off the batteries, whilst all over the village folk were finding their fridges starting to defrost.

It came back quite soon, but it gave me to think about the fact that we're running the washing machine a lot. If the shoreline failed whilst the machine was heating water, the MasterVolt would switch to invert and start discharging the batteries at a furious rate (like around 100 amps). Accordingly, I've switched the inverter/charger to charge only. This means that, if the mains input fails, the 230 volt circuit will just die; inconvenient, but not disastrous.

Sheila has now washed the all the towels and most of the bedding. During the weekend, she'll do the rest of the bedding and a load of clothes, having done the hot wash whites which are currently bleaching.

We'd been going to sweep and wash the floor before then, but we're dog sitting over the weekend whilst Elanor goes to a London wrg weekend dig, so I think the floor cleaning will keep until Monday.

Meantime, I've just watched another Blakes7 episode, "Horizon", which testified to the ingenuity of cash strapped production in the late 70s BBC. Most of the crew of the Liberator, having been captured by the Federation baddies, were working in a slave mine, lighted by what were clearly Camping Gaz butane lanterns, the kind with the lamp enclosure screwed directly to the baby cylinder, which was wrapped in silver coloured Fablon to make them look like alien artefacts, sort of.

There must have been a lot of liaison between production teams in those days, what with half of the Blakes7 kit seemingly made in the Blue Peter studio, and the need to make sure that they didn't try to shoot an episode in that quarry in Hertfordshire when the Dr Who team needed it. ;)

Tonight, Sheila is claiming her much snow checked meal out to celebrate her birthday. It should have been before Christmas, but the weather has only just improved to the point where you'd want to be walking back through it in the middle of the evening. We're planning on going to the Clifford Arms again, having had a very good meal there a while ago, and we're told that it's still good.