On our own again

After a very pleasant weekend, so ably chronicled by Sally, we're in sole possession of the boat again. Elanor and Sally had a very successful session at obedience last night, I'm pleased to say, and came back to the boat to sleep.

Sally was too modest to mention it, but they've been promoted to the top class, and this was their first occasion at the higher level. For a dog who was very nervy and underconfident (as rescue dogs so often are) Sally has come on by leaps and bounds (sometimes literally) in the last year.

Earlier in the evening, we'd had the pleasure of a visit from Tony and Pat Thorne, occasional blog readers, who are having a boat built by Graham Edgson at Norton Canes, and plan to have it fitted out by Sandhills Narrowboats.

Tony was particularly interested in the Hurricane heater, and I was able to show him how it had been installed in Sanity Again and to sing its praises.

Since Elanor and Sally left just after breakfast, we've had a pretty quiet day on the boat. First, we swept the floor, and disposed of a largish quantity of dog which had remained behind. We changed the bed, for similar reasons, then settled down to catch up with reading, and to go on working on the Festival Newsletter.

Thursday's edition is well on; it will mainly be filled with the timetables of all the events and attractions over the weekend. Later editions, of course, will have some topical stuff, as well as any updates to the timetables.

We plan to head on down towards Shobnall tomorrow, stopping at Branston overnight to do some stocking up. One advantage of this year's location is that we're within easy reach of Elanor's house, so we can get Ocado to deliver there and she'll bring the stuff down to us.

As I did last year, once we arrive at the Festival site, I'll stop posting on this blog and go over to posting on the dedicated Festival blog, Shobnall Fields Forever, delivering an account of setting up the largest volunteer run show in the UK.