Despite what some bitches might have been telling you, we did not spend the last 72 hours blind drunk. In fact, we were really quite restrained, considering it was Graham and Carolann off Autumn Years we were socialising with.
/wahaha
Admittedly, joining them on the towpath at three o'clock for "tea" led to beers and then wine quite quickly, but it was very Mediterranean weather, and it seemed appropriate, somehow. As usual, a merry time was had, and we were able to exchange chat with Jane Howarth who came past, having a walk after having had a bit of an op a couple of weeks ago.
We saw her again yesterday, in very similar circs, except that we were on the towpath outside Sanity Again rather than Autumn Years. Anyway Jane, I hope your recovery continues and that you are soon back to full fitness.
In between one afternoon and the next, it is true that we tried getting a take away from the Jaipur Cottage. Sadly, given their enthusiastic marketing by distributing leaflets to all the boats tied in Alrewas, this wasn't a great success. In its earlier incarnation (can't remember the name then) we'd had a couple of meals there and it had been OK, a cut above your standard sub-continental restaurant/take away.
This time, we were pestered by the staff to have a drink whilst we were waiting, which was the last thing we wanted, of course, having taken on board about six units of alcohol apiece during the afternoon. A couple of other punters came through whilst we were waiting, but eventually, a guy appeared with a tied up carrier bag, said something that sounded like what we'd ordered, and with some difficulty was restrained from carrying it all the way to the boat for us.
We got aboard, opened it up and fell on it ravenously. It was then that the doubts started: why did we have poppadoms, when we hadn't ordered any? Where were the king prawns? Finally we tumbled to it, we'd been given the wrong order, a bit of an achievement under the circs, given the restricted take away trade.
We were well into it by then, so really couldn't face taking it back. It was more or less the sort of thing we might have ordered anyway, as far as we could tell, but not of a particularly high quality, frankly. Lots of rather undistinguished sauce, and a few lumps of meat in each dish.
We won't be going back.
Elanor brought over our Ocado order yesterday lunchtime, and then Nev Wells came past on Waterlily, on his own. Elanor and I gave him a hand to lock down Bagnall, and waited whilst he winded below. There was, of course, an immediate rush of boats, so (assisted by Sally) we must have turned the lock three times before we got Waterlily back up.
By this time, Graham and Carolann had arrived, and the rest of the afternoon was pretty much as Sally described it in her reply to Lynx's comment yesterday.
Today, after a very quiet night, we took a walk across the fields to Fradley, coming back down the towpath, and refreshing ourselves with ice creams on the way. The batteries were well down; I didn't run the engine yesterday and though there was lots of it, the October sun doesn't generate as much power as the June one. So I ran the engine and Sheila did a washload, putting it out to dry on the whirligig.
She's just taking it in now; it should be pretty dry, though we've not had anything like the hot sun today that we had yesterday. Summer's final fling seems to be flung. The calendar is spattered with appointments for the next two weeks, so we're going to sit here for around ten days probably, or as long as the water lasts.
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