See you in 2012

I'm going to make this the last post of this year, and take a break until 2012. Elanor continues to make a good recovery, but it means that we are very busy walking Sally, looking after her house and our cat in it, as well as preparing for Christmas.

The main unanticipated event was the Squirrel glass cracking yesterday. It suddenly split from top to bottom; I was able to get a replacement from Midland Chandlers, of course, and was pleasantly surprised when the screws holding the clips came out without trouble. I used some WD-40 on them, and a serious bar on the Allan key socket, but it was still a relief.

The guy in MC advised putting a smear of Copaslip on the threads before reassembly; I didn't have any on the boat, but have ordered a small tube from Amazon, and when it arrives will take the screws out and treat them. The other thing to know is that you shouldn't over tighten the screws, nipping them up just enough to hold the glass securely against the rope seal behind it.

We've been seeing a lot of condensation in the engine room; Sheila and I spent some time sucking water out of the engine bilges, but the main solution is to keep the door open between the bedroom and the engine room so that it ventilates.

There are a couple of cold spots that we're going to get Braidbar to investigate next time we're up there, as well.

Apart from that, we've been plodding along; I called at Betty's farm on my way back from Elanor's this afternoon to stock up on fruit and veg, and the turkey arrived later this afternoon. Earlier in the day, we'd met the relief postman, who identified Sally as  Doberman lurcher on the basis of her paws and upright hind legs. She was just pleased to be fussed over.

Have a good Christmas/holiday/solstice/New Year, folks, and as I say, I'll see you in 2012.

Oh... and Sally says WOOF!

Quick update

Just a quickie 'cos we're run off our feet here:

• Elanor is fine and recovering nicely
• She and Sally will be with us for a few days more
• Sal's paw is healing well, but she needs a couple more days of only leash exercise to make sure things carry on getting better
• I bought two bags of Briteheat and two of Taybrite from the shop today; I'm going to mix up my own mixed ovals
• All we need now for Christmas is the turkey
• Santander have finally sorted out our switch of accounts to Nationwide, they say; watch this space.

Another quick update in two days time.

A quiet day between two busy ones

As I suspected, yesterday was really quite hectic, what with Elanor dropping Sally off with us before going to see a panto with her dog training colleagues, and Graeme, Cathy and the menaces grandsons arriving at the same time. So for a while we had the boat heaving with dog and kids and grown ups.

It all settled down eventually, and after lunch we took Sal for a run in one of the running about fields. Her paw is healing slowly but steadily; swabbing it with Hibiscrub after being out produces no bleeding, though the wound still looks a bit damp. Hopefully it will all heal up over Christmas, ready for the new season's training and events.

Once the Lincoln party had left, I roasted the forerib of beef joint we got from the butcher on Friday. It turned out to be massive, so we'll have plenty of cold meat in the run up to Christmas.

Sally was very quiet overnight until about half four, when she started pacing and whining. This usually means that she's getting cold sleeping alone on the saloon floor (she says) but in fact I suspect it's more loneliness. We let her through to join us on the bed, and she graciously agreed to let the humans have fair shares, that is, half the bed for her and half for us.

I managed to get snuggled down with my back against hers and most of me still under the duvet, and was just nicely dozing off again when she started having the most active and prolonged dream; rabbits were clearly involved, as there was much sotto voce woofing, and all four legs were twitching away.

All of this transmitted itself to me of course.

So we've been taking it easy today. It was seriously cold this morning, with the lake frozen right across, but the forecast thaw has arrived, and it's now much easier walking underfoot. Sheila's been catching up on the washing, and I've been doing various bits and bobs.

Tomorrow, I'm supporting Elanor whilst she has some day case treatment, so no blog until Wednesday.

Getting ready to last out Christmas

Today started very well; we'd run out of muesli, so we went across to the Willow Tree for two of their famous Boater's Breakfasts. For £6 you get a properly fried egg, two rashers of bacon, a sausage, a round of very tasty black pudding, some baked beans and some mushrooms, half a tomato, two slices of toast and a mug of coffee.

No lunch was required.

Walking around was quite tricky first thing; there had been a shower of rain in the early hours onto freezing ground, so black ice was lurking everywhere.

Back at the boat, we sat and digested for a bit, idly catching up with email and the like, then had another cup of coffee and made an expedition to the village to stock up on veg, muesli and other comestibles. It promptly started to sleet, of course, but we managed to get there and back without getting too wet.

After a bit more quiet recovery time and a mug of soup, we girded both our loins and the boat's and went across to the service wharf, dodging the showers more or less successfully.

There we pumped out, filled the fuel tank right up and replaced an empty gas bottle. This means that we are now pretty well set for the holiday period, if broke. We're expecting more freezing weather tonight, in which case we'll be glad we got sorted out today.

The family are descending on us for the afternoon tomorrow, so I'll probably not blog again until Monday.

Very chilly

For the first time this winter, it seems possible that we shall see some ice on the water by the end of the weekend. There have been odd bits of cat ice in the shallows on frosty mornings, but so far no suggestion of the main surface area becoming solid. However, the forecast suggests that we shall have sub zero temperatures Saturday night to Sunday morning, and the cold conditions for the past week mean that the bulk of the water will already be pretty chilled.

In the light of that, we may well go across to the service wharf for a pump out and diesel on Saturday afternoon, rather than Sunday morning, as we'd planned when we gave up the idea of doing it on Monday afternoon, Monday morning, Sunday afternoon.

Today, it was very cold in the wind, so that we felt well chilled walking across to the Willow Tree for a rendezvous with the Coffee Bar Kids for hot chocolate. After a pleasant hour, we went out to raid the mini market, with only limited success for once. The butcher was there, and had brought our beef fore-rib joints, but the veg stall hadn't turned up, a bit of a blow, as we'd all let our stocks run down a bit in anticipation of a good splurge today.

A walk into the village is now indicated for tomorrow, so as to have a sufficiency of veggies for the week.

We've spent the rest of the day huddled in the boat, working on various projects including the Canal Boat Christmas Quiz (mostly Sheila) and my book (me). I've just got the final chapter to write; I've got the notes for it, so it shouldn't take too long to do, then it will be a case of tweaking and polishing and finally publishing the thing.

After tomorrow, blogging may be a bit erratic in the run up to Christmas, with a lot of family commitments to cover, but I'll try and get something in at least every other day, then probably take a break between Christmas and the New Year.

A pleasant evening and a visit from Braidbar

We had a very pleasant session with Stephen and Jayne last night, consuming an excellent meal and nattering away until gone 11. Thanks very much, you two, it was great.

On the way round to Dolce's mooring, I tried taking some photos of the Christmas lights on some of the boats. It wasn't entirely successful, despite the use of the Gorillapod to fix the camera to the top of various fence posts, but I did manage this one:

I don't think camera shake was the problem, more movement of the lights themselves in the breeze.

On the way back, Jayne pointed out Takey Tezey to us, just a couple of boats away from Dolce, so Heth, your troubles may just be beginning…

/wahaha

Today, we pottered about doing on board stuff all morning, then had a call from Peter Mason at ten, confirming that he would be coming down with Andy Grindrod to fix a door on Dolce and investigate the cause of a water leak under their galley sink, and to look at our battery bank.

After going to Dolce first, he left Andy there sorting stuff out and came over to us for a chat and to top up the batteries. In the end, the answer was to dismantle the bank, taking each battery out, cleaning the terminals and topping it up.

This should extend their life for a bit; we'll see once they've been fully charged up and discharged a couple of times, but in the long run, replacing the batteries with ones from Pb Batteries that can be auto topped up is the answer, I reckon.

Meantime, I'm making progress on my book and Sheila on hers; whether we'll get them out in time for Christmas remains to be seen.

We also continue to struggle with Santander Bank, trying to get them to co-operate with Nationwide in transferring our accounts, but that's a tale for another day, when I'm feeling stronger.

/floor

A pleasant day

We've had a relaxed day in the boat, apart from walking into the village in the morning to post those calendars which needed to be so despatched. The printing session yesterday had taken quite a while, the printer becoming more and more cantankerous as time went on. Basically, it's getting old, the same as the rest of us, and really doesn't like doing long runs at best quality setting and on stock that's at the upper limit of what it will take.

By the finish, I was having to print each sheet as a separate job, otherwise the thing just sat there sulking. I replaced both ink cartridges, but once those are mostly used, I reckon we'll be looking for a new printer. I'm planning to stick with HP again; ironically, most of the all-in-one beasts are over-specified these days, with WiFi capability and all odd stuff like being able to email the job to it.

As long as it prints, scans and copies OK, I'll be happy; the USB connection runs neatly along the back of the desk from the Mac Mini box on one pedestal to the printer on the other, and Sheila usually connects to it via the WiFi network and the Mini. I guess the only advantage would be that my machine wouldn't need to be on when she wanted to print, as long as the WiFi modem was running.

Having posted our stuff and done a bit of shopping at the Co-op, we ambled back to a nice warm boat. Shopping at the Co-op is enlivened by the character behind the till, who seems to have modelled himself on Roy Hudd playing a manic shopkeeper, a sort of inverse version of Arkwright. No complaints; he noticed that the cherry tomatoes we were buying were on their death date and gave them to us half price.

I'm currently editing my ebook, going through it on the Kindle to spot typos and infelicitous phrasing, before writing the final chapter and then bullying it into a decent format. At the moment, the chapter numbers insist on appearing on the page before, at the end of the previous chapter, for example.

We're off out tonight, dining with Stephen and Jayne on Dolce Far Niente. I've just heard from Peter Mason at Braidbar that he  may be coming to see us tomorrow. He's got a replacement cupboard door to fit to Dolce, and wants to have a discussion with me about the best solution to our battery bank dilemma.

As I believe I've already said, topping them up is very difficult, so the choice is either a set of deep discharge cells from Pb Batteries, complete with auto top up system, or going over to sealed units.

Looking after Sally

I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but Sally currently has a sorely paw, having probably stood on a piece of broken glass or similar when in hot pursuit of a cat the other day. It's taken a lump out of the side of one of her pads, the chestnut pad on her left fore paw. She's being very good about not licking it, but it's in an awkward place.

Elanor has been putting a sock over it with a plastic bag over that when taking her out, and we tried that this morning when taking her for her first thing run in the field. We're obviously not as skilled as Elanor, and it all came apart rather, with the result that the wound opened up again and started oozing.

Elanor had left some Hibiscrub with us, so we were able to bathe it when we got back to the boat. This afternoon, I tried putting a piece of gauze on the wound before binding it over with tape; that worked a bit better, but it still got a bit rubbed up. If necessary, she'll have to go to the vet, possibly ending up with a cone of shame on her bonce to stop her chewing off a full dressing.

I did wonder if we would need to cut slots for her ears through the cone, which occasioned much hilarity about the place. It's not a serious wound, just hard to heal.

We've spent most of the rest of the day printing the calendar. It takes a while to print off six by twelve sheets at 'best' standard of print, not helped by the fact that the printer is feeling its age a bit, and occasionally throws a wobbly about such a big job. This then necessitates switching it off and on again, and sometimes rebooting the computer, with the associated challenge of not losing track of how far you've got with the job.

One final query: a letter in the Independent today recounted the experience of the writer, who had wanted to pay £20 into each of his two grand nephews' Child Trust Funds. He filled in the paying in slips at his local branch of HSBC, and took them with two £20 notes to the teller.

Only to be told "Sorry, we don't take cash."

Huh?

/blur

To Derby again

Needing some 120gm paper stock to print the family calendar, we caught the bus into Derby again this morning. We had a generally successful trip, and did so without leaving the Westfield centre, it being very cold outside. Lakeland, WH Smith, Holland & Barrett and Debenhams provided the stuff we needed, and we lunched at an Indian place on the second level. Kebabs and nan bread, would you believe - very tasty.

Before we left, I put the calendar pictures up on Flickr as usual; I'm still pleased with them, which is a relief. All we have to do now is print out the calendars, bind them up and despatch them.

Meanwhile, Elanor finally sorted 3 to her satisfaction; a SIM only deal would actually have cost more than her just keeping or selling a phone she doesn't want, so she's staying with the original deal and buying herself a cheap basic open phone from Carphone Warehouse.

No, I don't understand, either.

There's not a lot else to tell today; we're bracing ourselves for another storm this week, so it's good to have got the shopping out of the way.

Getting on with it

We've spent Sunday in the boat, catching up with stuff as the weather deteriorated as the day went on. It wasn't too bad at first, but by lunchtime the sky had clouded over and it started to tip it down. This was a shame, as the plan had been to run Sally this afternoon, but it was just too wet.

Elanor came over anyway to bring post and have a natter; she's still working on the 3 situation. The cunning plan now is to convert her contract to SIM only and buy a basic phone from Carphone Warehouse.

Meantime, we've finished designing this year's calendar; I was worried that I hadn't taken enough photos, but in the end I think we've ended up with a better set than last year.

I've also discovered that Sally likes aniseed balls; well, there's a surprise.

/wahaha

Tomorrow, we'll go into Derby; I need to get some more 120 gm paper to print the calendars, and we could use a new pair of pillows.

/bye

A frosty day

It was pretty cold overnight, and we saw ice on the water for the first time today; only cat ice in the shallow margins, but still ice. The frost layer on the pontoons made for very careful walking; I had some ash in the bucket, so sprinkled that on the route from the boat to the safer ground of the spine of land that runs down to our mooring.

It being a nice day for a walk, we went down into the village to post a couple of presents and to buy some stuff from the Co-op for a change. The wind started to come up, so we were glad to get back indoors to the warmth of the Squirrel. We're getting through the coal a bit faster now, as I'm stoking the stove to stay in overnight.

Yesterday in Midland Chandlers we bought the new issues of Waterways World and Canal Boat. The latter contains Martin Ludgate's Christmas Quiz. It seems a bit trickier this year, with more pictorial stuff that's always harder to spot if you don't happen to know that location, but we've had a good thrash at it today and it's starting to look quite sorry for itself.

Elanor had planned to come over and run Sally this afternoon, but she got held up in town, first off getting new front tyres on her car, and then arguing with the staff in the 3 store. She'd been rung by the customer retention team and offered a contract extension and a new phone, but when the phone came, it proved to be a Samsung Galaxy Mini, despite her telling  the sales staff that she didn't want a touch screen, just a basic button phone.

When she phoned to arrange a swap, she was told that she could go into the 3 store to do it, but that's not how they saw it in the store. In addition, the only button phone they had was a rather sad looking Nokia, so it looks like she's going to repudiate the whole deal and go elsewhere.

Last heard of, she was in Carphone Warehouse reviewing her options with them. I knew 3 didn't have a very good rep for its customer service, but this seems particularly feeble of them.

She's coming round to see us tomorrow, so more on this anon, I expect.

Christmas shopping

We've been using our time lurking on board these past couple of days to get the Christmas shopping sorted, mostly via the internet, indeed, mostly via Amazon. Partly working from wish lists and partly from advice from those who should know, we've identified stuff for almost everyone now, ordered it and the despatch confirmations are starting to come through.

In addition, we walked down to Betty's Farm shop today, the weather being ideal for the purpose this morning, clear and cold. There we both stocked up on veg and the like and found a handy present for one of those we hadn't yet sorted. Whilst there, who should turn up but the coffee bar kids, Stephen looking much better after enduring the cold that's doing the rounds. So we hung on whilst they shopped and then all walked back together to the Willow Tree for restorative hot chocs.

This afternoon, we braved the now icy wind to visit the Midland Chandlers store on site, where, believe it or not, we found presents for Daniel and Alex, who are very fond of the Muddy Waters books. All we need to do now is to design and print the Napier Family Calendar, and our family Christmas cards, using photos taken during the year for both.

We're looking forward to a quiet evening with the fire well stoked and the central heating doing its bit. I dipped the diesel tank today; it's just under half full, so sometime next week we'll pick a day when the wind isn't too bad to go across to the service wharf, pump out and fill up with diesel, so as to be set up for the Christmas period.

A stormy day indoors

The weather has been as forecast, and indeed we've behaved as I forecast last time; we've had a quiet day indoors, listening to the wind howl and the rain pour down from time to time. I'm certainly glad we made it back yesterday, as the wind has gone round rather, and would have been blowing in the port quarter when I was trying to berth Sanity Again.

Nuzzling up to a pontoon to windward is one thing, but being blown down onto one to leeward would have been much trickier.

I'd cancelled the order for the paper at the marina shop, of course, but when I went in to restart it, they had one on the rack; it looks as if they just carried on collecting it anyway. I was able to get some peppers and mushrooms too, which was handy, as I'm making risotto tonight, and would have had to walk into the village for them otherwise.

We'd told the Walking for Health folk not to expect us today, and did think about going to see the Owl Experience at Betty's Farm instead, but by mid afternoon the weather was at its worst, so we've stayed inside doing Christmas shopping via Amazon.

We must have got a bit punch drunk in the process; the final item was Sally's present, an Easidri towel, and we sat and solemnly discussed whether to order it with gift wrapping and a tag before coming to our senses. Sally may be bright, but I don't think she's going to look at an Amazon parcel and think "Oh goody, a towel for Christmas".

My thanks to Ann Street, by the way, for drawing these to our attention; they sound much better than using an old towel.

We made it

Since the forecast indicated a steadily deteriorating situation, we made as early a start as we could, getting underway at half seven, when it was just about light enough to see to boat. At first, the weather was quite pleasant, calm and dry, though it had rained and blowed overnight.

I winded Sanity Again below Bagnall Lock without too much trouble, though the winding hole was well silted up with disuse. It's amazing how quickly things go back without traffic; the paddle spindles are rusting already, for example.

All went swimmingly until we got to Branston, when a long threatened rain squall burst upon us as I approached the lock. Sheila, who had hopped off at the bridge by the pub, got the top gate open in good time, but even so, just as I lined up in the throat of the lock, a huge blast of wind shoved the stern sideways, and Sanity Again cross winded (ie jammed) hard. A good example of Sod's Law that the worst weather should strike at the most exposed lock.

On we toddled through rain and hail, Sheila now steering to give me a break. I worked Dallow Lane and then took over the helm again. The rain and wind came and went; for much of the time it was fine, and most of the showers didn't last too long. It helped, too, that the wind now mainly came from astern, so keeping a steady track through the water wasn't too hard.

At 11.45, Sheila relieved me again, and I went below to make us mugs of soup and to eat lunch. By the time I'd fed, Willington was on the horizon, so Sheila prepared her lunch but left it to eat later.

My turn into the marina entrance nearly came off; with the wind still from behind, I needed to get the bow round and into the hole quickly. I misjudged it slightly, and we hit the piling splay around the entrance a bit of a clonk, but then it was just a matter of motoring the stern round and so into the entrance channel.

Boating across the marina was fun, with Sanity Again crabbing like mad with the wind on her side, but fortunately the passages around the lake are all quite wide, so there's plenty of sea room to take corrective action.

The boat which shares our slot between the pontoons has a Saltire flag flying from its bow, and as it moors stern in, I had a good indication of the wind speed and direction as I approached the pontoon. It was a case of turning her into that wind, which was blowing onto the starboard bow, again going for it quite hard, then hard astern once the bow was in the lee of the boat alongside, so that the wind pressure was now pushing the stern round the way I wanted it to go.

We  touched the pontoon quite gently with the port bow, and once more it was a case of helm over and revs on to bring her round parallel to the slot and in we went. It all went much better than I'd feared in the small hours of last night. As I say, in these conditions (wind speed 20 mph, gusting up to 40), you've got to be "bloody, bold and resolute"; creeping up on the target is just not going to work.

So here we are, once more snug and sound with the shoreline connected, and all the facilities of the marina to draw on.

A quiet day tomorrow, methinks.

So far so good.

Blood test done, drugs collected, dog both sat on and walked. So today has been reasonably productive. Now, all we've got to do is get back to Mercia.

The forecast for tomorrow promises early rain, then strengthening winds, so it's going to be a bit challenging. It doesn't look any better for Thursday, and there's a snow warning for Friday, so we don't want to hang around.

We'll probably just slog back tomorrow; at least wind is just hard work, not actually damaging to the blacking the way ice would be.

Heigh ho.

Alrewas again

Well, here we are again, happy as can be…

We had a pretty straightforward run from Branston to Alrewas, leaving at eight and arriving at half ten. It was Sheila's turn to steer, and she slogged on despite a bitterly cold wind, muffled up in layers of fleece and wool.

I got some shopping in after we'd revived, bread from the Co-op, a paper from the newsagent and chicken fillets and pasties from Coates.

We've spent the rest of the day huddling in the boat with the stove well stoked. Sheila's finished subbing my book, so I've got a bit more work to do on it, with a final chapter to write and stuff to tidy up, then we might be getting near publishing it.

Tomorrow, off to the surgery for a blood test, and Sally sitting too. Should be fun.

Then Wednesday back to Willington, as long as the wind isn't too bad.

A trip out

First of, Sheila says thank you to all those who sent her good wishes on the occasion of her not getting any older...

/blur

Today has generally gone to plan, in that we managed to drag ourselves out of bed in good time, despite being a bit Takey Tezey-ed last night. By ten past eight we were on the pump out, pumping out, and by 8.30 were heading out of the marina. At 8.32 Sanity Again stuck her bow onto the opposite towpath, and by 8.40 we'd managed to haul her round, Sheila with a bow line on the towpath, and your correspondent with a stern line on the off side, the wind having ensured that trying it any other way just meant blowing sideways down the cut until becoming wedged again.

Off we went at last, and at 8.50 we passed Ivor Batchelor walking his dogs along the towpath. If we'd been just ten minutes later getting going this morning, he'd have found us wrestling with the boat jammed across the cut, and the story would have been the length and breadth of the system with about 48 hours.

We stopped at Shobnall and had a conversation with Andy there about Boaters Phone Company adaptors for the Samsung Galaxy, Mark at BPC having recommended that we do so. All this demonstrated was that neither the Galaxy SII nor the Galaxy Europa antenna socket will take any of the currently available adaptors, so it's back to Mark on that one.

We did buy four bags of Mixed Ovals and a couple of bags of kindling, then plodded off again, getting to Branston just on twelve. I baked some baguettes whilst we discovered that a) the T-mobile signal doesn't support data here, and b) the old 3 MiFi modem had a flat battery.

Later on, after a restorative lunch, I got the new 3 Galaxy sorted as a WiFi hotspot, propping it in the side hatch to do so, since we can't use the external antenna on it. It's successful, as you can tell by the fact that you're reading this.

The weather has been seriously wet and windy this afternoon, but we're hoping it will dry up and calm down a bit tomorrow, long enough for us to get to Alrewas, anyway.

Small celebration

Sheila says she doesn't have birthdays any more, so this is not one, obviously. But she still got some pressies and cards this morning, and we're having steak tonight, courtesy of the organic butcher yesterday.

We've had a quiet day, as you'd expect, a walk round the marina, guzzling partaking of deluxe hot choc (with marshmallows and whipped cream) in the Willow Tree, then watching my gift to her this afternoon, in the shape of a DVD of the Royal wedding; a chance for some unashamed sniffling, in my case because I'm still getting over this cold.

/hmm

Plus, I see what they were going on about re the MoH's dress.

Tomorrow, we set off for Alrewas, so we're hoping that the forecast lull in the wind does indeed occur.

A displaced Sally day

Regular readers will know that we normally dog sit on Tuesdays, but with Elanor being struck down by the lurgy at the start of this week, we didn't do so. Elanor's back at work, but still feeling a bit pale and wan (it's a vicious little bug that takes a couple of weeks to get over properly) so she's not been going to dog training, which in turn means that Sal has been missing out on a lot of exercise.

Since they were due to visit us this evening anyway, Elanor asked if we would take Sally during the day and get her charging about a bit. This we've done; it's been very successful. They turned up at eight as usual, Sally looking very cosy in her heavy coat, the one that's really a horse rug for a very small horse, a Falabella, say.

I took her for a first run after we'd finished our early morning routine of checking email and the like. As we got to the usual field, Ian from Nobby was there with Katie, a long, low slung dog, the result of an encounter between a Bassett hound and a collie. She actually looks a lot like the stretch limo version of a Cardiganshire corgi , and gets on well with Sally. They were having a good old charge about when Barry from Adagio appeared in the next door field running his Bedlington terrier cross whippet, Duffy.

Duffy made it clear that she really, really wanted to join her friends, so they came round and the three of them hurtled about to their hearts' content. After a bit, Sally started checking out the bunny options instead, which involved a lot of running to and fro by the hedges, so more exercise for her.

We all then walked round the rest of the marina; Sally was being remarkably well behaved, only grumbling at Duffy when the younger dog kept trying to get some more play out of her; Duffy is one of those dogs who just doesn't understand why the rest of the world needs to slow down occasionally. It just shows that three bitches can get on together.

Back at the boat, I had coffee then went shopping at the fortnightly mini Farmers' Market, getting a range of meat, a bit of veg, and a jar of mini beets in orange and spice dressing.

After all that, it was chill out time until lunch. Sheila and I took Sal for another run this afternoon, and then retreated to loaf for the rest of the day, the weather having turned from bright and frosty to overcast and grey.

Elanor is coming to help eat the haggis in a bit, so it's going to be a sociable evening.

Getting back to normal

We're slowly returning to our normal state, though still a bit short of energy and inclined to cough and splutter from time to time. (OK, I know that some of you will say this is my normal state.)

We managed a nice lie-in this morning, and then had a productive day at the ebooks. Mine is at the stage where I've asked Sheila to read it through before I go any further; Sheila has a bit to do on hers still, but then she is writing mostly new content, whereas I've been largely editing blog posts into a suitable format.

I think it will be a few weeks yet before either is ready for publication, but we're getting there. I must say, it's been an eye opener re-reading what I wrote two years ago in the light of some of the decisions we finally made.

Our Ocado delivery turned up just after half eleven, and it was gone twelve before we got it all checked off and put away. I've got one more booked for the week before Christmas.

We had time to make and scoff lunch before going out for our Thursday walk. The walk itself was along the towpath to Egginton and back, so nothing we didn't know about, though I got some info about a loop back over the railway that might be handy next time I'm walking Sally in that direction. The real gain we get from these outings is the chance to meet folk who are nothing to do with boating or the marina.

We had a good session in the pub afterwards, nattering about this and that, including taking cruises on a freighter; one of today's walk leaders, who hasn't been there before now, is another ex-merchant seaman, and he and his wife, Phil and Thelma,  were a great source of info on the subject.