I can see clearly now...

… the drops have worn off. Thanks to Sue for her kind comment yesterday, yes it is strange, like the moment when you wake up before you put your specs on, but all the time. And bright lights are really painful. On the other hand, atropine used to be called belladonna, because the large dark eyes it produces were thought to be sexy.

(I could go on, but this is a family blog, supposedly.)

Things have been progressing at Elanor's, with a good bit of work getting done; it's pretty uphill as a previous occupier seems to have been a bit of a DIY bodger, so there's often stuff that has to be undone before you can get on with the real job, but we're getting there.

Sally helps a lot of course; this morning, Elanor was wedged under the bath, checking out how it was attached to the wall at the back (it wasn't), and Sally wriggled in alongside her to see what she was doing. Strangely, Elanor didn't feel this was very useful. I finally managed to stop laughing long enough to order Sally out, but I do wish I'd had my camera.

We've had a useful series of conversations with Peter Mason about our defunct water gauge, which have established that it is indeed the sender that's failed. He's coming down to another boat in a nearby marina sometime soon, so will hopefully be able to get across to us with the replacement part on the same day.

Mick Tracey of Three No Trumps emailed Sheila about the drip catchers she's making to go under some of the mushroom vents, so she's asked me to mention them here now as the development work is pretty well finished and there may well be others out there who'd like to know about them. Here's a picture of the latest model in situ:

Drip catcher v3.2

It consists of a crochet doily fitted round a ceiling lamp lens from Midland Chandlers, the edge of the doily being drawn in with thread to hold the lens, and then suspended by further threads from two 4mm brass shackles, also from MC. Other suspension methods could be used, of course, depending on the kind of grill under the vent. Click on the photo see a larger scale version.

Finally, here are a couple of photos taken by Jo James to show our volunteer work:

Get stuck in!

This first one shows three of us in a boat rammed under the offside overgrowth, hacking away.

Packing up

And this is us finishing the morning's work last Saturday, cleaning and stowing tools. You can see the wood we left for the boaters along the edge of the canal in the background.

Tomorrow, back to Elanor's and then hopefully over to Fazeley to collect our new chimney from the Little Chimney Company.