Colder still and colder

It's definite, it's winter. On the other hand, the days are slowly lengthening again; at the worst time, we find ourselves putting the covers up at half three, and by now we're back to doing them at half four on a bright day like this. So, although the marina is frozen and there's more snow forecast for the end of the week, we know that Spring is on its way, and we only have to wait.

Naturally, we're keeping to the inside of the boat quite a bit; we both went to the shop this morning, so that we could bring back another couple of bags of Signal smokeless fuel as well as the paper. We're presently burning about 20kg of Signal per week, though I expect we'll get through a bit more this week.

After lunch, we had a brisk walk round the marina. As we did so, we were passed by Trev and Rachael in their motor, on their way to put some more stuff on their new boat, Takt Up, that's very nearly finished. I felt quite envious; there's nothing quite like that period of getting ready to take over your brand new boat, especially when it's such a quality job as Aqua have made of Takt Up.

We also had a good nosey at the start of building works on the peninsula at last. They are doing some test drills, and a JCB is busy dumping loads of what looks strangely like top soil at strategic points around the site. I was a bit surprised when a fellow moorer referred to it as "the pub nobody wants". We're quite looking forward to having a pub on site, not to mention good shops like The Butcher, The Baker and The Ice Cream Maker, and no one can say that they took their mooring without knowing that it's going to happen.

The latest evening events to be advertised are two short first aid courses next month in the Willow Tree. We've signed up for one, as it's quite a while since we last did one and that's one of those skills you really really need when you need it.

Tonight, we're having the other half of the beef casserole. I found some Atora suet in the shop here, so I think we'll have a nice thick suet crust on it in view of the weather.

/nobigdeal