Arriving at Alrewas

The BW shop and info centre at Fradley is closing at the end of this month, a victim of the cut backs. It's a shame, as they've been really helpful in the past, but perhaps inevitable. They are advertising a closing down sale, and since some of our Pearson's guides are quite old, we thought we'd take the opportunity to restock.

The shop is closed all day Tuesday, but opens at nine on a Wednesday, and since we only had to come down to Alrewas today, we hung about at Fradley until then.

When we got over there, we saw the notice on the door that they wouldn't be opening until ten today.

Bother.

That was too long to wait; we may walk back there tomorrow. The run down here was straightforward, though there were a lot of boats coming up. On arrival, we had a load of choice, as there was only the one boat tied above Bagnall. We've been joined by a BW workboat since, which they have handily tied just off the end of the lock landing.

That will be amazingly popular over the weekend, with all the boats queuing to go down, methinks.

Yesterday, I forgot to mention  that on a walk up to Shade House for the exercise, we encountered nb Sandra, a medium sized Springer. She had a Honda genny running on her bow, despite the fact that she was preparing to set off and had her engine running as well. Her steerer explained that, with a boat full of grandkids, he needed the genny on to recharge all their games whilst cruising.

I've been to the surgery and been rigged with a 24 hour BP monitoring kit, so every half hour there's a beep and my left arm threatens to fall off. It's probably not the best time to do it as it turns out, as Elanor is having some grief from her new employer, who doesn't seem to understand why, after working for him for over a week, she'd quite like a contract, please, and some indication of how much and when she's going to get paid.

Hopefully it'll get sorted out soon, but it's come to a head just over this monitoring period. At least it's a thorough test of how well my BP is or isn't controlled, I guess.