Started the day with a few phone calls, one with good news re sub letting the small flat my mum lived in – it looks like we might have a new tenant, which will be a weight off my mind. Then late morning my friend S arrived and we went to find an outside coffee shop where we chatted non stop for two hours! It felt decidedly normal and it was good to see more people milling around. Somehow I have got so used to the face masks I don’t register them any more. On the whole people seem to be very mindful of one another and so we had a very pleasant morning watching the world go by and putting the world to rights!
Returning to the boat I came down to earth with a bump as I realised how full the Elsan cassette was and had no option but to trundle it along to the Elsan point and do the business, which R very gentlemanly normally does! I had remembered to take a mask which definitely helps. There were also plenty of chats to be had with narrowboaters who are just on a boat for a week or two. I noticed the canal was much busier today. As I settled into my ‘snug’ area for a 4pm Zoom call, that actually lasted a couple of hours (good thing I had done some Joe Wicks beforehand or I might have seized up!), I was conscious of many boats passing. Each time a boat went by, my boat was jostled by the wash and bumped noisily against the canal edge!
The evening whizzed by and eventually when I felt a chill in the air I took myself to bed rather than light the fire. I had eaten a rather strange supper of leftovers, starting with some cherries. I was told, as a child, that Australian’s always eat their dessert before their main course, which I am sure is not true, but it still came to mind today as I ate my food back to front!
No pictures – I didn’t take any! Must be a first since this trip began. I never was in the habit of taking photos but it’s something that has given me a surprising amount of pleasure in the last few months and apparently this phone has quite a good camera, not something I considered when I bought it.
Settling for the night after a long conversation with both R and then my brother, I was startled awake by the fire alarm beeping above my bed. As there was no fire evident (I did get up and thoroughly check the boat!) I thought perhaps it was also a carbon monoxide alarm as you can get a 2 in 1 device. That worried me far more as you obviously can’t see carbon monoxide! I double checked that all the rings on the gas cooker were off and even opened another window so that more fresh air would come into the boat. Then I settled down to sleep again, only to be disturbed every five or so minutes by the alarm sounding yet again. It was very irritating and deciding to dismantle it for the night, I struggled to get it open to remove the battery. I even tried ringing R to see what else he would suggest. Sensibly he’d gone to bed without his phone nearby as I don’t think he’d have appreciated being woken up at 0045! I did leave him a Whattsapp just in case I didn’t wake up so he’d realise I had died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Such is one’s imagination in the middle of the night!! However it’s amazing what you figure out when you have to and as the thought of a continuous intermittent fire alarm throughout the night did not appeal, I fiddled around with it until at last the cover came off and I could dislodge the battery. If I’d been at home I would have had no hesitation in using brute force and breaking the cover if necessary but you can’t do that when it doesn’t belong to you. Patience is required. At the beginning of our trip we knocked the alarm off the roof at the far end of the boat and R had to replace the whole unit with a new one, which required drilling holes etc. Did not want a repeat performance! It probably just requires a new battery but rather unfortunate timing to alert me to that! I had gone to bed dressed in pj’s, a gilet and wrapped a throw around me before getting under the duvet to keep warm all night. Every time the alarm beeped I had to disentangle myself from my warm cocoon, silence the thing and then wrap myself up again. What a palaver!
NarrowboatTLC 