I am a numpty but I suppose you could say I was just trying out our boat security! The saga began on Wednesday when our lovely engineer Martin agreed to go to our boat ahead of us and try to sort the idling engine. I had told him, exactly I thought, where I had hidden a key for him to gain access but obviously not clearly enough. At least he was able to WhatsApp me and via the video link we could locate it! Then the real problem occurred – where was the engine key? In my desire to make sure no intruder could start the boat even if they managed to enter it, I hid all the keys somewhere, but could I remember where?! Martin literally went through everything, even as he said, my knicker drawer, in his quest to locate the missing keys. Eventually he had to admit defeat but, on the upside, it was good to know they were so well hidden. When I walked into the boat I immediately located them, but how annoying that my mind had been a total blank up until that point. The invoice for ‘hunt the key’ has yet to be raised but as you can imagine, R is not best pleased and we still have our engine issue! This afternoon was the earliest date Martin could return so yesterday we spent another day twiddling our thumbs. To be fair, son P didn’t appear until last night to take our car home, so it is unlikely we would have moved the boat any great distance, as we would have had to move the car along with us, which is always slightly troublesome. As it was, we made good use of the day. There’s a constant list of ‘things to do’ on the maintenance front, so R replaced some tiles that had dislodged themselves from behind the stove and I managed to submit two pieces of writing for a couple of canal magazines. Only one slight hiccough when we decided to moor slightly nearer to the pub – where had I hidden the tiller handle? R’s patience rightly ran a little thin, but fortunately I did remember where I’d placed it – it had just rolled a little further out of sight! R did manage to drop his glasses into the canal – they fell off his nose as he was attending to something on the stern. Sadly we couldn’t locate them with the magnet we have on board for such emergencies and ended up having to go to Banbury to buy some more reading glasses.
I tried out the oven both for supper and then this morning I cooked up some Jusrol ‘pain au chocolat’ from the tin – didn’t realise they were still in existence but I’d bought them in honour of having a guest on board and we also had our friend K to breakfast, the lady with the boat we’ve nicknamed the ‘long carrot’ owing to it being 70ft and bright orange. K and P talked music and we listened to some of their compositions and a song by daughter H. All very lovely, sitting in the sunshine on the stern of the boat. I had to do a quick repair job on the strap of P’s rucksack – not easy with a small needle and cheap thread! P is off to Milan for the weekend, but the friend he was going with had to cancel yesterday due to work commitments so P asked another friend, N if he’d like to go. N couldn’t afford it but his boss, on hearing this, said he’d pay for the trip if N beat him at a game of pool, which he did!
P also suggested we watch Minamata, a film based on true events about a chemical plant in Japan that emptied its toxic waste into the bay resulting in the local inhabitants getting mercury poisoning. It was a sobering film but worth watching. The three of us managed to squeeze onto our 5ft wide bed in order to view the screen at its foot with the projector balanced precariously on R’s stomach, going in and out of focus whenever he moved. Luckily son P is more savvy than us and showed us how to turn off the auto focus function and also suggested the projector would fit on the small shelf behind our heads, thus making the screening far less precarious and the film experience all the more enjoyable!
NarrowboatTLC 