Atherstone, day two

Everyone's a bloody comedian here, it seems. I've been giving Warrior a good clean today (at a fairly leisurely pace) and doing the exterior brass, which of course is the cue for 'you've missed a bit'; 'if you make a good job of that you can come and do mine' (but you haven't bloody got any) ... no one, but no one, said 'that looks nice' or anything similar (although a party of, I think, Italian tourists did say that the boat was nice). Why do people think that 'use a bit more elbow grease love' is a witty conversational gambit? It's very disappointing, but that seems to be about the standard so far.

Still, on the plus side, Jubilee and Thea have gone by today and I managed to have a quick chat with both of their owners. Jubilee was quite heavily loaded and made a lovely sight, looking like a boat really should.

On Monday, Jim was complaining about the smoke from the engine going in his face (goes straight over the top of my head of course) so I said let's try the old trick of sticking a tin in the chimney. It's quite hard getting the bottom off a modern tin (with only a butterfly tin opener and a pair of dispensable scissors), but we managed it in the end, and, very gratifyingly, it does work. In a modern twist on tradition, it's an organic vegetable korma tin.