If it's good enough for the engine room

... Then it's good enough for my kitchen. The time before last that Jim was up on Warrior, I took advantage of his absence and took down some shelves* in the kitchen. I say shelves; what they actually were were primary school lockers, minus the doors. A set of foot square boxes seven boxes wide and three high. They were super, and I was very pleased when we salvaged them from the school, and for years they held all manner of treasures. Coffee pots, mostly. But I was starting to find it all a bit overbearing and as I was in the process of downsizing the antique collection, not really needed any more.

What I had forgotten was that when we moved into this house, there had been a door knocked through this wall, and although Jim filled it in and made it good it's still bare plaster and not quite flat. But fortunately we still have lots of the wood left that we did Warriors engine room with; pine T&G from a 1920s house (well, they wanted it replaced with nice smooth plasterboard). Perfect, especially as one wall in the kitchen is already - original from 1901 - done similarly. When it's finished the whole lot is going to be painted in some trendy shade of white.

Gosh, keeping up a post a day isn't going to be easy.

*When I say I did it, obviously what I mean is I told Aaron and Sebastian to do it. Children are so useful once they get big and can wipe their own noses.

22: From country far

I've carelessly squandered all the ship lines, and it surprised me that I couldn't find anything closer than this. It could be a Christmas card scene, couldn't it; the exotic lands from which the wise men set out; the ships in which they travelled; even, if you wanted, the star they were following.

The stained glass window of a Georgian house in Bloomsbury, surely showing the same influences, whatever they were, as the more familiar narrow boat castles.

Transport

Well, tomorrow we're off, for Bill Fen fun, RN open day and painting. We won't be going in the new car:

because I've just spent an hour banging my head on the keyboard failing to insure it.
Instead, we will be taking the old car:

To ensure my stress levels don't drop too low, the local evangelical church, two doors down, is hosting a discotheque, just to let us know that summer has finally arrived, and I'm knackered from shifting tons and tons of stuff/crap/heirlooms about.

I am self-medicating with chocolate.

A picture of Lewes

A couple of years ago my sister gave me a picture book for Christmas - one of the enormous number put together from the photographs of Francis Frith who, if the blurb is to be believed, was a Victorian photographic pioneer. His collection would certainly seem to be a reliable moneyspinner in the twenty first century, and his empire has clearly outlived him, as he died in 1898. This particular edition was Canals and Waterways, and it has a voucher in the back whereby you could send off for a free print of one of the pictures in the book (presumably in the hope that you would then be unable to resist ordering many more at forty four pounds a pop. I resisted).

Anyway, even though the voucher was out of date (my sister at the time worked in a remainder shop....) I sent off for, and got, this picture (albeit rendered in artificial sepia) of a sailing barge at Lewes c. 1960. The book tells me that the boat is called Federation, but nothing about what she might have been carrying. This wharf is in Lewes itself, and today there is a lone narrowboat moored at about this spot (I would love to know how it got there), which is handy for the Snowdrop pub. The pub, incidentally, is not named after a flower, but an avalanche which killed eight people in 1836 (or 1829, 0r 1830, depending on what source you believe. I'll go for the Argus's December 27th 1836, which seems to be the most popular).

We found a nice oak frame for the picture in our jumble sale collection, and have really only been waiting (ages) for me to get around to getting a nice mount cut for it. I've now ordered one from a shop in Lewes - it's nearly a tenner, so it's as well the picture was free and the frame was 20p - and it should be ready on Friday, so hopefully we will be putting it up in Warrior this weekend.

New knees

Hang on a minute, those aren't Jim's...

I may have mentioned in passing that Jim had a bad knee (he's been telling everyone down the supermarket about it, so I'm sure he won't mind me telling the world); it was a very longstanding thing, caused in part by rather foolhardily making a habit of jumping out of aeroplanes many years ago, but it started to get a lot worse last summer, to the point that it was proving a significant hindrance to working and, more importantly, boating.

So, to cut a long story short, and certainly to skip the details, he has had it 'done', last Thursday, and (touch wood) it appears to have been very successful. In vain do I implore him to sit down with his leg up; he is already leaping about like the proverbial gazelle. This means that barring any other unforeseen events, we WILL be painting the week after next.

But there's more. Over the May Bank Holiday weekend, Bill Fen host a weekend of fun and frolics for the Peterborough IWA, with games, music, barbecues and beer, so we (including Sebastian) will definitely be up for that. And on the Sunday, Russell Newbery have their 'Open Day' (I put that in quotes, as an examination of the small print reveals that this 'day' runs from 12 noon to three p.m.) and we are going to go to that. 3D Steve will be there, and hopefully Allister, David, and above all Compo. Jim tells me he has lots of questions to ask them. I have one: why didn't you tell us our skin tank was too small?

Sadly, after the fun and frolics finish, and before the work starts, Sebastian and I shall have to return home - he to college and me to work. But we will go back the following weekend to do our bit. So we're all very impressed with Jim's new knees... (You can see where this is leading, can't you) ... Do you think I should have had him rebottomed?

William

In 1988, when Number One Son was two and a half and Lockboy was nearly two years off being born, we bought a little ginger kitten, and called him William. Other cats, and other pets (hamsters, rabbits, rats, guinea pigs, fish and, briefly, snails) came and went, but William stuck with us - and me in particular - through all the ups and downs of contemporary family life. When I saw this tapestry design that looked exactly like him, I had to buy it. This would have been in late 2002/early 2003. Knowing there wasn't room on my lap, William - now an old cat - would lay beside me, stretched out against my leg, as I stitched. In the heatwave of June 2003, William suddenly started going downhill fast, and died, essentially of old age, within a couple of weeks. This was particularly hard on Lockboy, who had never known life without this amiable, lazy cat.

This was at the time when we were first seriously thinking about buying a narrowboat, and we declared that our boat, when we got it, would be named 'Sweet William' in his memory. I had some reservations about changing a boat's name, but if we had bought one called, say, Foxy Lady, I would not have hesitated. Warrior however is a different matter. We have met the builder, who built it for himself, and named it after HMS Warrior. His current boat is named after her sister ship HMS Revenge. What's more, the name really seems to suit the boat. So we won't be changing it after all. But what we will do is have the tapestry - which I finally finished yesterday, after about four years - framed, and it will have pride of place in Warrior's saloon.

There is a small postscript to William's story. Shortly after he died, leaving us with just one cat (Emily) the local paper ran a story saying that the local cat rescue centre was having to close for lack of funds, and desperately needed to home all its remaining cats. I rang up and said we could take two, perhaps three ... The woman who ran the centre was overjoyed - she had, she said, three cats - three generations of the same family - who were so devoted to each other that she couldn't bear to part them; could we take them? Of course we said yes. And now have a trio of cats who hate each other and are not conceivably related. And the following week the rescue centre was reprieved by a large donation. We now actually have five cats, having added a stray who has a nice line in killing pigeons. But there will never be another William.

Narrow Boat TV marathon

Lockboy helps move Dover at Stretton Wharf - not on the telly.


Three years ago come Christmas, we got rid of our TV. We'd gradually arrived at the conclusion that it was providing more irritation than entertainment, and when the licence was due for renewal we decided to take the plunge and see how we got on without it. To be honest, it was easy; we haven't missed it at all, and can count on the fingers of one hand the programmes we regret missing.

So we'd never seen the Sky series Narrow Boat, in which former Grand Union boat Dover is restored/converted (we've never seen Waterworld either, or even Rosie and Jim) . Quite a few of the people we've met through Warrior were involved in the programme, particularly Keith, but also Ian and the Russell Newbery mob, and both Lockboy (see above) and Jim have at various times been on the other end of Dover's ropes, so it seemed a bit of a shame.

But even when we had a telly, we didn't have Sky - but our next door neighbours do, and just before they left on their holidays this morning they insisted that we take advantage of this afternoon's screening of all ten episodes, back-to-back. I wasn't planning to sit down and watch all five hours of it, on a lovely sunny afternoon, but I'm afraid that's exactly what Jim and I did, and we were joined by Lockboy when he came back from orchestra.

And it was very enjoyable. I was expecting horrible choppy editing and nasty music and lots of repetition, but it wasn't too bad at all. We enjoyed finding fault with all the things we would have done differently, and shouting 'those cloths are going to fade dreadfully you know'. Parts of it were very interesting and there was a fair amount of nice boat footage. On the downside, it was rather bitty and the overall rationale was unconvincing - if you want a glitzy hi-tech holiday home, then why start with a 1937 boat? If you like it that much, why has Dover been up for sale (increasingly desperately) ever since you finished filming? - and some bits were boring, but that's probably just a matter of where your interest lies.

Apparently a new series is currently being made, in which the presenter travels around in Dover, being filmed from a helicopter, and interviewing waterways-related people; on the basis of the first series, I'm looking forward to seeing it. Will just have to wait for the neighbours to go away again.

230v, 3.5 kva alternator for sale!

Isn't it lovely? This piece of kit came with Warrior - it had to be to cut off to get the engine out - but it doesn't appear to have been used. Certainly on Warrior it wasn't connected either to the engine or the electrical system. We have no use for it so are hoping someone will buy it from us to help defray some of our outgoings! As we've never seen it in operation we obviously can't guarantee that it works, but if anyone buys it through the blog (it's also on ebay, but very well hidden) we can come to some sort of money back if not satisfied arrangement.

More photos here.

The specifications are as follow:

3.5 kva output
57/110/230 volt
30.4/15.2 a
50 hertz
3000 RPM
weight 18.2 kg
clockwise rotation (looking from front)
90mm overall double pulley
length 375mm O/A
diameter 173mm O/A
Manufacturer's name (?) Mecce Alte, made in Italy
Date of manufacture is 2000.
It appears to be very similar in specification to the Electrolux Travelpower

Any enquiries/offers/expressions of interest, leave a comment here with your email address (or phone number if you prefer) and Jim will get back to you.