Pillings Lock Marina 2010 #6

Friday 19th March and, for the first time since arriving here in September 2009, I am on my own for a few hours. My dear Wifey has walked into Loughborough with our neighbour Marion. So, I have spent some quality time with my laptop and have been preparing my next recipe book, which is to be called, “Pasties, Pies and Sausage Rolls”.

Yesterday evening I plucked up the courage and girded my loins and posted “A Taste of England” on eBay’s US site. I’m still a bit hesitant about posting it in the UK, because I’m still unsure about copyright where recipes are concerned. I do know that Ingredients cannot be copyrighted. This is because they constitute an idea. But, where the Method by which a recipe is put together could well be and, even though I altered certain parts of the method in all of them – without detracting from the final result – I would hate to find a “Cease and Desist” notice in my mailbox.

Amongst all my documents on this laptop and on a separate disc I have over 11,000 recipes, most of which are American. And, within those files are recipe books that I can sell as is. But I would rather make my own books, all with varying themes. The opportunities are only limited by one’s imagination, hence the latest creation. I have no doubt it will take me many months to compile, but at least it will keep me amused.

Monday 22nd March and I have to say that, despite having a thoroughly enjoyable weekend, it’s really great to be home. For one thing it’s so peaceful here. All we can hear is the far distant traffic noise from the A6. Oh, and the ducks of course. And the water lapping against the side of the boat. And, before I got up, the light snoring of my better half, bless!!

Anyway, as usual, the family reunion went off very well and, apart from the enforced absence of June and Keith, a perfect little get together. What stick most in my mind, is the sight of the four remaining Kennetts all clustered around the laptop, going through old family photographs in order to determine who was who. A truly magical sight.

It was also quite a treat to find Ian and Susan there. I for one was most pleased to see Ian looking far better than has been reported in the past. And Susan? Well, we haven’t seen that delightful lady in many a year and she especially had much to catch up on.

Sheila and I would like to offer up our thanks to Bob who, once again, managed to slide off to pay the bill. Much appreciated again Bob, you are now ahead of us by 3:1. Perhaps, next year, we’ll be able to outflank you, who knows?

As you all know we probably won’t be doing much cruising this year. However, once I have a date for my knees to be replaced, we may be able to pop off for a couple of weeks.

On the subject of the “Taste of England” book, which I listed on eBay US on Thursday of last week, I have just been to check if it has received any bids, and I have discovered that the picture I uploaded has not bee displayed. In addition to that, there are a couple of other listings with the same name, something that did not show when I last looked.

It could be that, because the picture I used was a screen shot that had been reduced in size from about 1.3Mb to about 45Kb. Anyway, I am most disappointed it this affair and will probably have to re-list it using a different picture.

The other problem I have is with the Picasa 3 programme that Carole suggested I download from Google. I have found that by going to the –supposed – Google download page, there is actually no link with which to do so. Carole assured me that it is not necessary to work online with it, but what I saw certainly led me to believe that this is how it works. Over to you Wee Mac Sis!

Incidentally, unbeknown to me until earlier today, it seems I have committed something of a faux pas with regard to the recipe book, and this faux pas has resulted in my having to remove my listing from eBay. You may well ask ‘what could possibly be so bad as to require me to remove the listing?’ Well, if you have looked through the book you would know that it’s is all in English measurements. However, I listed it in the good old US of A and, in the listing I made it known that a Weights and Measures page would be included. But I hadn’t done so, silly me!!

Also, when I checked to see if there were any bids on the book, I discovered that the picture I uploaded with my listing had not been included. I have therefore spent the past couple of hours amending the book and re-compiling it. Oh, the trials and tribulations of authorship!!

By way of another incidental, I feel I ought to mention the trouble with our velocipede. Just recently, only over the past couple of days or so, I have become aware of a strange noise emanating from the underside of said vehicle. I established, only at about 10 am on Sunday that it was coming from the exhaust pipe. On closer inspection at Formula 1 in Edingburgh Way, that the darn thing is indeed blowing. They assured me however that it would not blow apart if I drove it the 120 miles to the marina.

So, this morning, after a visit to Morrisons, we popped into Fast Fit in Loughborough and, surprise, surprise, we discovered it was not going to be cheap to repair. Indeed, when the nice man checked it out he discovered that it was not only blowing in the place we knew about, but that the back box had been repaired with some kind of filler, which was also blowing. The final bill for this repair will be in the order of £450! Ouch!! The blessed car only cost us £700! But, since it is very reliable, especially with the regular runs to and from Harlow, it’s still worth keeping. We certainly do not have any plans for buying another car, at least not until we’ve made our first million from the book. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Thursday 25th March and it is wet and muggy this morning. It is also pump out and diesel day.

Yesterday we spent over £450 on our exhaust system on the Alfa. For some reason that came as something of a blessing, the centre section that carries the catalytic converter was perfectly OK. Thank goodness for that because, had we been obliged to replace that as well, it would probably have cost us more than we paid for the car.

Over the past couple of months I have been humming and hawing as to whether to try turning the recipe book into a single book before I advertise. To be honest I’m none too keen on it being in two volumes because, to me at any rate, it’s a bit sloppy. After all, you wouldn’t expect to go into a shop for such a thing and have to pay twice, unless it was a follow up volume issued at a later date.

So, as of this day, I am going to try doing just that. I’m not sure that it will work mind, because the makers of the programme actually suggest keeping the page count down to about 100.

On the subject of Windows 7 and how slow it is running on this machine, I had a chat with a rather elusive neighbour of ours yesterday, and he suggests I do either of two things. He thinks that certain programmes, such as Word and PDF files, are running slow because I have 64 bit installed. If I change it to 32 bit it should run better. Alternatively he would be happy to loan me his XP disc so that I can load that instead. He is of the opinion that XP is far superior anyway. Another alternative would be to download 2010 from Microsoft, but I’m not convinced about that alternative.

Friday 26th March and we’ve had a fair amount of rain this afternoon, summer showers I think they are called. Luckily we managed to get out for bags of coal and a little bit of shopping before the heavens opened.

This evening I am being treated to something new for my dinner. This recipe was spotted by my dearly beloved in todays Daily Mail, or was it yesterdays? Anyway, it’s called Red Pepper, Ham and Cheese Tart, but it looks like a Pizza. It consists of the bits in the title, along with sun dried tomato paste, black olives and oregano, all in a flat pastry. Actually it looks rather tasty, so I’m quite looking forward to it.

On Sunday I will be driving down to Harlow again and staying overnight with Alan, because I have a hospital appointment at North Mid on Monday morning, the last one, I hope. As my second appointment after seeing the surgeon, is at 11.30 with the doctor, I don’t suppose I’ll get back to the boat much before 3 pm. Next year, assuming they’ll want me to have regular annual check ups, I shall try to arrange for them to be carried out in Leicester or Loughborough.

While I’m in Harlow on Sunday I’ll be calling in to Maplin’s for a new external hard drive. We already have one, but I want another one specifically for back ups and, as it’s my birthday on Easter Sunday, this is by way of a birthday present from Wifey.

Everywhere you go you will find a computer wizz somewhere nearby, and Pillings Lock Marina is no different than anywhere else. Our one goes by the name of Ivan and, after spending about 15 minutes with him bemoaning my problems with this laptop, he suggested that I carry out a recovery and set it up in 32 bit instead of the current 64 bit. His reason being that MS Office and virtually all other such programmes being used on Vista and Win 7, are all 32 bit, which could account for the slow running I’m experiencing.

Alternatively he suggests I set this machine up with XP, for which he has a disc I can borrow. He still has XP and I must say I found it very easy to use. Anyway, once I have the new hard drive, I’ll carry out a full back up and then a recover to 32 bit. If that doesn’t improve the situation I’ll go on to XP. So there!!

OK. Six pages of bloggy nonsense, so I think it’s about time it was posted. Happy days to all and don’t forget to put your clocks forward this weekend.

Dave, Sheila and Rusty.