Thursday 28th March
Well, apart from the successful shopping trip to Burton, the
purchasing of a pair of boots for me was a dismal failure. Despite the diet, we
did treat ourselves to coffee and sticky bun. I put my foot down with a very
firm hand about this. Most enjoyable!
Tomorrow morning, Andy assures us our Remote Unit should
arrive and be fitted. He also said, on a less than positive note, that if it
still doesn’t work he will remove the lot and take it all back to the makers
for assessment.
We bought ourselves a new broom, a nice soft one for
cleaning the side of the boat whilst cruising. Goodness knows why it gets so
mucky but, since our one recently fell apart, we decided to blow the £3.45 on a
new one and to hell with the expense.
Friday 29th March
As you all know, I’m learning to play the ukulele. But, did
you know that there’s a hybrid instrument, that’s been around since about 1999,
called a Guitalele? No, me neither, I only discovered it a couple of weeks ago
when I accompanied my neighbour when he bought a new uke.
This year whilst cruising, I will be making every effort to
improve my uke technique, but I have yet to decide if I want an 8 string uke or
one of these guitaleles, which are in essence, simply a guitar, only shorter by
5 frets, thus making them ideal for travelling. Hmmm! Gotta think about that
one.
Today Andy will be fitting our Remote Unit, we hope, after
which we’ll be popping along to The Range for a lightweight watercolour book.
Sad to say our printer will not print the heavier, 300gms paper.
I have found a way to converting a photo to black and white
and giving it a ‘wash’, so that it looks very faint when printed out. I’m
pretty lousy at copying a photo onto watercolour paper, even when placing a
grid down first, so this could be an ideal way of achieving the same thing.
Graphite paper can be a bit messy, very much like carbon paper, so this could
prove to be a clean alternative and much easier.
Saturday 30th March
Still no sign of our remote unit yesterday, which comes as
no surprise since it was Good Friday. Andy doesn’t expect it to arrive until
Tuesday now, so he’ll probably have to meet us somewhere along the cut. His
boat is already ahead of us any way and is currently moored at Alrewas, so he
won’t have a problem.
He’s one of the few boaters we know who actually take their
car with them when cruising. This is because he could still be called upon to
work on a boat or car and, if necessary he can get to them quickly. When you
consider all the walking, or bus riding necessary to fetch the car after moving
along with the boat, I won’t even consider it. Also, where do you park the car?
If you don’t know the area this could be a big problem. Still, horses for
courses I suppose!
I’ve decided to pop down to Harlow today to drop off the
Toshiba at Frank’s place. He’s helped Alan out on a number of occasions and has
offered to wipe the hard drive for me. Hopefully I’ll be able to bring it back
with me tomorrow morning. If not, then Alan will take care of it and fetch it
with him when he visits, whenever and wherever that might be. Frank tells me
that, with a hard drive of 250Gb this could take up to 4 hours, and the drive
on the Toshiba is 320Gb, if you count only the C drive. The whole drive is
partitioned and totals 640Gb and so, if he has to do the lot it could take all
night!
Whatever happens I must get back on Sunday morning as we
have a finally shopping trip set for Monday. So, on Tuesday morning I will post
this blog and start a new one for our 2013 cruise. Yeah!! Whoopee!!
Monday 1st April
Well folks, today is the last of my winter blogs. We’ll be
off tomorrow morning. The weather today is milder than of late, so I’m hopeful
we’ll be able to leave without having to break through the ice.
Frank has reported back about the laptop. On the strength of
the info I gave him; namely that the System disc that came with it has 5.6Gb of
info on it; he is hopeful that the whole of the system information is in there.
If so then he won’t have to re-install Windows and drivers as they’ll be on the
disk.
He also installed so much stuff and rubbish after wiping the
hard drive, that nobody will be able to unravel any sensitive information. I’ll
have to wait until tomorrow before posting the disc to him as I want to send it
Guaranteed Next Day Delivery, just to ensure it doesn’t get lost in the post.
As for today, well, that will be taken up with shopping and
checking the boat over. We cleaned the windows yesterday and Wifey washed down
the port side, we’ll wash the starboard side when we are moored up with that
side to the towpath.
Our first port of call will be Branston, assuming it’s not
raining or blowing a gale, in which case we’ll stop at Willington, or a bit
further on.
All the best to you all, and have a good summer. We
certainly intend to, despite what the elements may throw at us.
Cheers me dears!
Dave, Sheila and Rusty.
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