Shiralee: Cruise 2014 # 20

Monday 18^th August to

 Tuesday 19^th August

 Since the day started out bright and dry; a temporary aberration, as it turned out; we decided to risk with the 12 Bosley locks and nine miles back to Congleton.

 As we passed through the 10^th one of these, we saw a holiday boat coming up from the one below and, as is the usual practice with locks that are so close together, I waited inside the lock until they came out and we passed in the middle of the pound.

 These holiday boaters were on their first time out so, what followed didn’t come as too much of a surprise, even though we hadn’t come across it before. After passing through that 11^th lock I then hovered until Wifey opened the gates to the final lock, which should still have been full. However, much to Wifey’s surprise, it was completely empty.

 Now, there are some locks around the system, that leak so badly that, over a good length of time will empty themselves, but the Bosley locks aren’t too bad in this respect. This final lock certainly couldn’t have done so in such a short space of time.

 So, the only solution to this anomaly was that, after filling the lock and passing through it, they then closed the top gates and proceeded to empty the lock again. Goodness knows why they did so, other than perhaps they thought it was normal practice to do so. We’re still puzzled by this!!

 The accepted rule of thumb when calculating how much time it will take to travel from A to B is to add the miles to the amount of locks and divide by three. So, with nine miles and 12 locks we would expect to take about seven hours, which of course is a load of poppycock. With practice however; and we’ve had lots of that over the past eight years; nine miles and 12 locks would have taken about 3 to 3½ hours. However, when you take into account the dreadful state of the Macclesfield canal; which is well and truly knackered, with tall weeds and saplings lining the towpath almost all the way along its 27 mile route; we found ourselves going along very slowly in places, simply because we couldn’t see what may have been coming towards us. Yes, it really is that bad!

 So, having left bridge 46 at 7.45 am, we finally arrived at Congleton at 12.15 pm, only to find a day boat just that little bit too close to the next boat along, making the gap too small for me to pull into. There was plenty of space nearer to me as I approached them, but they were using the nearby bench for cooking up a barbecue, and I really didn’t want the smell permeating our boat.

 Eventually, although they seemed somewhat reluctant to do so, they did move along by just enough for me to squeeze in, but only just. But, we had to wonder why, if they were going to use that bench for their barbecue, they didn’t tie up nearer to the bench. Even my Wifey couldn’t see the logic of it, and she’s usually pretty laid back about such unfathomable behaviour.

 Avast:

 Back to this sorry saga, I regret to say. Yesterday, having received more useless information about how to run this Grime Fighter programme, I emailed them again with reasons as to why their advice would not work. One of those reasons was that perhaps the downloaded .exe file had not completely downloaded, or perhaps it had become corrupted in cyber space. Did they listen? Absolutely not! Instead I received even more useless information and have now advised them that the programme only partially downloaded and asked for a link leading to the download. We’ll see what happens next.

 However, I finally received a reply to my question as to why I had been charged an extra £2 for the Secure Line programme, which is the one we use when we’re at Crick and going online with their WiFi. For some odd reason it is not possible to print out their emails and, when I use the snipping tool on the laptop, to copy the email, I am unable to scroll down the page, so I couldn’t send them a copy of the payment. Instead I have copied and pasted some of it into a Word document and sent that instead.

 But, I have to ask myself, why didn’t they look up my recent payment for themselves? Surely they have the wit to carry out that simple chore. My next payment is due today and, sure as eggs is eggs, that one will be wrong too. I tell you, I’m really getting quite annoyed with Avast and their inability to solve simple problems. I’m even doubtful that the reply I sent about Grime Fighter will even get through, because they normally make it impossible to reply to emails. Instead they insist you raise another ticket through their, so-called, Customer Service. Ye gods and little fishes, what has happened to common sense these days?

 Looking on the bright side, no sooner had we moored up here than it started to rain and our day boat people moved off. Whether they had finished cooking their bar-b we have no idea, but it allowed us to pull our boat back a little, giving us some extra space between us and the next boat.

 Eventually, after all this faffing about, we had our cup of coffee; well-earned in this instance; and took a walk into town. Guess what? We’re doing it again today because it’s Market day in Congleton. Yeah!!

 Wednesday 20^th August

 Avast:

 Yesterday morning I decided to telephone Avast about this problem with Grime Fighter and spoke to a representative. After determining that this number was not a Premium Rate number, I explained my problem and told him that, having checked my recent downloads, the programme had only partially downloaded. I then asked for the link to the download again, so that I might start again. From there onwards our discussion became rather heated, on my side of course.

 Like most people who have a computer these days, we do all our banking and some of our purchases online. We therefore have quite a bit of sensitive information stored on our computers, none of which we want to allow access to by outsiders, not even if they do represent a security company like Avast. After all, I’ve only been using their free anti-virus so far, along with their Secure Line.

 So, when this person suggested that I allow him remote access to my laptop in order for him to determine why I had been unable to download their programme, I told him that I would prefer to re-download the programme and requested the link again. He then suggested that, in that case I should go to their Customer Service page and and…… well, I didn’t get the rest because, out of the blue, our conversation was interrupted by an automated message asking me how satisfied with their service, ‘on a count of five to one, with best satisfied to very unsatisfied’. I responded with ‘one’, to which I heard ‘please respond’. I tried again and received the same message again, at which point I gave up and ended the call.

 Following all that I decided to email this person, Selma, who is currently dealing with the matter of that £2 price hike in my Secure Line programme, and explained my problem with the Grime Fighter and requested that she arrange to cancel my order and repay my fee to my PayPal Account. I received an email from Selma this morning, assuring me that she had now forwarded my information about that price hike to the relevant department. I am still awaiting a response regarding Grime Fighter.

 The good news; if it can be called that; is that, having paid through PayPal, I have 180 days in which to raise a dispute regarding the transaction. So, that’s something I suppose.

 After that disastrous telephone call, we walked into Congleton, did a bit of shopping, stopped for a coffee and sticky bun, then walked back to the boat.

 This morning is looking a bit calmer, weather-wise, so we’ll probably trot along to Kidsgrove, where Alan and Chris will be meeting us on Friday.

 Thursday 21^st August

 Thinking that we only had three miles and one lock to do before reaching the aqueduct at Kidsgrove, we put off leaving Congleton until 8.30 am and, just as we were leaving another boat passed us. This didn’t bode well for a reasonable speedy trip because, ahead of that one was a holiday boat, which was crawling along, with the holiday makers taking photos along the way. Needless to say, a trip that should have taken 1 ½ hours, now took three, in part because there was no space on the aqueduct, which meant another half a mile and another lock.

 After coffee and a quick read of the paper, Wifey suggested we might take a walk up to the shops and so, despite the rain, off we went and spent a pleasant hour walking.

 The rest of our day passed very much as normal until, whilst sitting down to dinner I suggested we might take another walk, this time down to the Red Bull pub, where we enjoyed a pleasant half hour over a drink; Wifey with a latte and me with a lager. Just the one!!

 While checking her emails a couple of days ago, Sheila found one from our son David, in which he told her that he had bumped into my old friend Chris Green’s wife Marilyn. I can’t remember the last time I actually saw Chris and passed some time, but it was certainly long before we bought the boat. Anyway, Marilyn passed her email address over to David, who then passed it along to Sheila.

 On Tuesday morning I emailed Marilyn and, since it hasn’t returned as undeliverable, I assume the details are correct. However, it seems that Marilyn wasn’t in any hurry to hear from me, because she hasn’t replied yet. I’m hoping she contacts me soon, because it would be good to renew an old friendship, even if it is only by email.

 It seems that we are not going to spend our time with Alan and Chris here at Kidsgrove after all. Instead, as Alan suggested, they’re coming here to meet us and then taking us to Tunstall, where we’ll visit the market and lunch at The Snead, whatever that is; probably a local watering hole.

 Friday 22^nd August

 Moored here at Kidsgrove between two locks, we have excellent Internet and mobile access, which is more than can be said for the TV. Apart from the fact that we are sandwiched between a couple of train lines, we can think of nothing else that could cause such a problem, but while we’re sitting here, off stays the tele.

 Anyway, yesterday evening after dinner we decided to watch the third film in the Steig Larson films: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. After wasting time watching three trailers of other films we finally got this film rolling. This film is well over two hours long so, about ¾ of the way through, and much to our surprise, it stopped rolling and inched forwards now and again.

 This was a new and unwrapped disc that we bought during the closing down sales at HMV, so we really shouldn’t have had a problem. The hand set for the TV doesn’t seem to have a Fast Rewind button, so we decided to try watching the rest of the film on the laptop. Luckily the Fast-Forward controls are there and it took several minutes to move it along to where it had stopped. Even then we found we had skipped over that bit, but we did at least get to watch the final and best parts, even if the dialogue was in American English and didn’t follow the sub-titles.

 Avast:

 Finally, after all the fuss and bother I’ve had with Avast, I received an email from a technician with a new link to the programme download. I have now downloaded it again and checked that it is the real McCoy but, from the info that came up on the screen, the Grime Fighting process can take quite some time, so it will have to wait until I have the laptop plugged in to 240 volts.

 A simple matter of providing a link to download has taken about eight separate Help Tickets. I dread to think what will happen if it still doesn’t work.

 Finally for this blog, something strange is happening to my WiFi. When I downloaded the Grime Fighter prog, I immediately double clicked to run it, which was when I noticed that the process of cleaning up the laptop would take quite some time. I now find that, just above the System Tray in the right hand bottom corner, there’s a wee box telling me that I have 3Mobile Internet Access. This doesn’t normally appear once I’m connected, so I must assume that Grime Fighter is to blame.

 Right, enough already. Let’s put this blog to bed and post it.

 Take care folks and have a good weekend.

 Dave and Sheila