All hooked up.

Hi Friends.

After a night of strong winds and rain, the canal outside of the boat looks completely ice free, there is not a block of ice to be seen and having walked with Paddy up the towpath, the ice is slowly going, so it all bodes well for moving tomorrow. With this in mind and the fact that we have a coal delivery arriving in the morning, we thought we should move the boat on to the Sanitary Station mooring's in the basin ready. So Keith went and asked at the office when it would be ok to come in. He was told, to go in when we liked because no one was using the services, so at 10.30am we started up the engine which coughed and spluttered into life. She was only running on one cylinder, so needed warming up. Whilst the engine belched out smoke my phone rang to tell me my Tesco food order had arrived at the Waterfront Restaurant, bless him he was 15 minutes early. We had hoped to be moved into the basin before he arrived between 11am and 12pm, but he was early so I sped off down the towpath with my boxes, whilst Keith waited for the engine to run on two cylinders. We are known to the Tesco van driver, so he was happy to drive round to the sanitary station and help me with the shopping. I then waited for Keith to bring the boat alongside, this took a further 15 minutes because the engine was slow to kick into the second cylinder.
Having moored up, it was clear out time of the bags of rubbish which we had stored in the hold. I also had bags of rubbish after my Spring clean. In all we had Eight bags of rubbish, a mat and a wheel (don't ask). Keith connected us to the eletric hook-up, so I got the washing machine cranked up with the first load. I get quite excited when we are on electric hook-up, because I can get a lot of jobs done. The washing and drying of our washing is the most important thing, next comes the hoovering and then finally charging things up like the phones and the camera batteries. To anyone living in a house, these are things which are taken for granted, but when living on a boat and relying on the battery bank you do have to think about what you put on and when. We do have the luxury of an inbuilt generator, which I run the washing machine off of, but even so being on hook-up for the night means I can get the bigger items washed and dried in the drier, so the boat does not look like a Chinese laundry over night.

Having just eaten lunch, I am now thinking about what I can do next?

Coal order's will be filled this afternoon, as people arrive to collect their order's. Then once we are full again tomorrow we will head off towards Foxton and hope that we will get through the ice.

We cannot get a TV signal where we are, so we will be watching DVD's tonight from our extensive collection. I will then be off to bed early, ready for getting up early in the morning.
What ever you are doing today, I hope you have a wonderful day. Chat soon xx