Saturday a day of boat jobs and rubbish.

Hi Folks.

I enjoyed a fantastic nights sleep in the silence of the countryside and was only woken up by a cock Pheasant shouting in the field opposite the boat. He clearly felt he had something to say, so just got on with it, with no regard to me sleeping in LOL. I got up and made Keith and I a cuppa and we sat in bed watching "Takeshi's Castle" on Challenge. It is absolute nonsense but a laugh nevertheless. 9am I was up and out on the towpath walking Paddy, who made a beeline for the field which has horse jumps. No he was not about to do some agility, but loved running up and down the field like a loony. When we got back to the boat, Keith had made toast for breakfast, the kettle on the back stove was beginning to whistle into life, so coffee could be made later one, Marmite and Paddy were both tucking into their breakfast.

My first job of the day was to fry off  a Lamb Shank ready for cooking. I wanted it to stew in the back cabin stove, so I would be able to strip the meat off for a stew for tomorrow's dinner. With the job done, I was on to my second job which was to tidy the storage boxes in the hold which were a real mess. I tidied everything in the boxes and re-stacked them giving me more room to move. Keith then got started on his job which was to fit the new battery switch, to replace the broken one, and whilst he had the boatman’s cabin floor up, he checked the oil level in the gearbox, which was fine. I was then on to my third job, which was to go litter picking with our new grabber.

We bought it from Argos in Rugby and this was its first outing. It certainly did the job. I walked 100 metres in in both directions from our boat and picked up all the rubbish I could find, which was a lot in such a deserted area.

Undoubtedly most of this rubbish came from boaters. The road cone well that came from a road nearby, but the rest of the rubbish could of and should of been dumped in proper bins and not in the hedgerows. I like many other people are fed up with the amount of litter we see along the canal, so are doing something about it. There is a website called Litter Heroes, which encourages litter picking. It is about time we Kept Britain Tidy. If boaters did as I and others like Maffi are doing by tidying a 100 metres either end of the boat, we could make such a huge difference. It is not rocket science and yet some think it is beneath them to pick up others rubbish. In an ideal world everyone would sort their own rubbish out in the proper places, but this is not the real world and it seems many just do not care about the countryside or the wildlife, because this rubbish has an affect on both. Only on "Autumn Watch" last night they were suggesting that people should go down to the beach and collect the mountains of rubbish washed up on the beach, well if your not near a beach do the same thing near a river, or canal. Lets make Britain clean and tidy. Ok I am getting off of my soap box for now. Just want to try and get a message across.

With the rubbish stowed away in the hold until we get to a rubbish point, I then turned my attention to some bacon sandwiches for lunch whilst we watched the F1 qualifying from Abu Dhabi. Geesh Vettle did it again after Hamilton put in a stonking lap. Fed up with Vettle winning everything, it is becoming boring. After we watched the qualifying, Keith got on with sorting some bags of bits out, he used a couple of the cabin lights he found and changed them for the ones already up in the back cabin, giving us a better light. We have not done huge jobs today, but nevertheless important jobs, which keep the boat ticking along nicely.

As of now I am going to be putting my feet up and watching the films on Film4. At the moment it is "The Poseidon Adventure", so I will say cheerio for now xx