Mild February... So far :-)

Dear family, friends and followers.

With the weekend bring us into the first full week of February, Monday dawned with yet another mild, cloudy start. I took myself off for a stroll, before getting to grips with the day's chores. The first one being the fire. The days is coming when we will be letting the fire out, and I will not be doing the ash pan walk, or the clearing up of the dust from the fire. There will be no lifting of the 25 kg bags of coal either. The letting out of the stove is always a joyous thing, because it means I can rub the stove down and give it a re-paint. But in the meantime, the fire needs feeding still in order to give us our heat and some hot water. The joy of having a back boiler on our stove, is we do not need to have the immersion heater on, which save on the electricity. We manage to heat all our hot water from the fire so far this Winter. Once the fire was done and the coal bucket refilled with coal, it was time to change the bilge nappies again. Two weeks soon goes, and that means wet nappies come out and dry ones go down for a fortnight to soak up any water deposited into the bilge and under the floor of the galley. The water under the floor is purely condensation, which all boats get and that is why inspection hatches are a must in any boat. All nappies changed, time for a coffee, before doing anything else.
Monday was a quiet day in may respects. I did spend a lot of time catching up with e-mails and other correspondence. It makes me wonder how on earth we ever managed without the internet. In the old days we would hand write letters. I wonder who does that these days? It is a real treat if you receive a handwritten letter. I was never that great at writing letters. When I was a child, my brother and I would always have to write thank you letters at Christmas and for our Birthdays. I then had pen pals who I used to write too. These days it is all done online via e-mail.
I wonder is the internet a curse or a help, what do you think?

Tuesday was spent at the dentists, because hubby has an abscess under one of his teeth. He has been on antibiotics since last Friday, but they have not done their job and he only had enough till the end of Tuesday. The dentist was lovely, but she reckoned he did not need anymore antibiotics, but we should up his pain relief until he sees our own dentist in a couple of weeks. It looks like he may end up losing another tooth, because to have a root canal done, it could cost several hundred pounds which we do not have. After seeing the dentist, we popped into the town to pick up my prescription and other bits and bobs. We went to Wetherspoons for a late breakfast, which meant no cooking for me. Back home and It was a day to get small jobs done. Sewing buttons on garments, tidying drawers, cupboards and cooking a spag bol for tomorrow's lunch. It was a day for getting ahead of the game.

Our new water pump arrived from Midland Chandlers, so we will change it for our back-up pump, which will go back to being the spare. The reason for this, is we know the spare works, we need to know the new one works, hence we will get it fitted.

Wednesday and we were greeted with a stunner of a sunrise. The photograph was taken from the engine room, when I got up to make a cup of tea. Mornings like this always make me smile. This is what life is all about afloat. It was another mild start and the birds were singing happily, whilst waiting for their breakfast. Mr Robin was there on the fence, even the Blue Tits have cottoned on to the fact that they can wait for food. I put some nibbles out for the Bank Voles, who were again taking a lazy lie in. Hubby is still suffering with his tooth, so I decided to head into town early. When I say early, I was at the chemists for 9 am. Our chemist Andrew is absolutely brilliant, you can go an see him about all sorts of ailments and he normally has the answer. He suggested stronger pain relief and a gel which you rub on the gum and it acts as an anesthetic for a while numbing the area, thus dulling the pain. Having purchased both items, I took myself off to Cutter's the hairdressers, where Dave gave my hair a trim and cut in a new fringe. I have been without a fringe for over a year, but I have noticed my hair is thinning at the front, due to sun damage last year. My forehead always burns and therefore it damages the follicles of the hair, which means my hair is thinning. I have a high forehead anyway, so by having a fringe it will cover it up a bit and perhaps stop my hair from thinning. That is the theory anyway. I have gone for a thin fringe, which can still be put up with a hairband. £10 paid for my trim and the fringe is a bargain, when some want to charge me between £16 to £30 for the same thing and that is just in Warwick.
Back home, I dosed up hubby with his new pain relief, so we will see how that goes. Lunch was the remainder of the Cottage Pie, which has done us three meals, with Mince Pie for pudding. I had some mincemeat left over from Christmas in the cupboard, so decided to use it up for a pudding. I never like to let anything go to waste, if I can help it.

After lunch we got on with fitting the new water pump. The spare one will go back in hiding until it is needed again. Hopefully that will be a few years. Time for a coffee and a catch up with mail.

Wednesday to some is hump day. To me it is the middle of the week and the run towards another weekend. Looking forward to the next round of the Six Nations Rugby matches.

Pop back soon xx