First snow.

It's arrived a day earlier to what the forecasters said. This morning I opened the back cabin doors to find a dusting of snow on the canal and towpath.

I absolutely adore snow, it brings out the child in me. Even Paddy had a spring in his step when we went for his walk.

After breakfast, we had a few things we wanted to do in town, we also wanted to visit the local radio station Hfm with who we love dearly. They are about to have their fifth birthday and we wanted to take a card into the station, as we cannot go to their birthday part on the 10th February, because we hope that we will be on the move then, if the ice goes away. The radio station was the first port of call, where we received a warm welcome and a nice hot coffee. We spent an hour chatting to the DJ's about all their news from the past few months. Whenever we are in the area we like to listen to Hfm and to pop in and see them all when we get the chance. Having said our goodbyes until we see them again in October, we headed off into town to pick a few things we had forgotten yesterday, this included some elastic for Keith's tracksuit bottoms, which he wears in the evening. The elastic in them is no longer doing its job, so we went into the indoor market to purchase some more and whilst there we went and chatted to John who runs the outdoor clothing stall, where we buy our trousers, shirts etc for boating in. John like all the other stall holders are extremely worried about having to move out of the market. The council want to sell the indoor market hall to a big name retailer, meaning the stall holders will have to move. This is extremely upsetting for all concerned. There has been an ongoing petition, which now has over 10,000 signatures, but as yet the council are not listening to what people are saying. Hands off our Market. John say's they have been told they have possibly two years before they will be forced out, which is a real shame. We wished John well and hoped that we would see him in October, when we would be stocking up on new trousers etc.

Back on the boat in the warm, it was time for lunch and a coffee, before sitting down to watch "Carry On Sergeant" made in 1958 and was the first Carry On film.

I did have a shock today. Keith and I keep a supply of British Waterways pump out cards on board, which we sell on to people who require them, we do not make any money on them we sell them on for the price we buy them, so no profit for us, we just offer a service, so I was absolutely horrified to find out this morning that in a year the cards had gone up from £10 to £18. With such a hike in the price we have decided that once we have sold the remainder of the cards we have left, we will stop supplying them. It makes me glad that we do not have a pump out on our boat. I wonder if anyone else has noticed the hike in the price of pump out cards??

Chat soon x