Day 104: Carry on Regardless.

Dear family, friends and followers.

We are coming to the end of another week of this dreadful Coronavirus and we are still in lockdown. The Arm at the moment is remaining shut, despite some businesses re-opening and people beginning to go back to work. For us here, we have vulnerable and elderly people living on their boats here, so we need to be more careful. CRT are allowing boats to move now, but only minimal distances and boaters should not use locks unless necessary, so for us we are still going no where and will not be going anywhere this year. We have decided that we will write this year off at least, because we want a working vaccine before we go out and about boating. It is our choice our decision. I know many of our boating friends are chomping at the bit to get moving, but we just do not feel it will be safe enough for sometime to come. So all my blogging for the time being will be home mooring based. I do hope it will not bore you to much. I will try to keep my postings fun and informative.

I am still in painting mode. I am doing some touching up on the red paint on the cabin sides. I am hoping to get that finished in the next couple of days. I can then turn my attention to varnishing the galley doors and frame, which have not been done for a couple of years.

We did a repair to our Winter chimney. The brass handle was very cracked and had been like it for a couple of years. A few years ago I took the brass strips off the top of the chimney because they were constantly getting tarnished throughout the Winter with the smoke from the stove. I gave up trying to keep them clean. So we now have a Winter chimney with no brass strips for the Winter and a Summer chimney with brass strips. I kept the brass strips and today they helped to make a new handle. In order that this one does not crack, we doubled the strips to make it thicker. We could not pop rivet the strip back on, so we used self tapping screws instead. It is not ideal, but it has done the job.The hope is it will last a good few years. I now need to rub the chimney down and give it a couple of coats of black paint.

On the wall of the pump out building, we put up a trellis and have had one of our Clematis growing up it.

Today the biggest of the buds opened and is beginning to show us its colour. The Clematis appears to be very happy in its new home. Looking forward to seeing how many blooms we get on it this year.

One our our bee hotels is almost full. The bees have been so industrious, they are truly amazing creatures. Of course now we will have to wait to see how many of these nests hatch out.

In the fruit patch. The Gooseberries are really filling out. Keith will be enjoying these little gems soon hopefully. I will stick to the Strawberries and Rhubarb.

This afternoon, we had a food delivery, which has topped up the fridge and the cupboard for another week. It would be nice to think at some point we will be able to return to Keith shopping at Aldi on the bus, but not for the time being. It is funny how a food delivery is one of the highlights of the week or fortnight. It is normally something we take for granted, but not anymore. There are so many things in our lives we have taken for granted and yet now we look upon them as exciting and a way of brightening our day.
News on the Robin pair. This morning we saw a Robin in our hedge. It was not Mr Robin who I feed, but I think it was his partner, so I am thinking now that maybe they have a nest with either eggs or youngsters in it. If either of them cares to call, I have some meal worms for them, which I am sure the brood would enjoy. I will keep you posted on any news of them or their family.

Quite sometime ago, I mentioned I was suffering with Hives and I thought I had them under control, well it seems that is not the case. My skin at the moment is not happy. I am taking anti-histamines and putting creams on, to try and stop any outbreaks which I last suffered with in 2001. Because I am allergic to Nickel, Cobalt, Thiarim and Neomycin any one of them could be causing the skin issue. I have a feeling it may have something to do with the dust from the road works going on outside of the Arm. Something in the dust from what they are using and digging up maybe affecting me, because I am allergic to cements, I know this from when we had building work done on the house and I came up with a rash all over, which nearly put me in hospital. So we will see how I go, but I may end up having to go to the GP for further help, which will mean steroid creams and alike.

For anyone following Keith's railway. He adds something new everyday to his blog. Hadarford

Pop back soon xx