A Day Off

Yep, today was billed as a "day off".....

Needless to say that now it's over, I'm absolutely knackered!

The day began very well with a lie-in until about 10.00. However, it was around this time that Jackie started telling me the list of jobs that needed to be done. This is normally my cue to get up and get on with it, so I did.

I wandered up to the lock to see what potential salvage was bobbing about in front of the weir sluices. A lot of wood, a punt pole and a small fender had floated down from Cambridge, so I borrowed back a grappling hook I made from Andreas and Lou, fetched the barrow and my other salvaged punt pole and set off.

After about half an hour of patient 'fishing' with the hook, I had got a couple of good branches, the fender, the punt pole and a very nice plank. (This may have come loose off the superstructure of poor old 'Jester', the near derelict wooden fishing boat that is moored upstream at Clayhithe.)

Jackie then turned up, having been for a run. Together we succeeded in getting some more goodly logs. One was so big it was a bit of a problem. Fortunately, a passing cyclist stopped to find out what the heck we were doing, and Jackie offered him a go on the grappling hook. With she and me on the punt poles and cyclist on the grappling hook, we managed to manouvre the large trunk out of the weir's undertow and to the bank. Getting it out of the water wasn't nearly so hard. We were soon barrowing our trophies back to the wood-pile where they are now under cover and (very slowly) drying out. I reckon they will be dry enough to cut up and split sometime in August....

It's been such a long, hard winter that we have used almost all the wood in The Stealth Woodpile. Jackie had got some more from the wood place near Barkway, and my next job was to split these lovely seasoned oak off-cuts down to woodburner size.

That accomplished, a quick round of cheese on toast was called for.

I then stripped the pump on the Fuel cube and made a new gasket for it before reassembling it and pumping out about 15 litres of the remaining diesel. Jackie then cleaned it up a bit and took some photos. We're going to put it on ebay at the weekend.

By this time, it was too late to take the recycling to the tip......

I did manage a quick foray to Emmaus, however. Sarah, who blogs so well about life, the universe and owning a Big Woolwich (see 'Chertsey' on our blog list), was bemoaning the demise of the jumble sale in a recent post. It's true, you see them less and less, and really good stuff tends these days to end up on ebay. Emmaus, however, remains an Aladdin's Cave of good stuff. Well worth a visit! I was in a hurry, so passed on a nice trolley-jack with chassis stands, a mahogany commode (what a great casing that would have made for our borrowed Thetford Cassette loo.....!)and a couple of likely looking toolboxes. I breezed through the China and Glass Section, past Kitchen Stuff, and ended up glancing round the books. A mint copy of "Post Captain", second in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, came home with me for 75p. The really good thing is that it's the same edition as our copy of the first in the saga, "Master and Commander", (£1 from Emmaus). I have read them all, but lost the whole collection when we down-sized for the move aboard 'Pippin'. Hopefully, Jackie will read them and become as hooked as I did. They will be then given the honoured status of 'keepers', rather than 'read and give back-ers', which is what we do with 90% of the books we get from Emmaus......

Our friends Lou and Andreas from nb Rowanberry are back on the mooring after a fantastic trip to India. It was great to see them again as it's been a bit quiet of late.

To round off this post, here's some more entirely gratuitous 'cute cat' shots:-