Altogether too much drama.

Wow.

No sooner do we suggest that our friends' blog is worth reading, then said friends are involved in a tsunami following the Chilean earthquake!

Relax, they're both fine. Not quite back to Condition Beige, but okay just the same.

Thank goodness. It's been a worrying 24hrs or so.

Of course, after all this serious life-threatening drama, blogging about the Cam having risen a bit seems rather lame.

Risen it has, though. The drop at the weir is now as little as 4 inches or so. The E.A. are manning the nearby pumping station 24 hours. A lot of water is whooshing through the sluices, which are cranked wide open.

The water level just upstream of the lock hasn't got too worrying. In fact when things were this bad (or a bit worse) last Feb, our parish field didn't flood. The gang plank angle has increased a bit, but that's about all.

I'm jolly glad we are using the borrowed Thetford cassette loo, though. Cambridge is properly flooded (which will have stuffed the pump-out electrics again anyway). Having to chug to Ely in this sort of strong stream might make for a record breaking time on the out-bound leg, but a long, high-rev, low knots battle back against the current on the way home.

However, there is some progress to report on the new loo front. We have removed the ply panel behind the existing loo, exposing all the pipework. We have decided to try to repair it, (new solenoid, non-return valve and one way air vent), and then save up for the Vacuflush 5000. This may seem a bit daft, but consider the following:

-it will take us a year or so to find the money.

-that's a long time to be carrying cassettes.

-the Vacuflush uses about one quarter of the water our current system uses when working perfectly

-this will lengthen our pump-out interval to about eight weeks!

-this will save diesel, money, time, the environment, and mean less chance of getting athwart the hawse of rowers or having to deal with dirty looks from used car salesmen and estate agents in plastic cruisers.

So it makes sense.

To us, anyway.....

In other news, Jackie has been busy today helping our be-winged and halo-ed friend Paul strip down the engine of our Suzuki Vitara. (Why wasn't I doing it? Well, it's got heathen devices like fuel injection, catalytic converters, overhead cams, 16 valves and a plumbers nightmare of coolant hoses, air ducts and wiring looms, and is not a nice, big, bare block with four bits of wire emerging from it and lots of space around it, so I tend to get a bit lost..........

I busied myself removing and replacing the rear bumper's plastic impact-absorbing outer skin instead. (To remove the evidence of some impact it had absorbed, since you ask....) This was accomplished fairly easily despite some 10mm bolt heads shearing off. The dent was teased out using a small amount of carefully aimed percussion engineering and a waft of heat from my trusty hot air gun. It all went back together okay, though what lights will light up at the back when the clever people working on the engine re-connect the battery is anyone's guess.

If it stays sunny tomorrow, Jackie and Paul are going to clean the head and top of the block, install a new head gasket and put it all back together.......

And so, to today's gratuitous cute cat shots. Spot the difference:-