The Great Library of Alexandria.

There is a wonderful old African saying;

"When a wise man dies, a library burns....."

My Uncle John Coles was wise.

An architect.

A practical man who was never happier than when mending something broken, (something that usually belonged to someone else.......)

Son of a garage-man, the great Eric Coles, who was as old as motor cars......

Mender of the sickly automobile.....

Curer of all mechanical ills......

Fixer of pretty much any stuff that needed fixing......

More:

Loving husband to Christine, father to Caroline, Sarah and Vikki, Grandad to Theo and Zak.....

Brother to David and to Ann.

Best Man to my Dad when Dad married Ann, my Mum..........

Father-in-law to  Phil, Jim and Nick.......

Uncle to me and Nikki.

Godfather to me.

To everyone else, he was Johnny.

To all of us, he was Johnny.

Johnny the decent, the kind, the generous, the thoughtful, the good of heart........

Johnny the wise, the clever, the sideways-thinking-solution-finder...........

Johnny the patient.........

PAUSE: ......................BREATHE .............

What lives beyond the fire? The ashes? The library destroyed?

We do.

We carry that which  we learned of you with us.

It will not fade nor fail us, and it will be with us always.

Thankyou, Johnny.

Thankyou.

Proud shall I stand as your pall-bearer.

Grateful.

And Proud.


But, oh, the library burns. The library burns......

And my tears shall not quench the flames.

X

The Lutine Bell.

Let it toll.

Let the market cease....

Let there be silence.........

For there is a loss..............................

Yes.

A great and irredemable loss.

My beloved Uncle John died suddenly on Saturday.

So let the bell toll.

And let there be silence.

Silence.

And silent tears.

Silence.

Emergency Ward Ten.......

"Nurse!

The screens!!!"

I have three new, but now VERY knackered, Elecsol 110a/h deep cycle batteries on life-support in Pippin's kitchen, hooked up toJames's battery charger.....

(The picture on the box turned out not to be Kitchener after all, by the way......

It's Michael Faraday.......)

Pippin's Pramac P6000s generator has been pouring-forth life-giving amps for some hours now......

Lights on machines glow.

Machines bleep............

It's touch and go.........

Where the flippin' Henry is Dr Kildare when you need him, eh?

So.

Anyway.

How the heck did THIS happen?

Well, as C.W. McCall once said, " That's a long story, Harold............"

(Google him and click on the audio recording of his track 'Classified': It's a hoot.............. And BTW, anyone whose gone car-shopping with me in the last year really should hear this if they haven't already!)

Good, isn't it?!

Okay, so, back at The Gentleman's boat.......

My last post (and I use the term advisedly.....) concerning this vessel, it's engine and it's sometimes challengingly behavioured owner, had me and James fitting some sprauncey new leisure batteries.

No problems there, you might well think.

Job done.

Off home.

Guinness and a welcome sleep.

The sleep of the just...........

Yeah.

Right.......

Okay, so we thought everthing was ticketty-boo, because I hadn't heard a thing from Our Gentleman since the battery fitting episode.

One assumes 'no negative feedback'  = ' happy camper'...

Oh no.

Oh dear me, no.

Oh no no no no no...........

Far from it, in fact.

His mobile isn't receiving voicemail from my mobile.......

Many a message and oft has, therefore, disappeared up the ether. ......

Or so it would seem.

Bugger........................................

Is it me?

Or would a relay of native runners carrying messages in cleft sticks not be more efficient?

Anyway.

Our Gentleman rocks up at The Hole Making Shop, full of the joys, and aware that something had happened over the weekend because he got back from choir on Sunday to find his fridge revving like a bastard and his milk frozen solid.....

(That'll be the effect of some amps, then........)

In short, unable, as he was, to access my numerous mobile answerphone messages, he was non-plussed as to why all his boat's electrical systems were suddenly working as their designer intended.

Which would have been fine.

Absolutely fine.

No problem.

Not a worry in the world.

IF..............

the bastard bloody lpg powered electrical generator that was installed by some clueless numpty and fellow rip-off merchant recommended by the low-down-no-good-thieving-douche-bag who ripped Our Gentleman off over the engine in the first place, hadn't broken down.

Broken down the day before James and I, all unwitting, installed three brand new 110 a/h deep cycle batteries.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

In short, because of mobile phone issues, the gentleman didn't know he had new batteries.

I didn't know (until I saw him, viva voce, at the Hole Making Shop), that the useless piece of crap that the thieving banderlog have passed-off on him as a viable generator has ceased to be, (and, quite literally, 'shuffled off this mortal coil'), thus leaving the beautiful new gorgeous and doomed to die batteries we installed to a fate worse than flat.....

At £106 a pop, to boot.

Good grief.

I am so frustrated with the sheer bad luck of it all that I could spit my teeth out.

One by one.

(I don't yet do dentures.....)

Anyway.

Today.

Day off from Hole Making Shop.....

Day spent in the bilges of Our Gentleman's boat.......

(Whoop-de-do........)

Task one:

Remove several gallons of rainwater which has accumulated in the bilge because:

a) It's been raining hard, a lot............

b) the deck drainage system on this particular crap-barge dumps all the water from the roof and aft-deck straight into the engine room.

c) working on electrics while standing in four inches of water is a mugs game.

d) Our Gentleman needs to observe how this is done and actually have a go at a bit in order to improve his coping skills.


Task two:

Try to hook up a borrowed petrol generator to the battery bank.

Nice try. No cigar...... I failed because the coupling is a 32-36 amp beast of nearly 2 & 1/4 inches diameter. Needless to say, no Spark Shops in Ely were able to supply such an item, depite a thorough and time consuming search of several.  Kev from wb Avalon got close with the offer of the lend of the right size coupling, but it was male, not female.....  (Ooh look, there goes another molar........)


Task three:

Remove the quivering and heavily traumatised Elecsol leisure batteries installed last weekend, and take them to a place of safety.


Task four:

Put the old, knackered-and-therefore-no-more-harm-can-come-to-them batteries back in place so Our Gentleman still has some vestige of light etc. (These tasks all involved a trolley and many walks to and from the car which was parked as close as I could get it, a mere ten minutes away.......)

Task five:

Place traumatised Elecsol batteries on life-support in Pippin's kitchen hooked up to James's battery charger.

Before emergency treatment commenced, the multimeter was showing between 10.2 and 10.6 amps.........

The prognosis is not good..............

They are going to be in the I.C.U. for some time.....

I'm going to charge all three up as best I can, then, having left them for a bit, do a voltage drop test.

Please keep your fingers crossed!

:-)

Oh, and Our Gentleman was  very polite today, apologising at least twice for taking up all of my day off.

He even offered me a cup of tea!

But there was no milk, despite one of Europes largest branches of Tesco's being just across the way.

So I went without.

Palindromes

Okay.....

I know...............

I really should get out more......

However, today is a palindromic date.

21/11/12

It reads the same backwards as forwards.

It is both elegant and beautiful.

So where were you at the moment of The Double Palindrome?

(i.e. eleven minutes and twelve seconds past nine o'clock in the evening.......)

And where will you be for the last sequential date of this century?

December 11th 2013....

11/12/13.......  ? ...........

Especially, at ten past nine in the morning?

I'll leave you to ponder that while I go for a lie-down..........

The 'embers of the year......

I woke up early this morning to the rhythmic drumming of heavy rain on Pippin's roof.

I got up, made a cup of tea and lit the fire.

Work has been hard of late, and there has been little cheer to brighten these grey days.

For we are into the embers of the year.

Nov and Dec.............

Embers.

Always seems like the end of something. And endings are sad sometimes.

My good friend Mark (The Engineer) has had to have his beloved labrador Ollie put down.

He is very sad.

Mark doesn't have a blog himself, yet. He's waiting until he gets his boat, I think........

But if you feel moved to leave a message for him on this one, please do.

(For some reason known only unto himself, he does read this rubbish......)

It may help, a bit, to cheer him up.........

I am also feeling a bit down on the mouth.

The days shorten and the gargantuan commercialised juggernaut that is Christmas looms ever closer, with it's now unrealistically high expectations of a purchased joy and a fragile, momentary truce that looks like peace and goodwill, but is, in truth, but tinsel, dearly leased, and owned by usurers.

But strike up, brave heart! And be glad!

I've been looking back through wb Pippin's photo library.

Here's some pictures to remind us that it isn't always rainy, sad and grey.........

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm feeling heaps better.......

:-)

Batteries and engines...... Boats and boating........

Just a quick update really , on the 'progress' on The Gentleman's Engine.

James and I drove over to Ely in The Boatmobile on Sunday morning, armed with three new leisure batteries, more Bradex Easy-start, a monster set of jumper-cables, a grimly determined set to our jaw and steely glint in the eye.

Today was to be the day when we would signal to C-in-C East Anglian Approaches, repeated, Admiralty, that 'We have main engine start'.

(The Engineer couldn't be with us as he was otherwise engaged, but I reckoned with James's knowledge of Things That Spark and my inate ability to lift and carry heavy stuff, there was a fair to middlin' chance that, between us, we'd crack it.)

The batteries had been obtained from Andy at Midsummer Energy: proper-job deep-cycle 110 AH gel jobs by Elecsol. The gentleman has paid me for these which I had obtained on his behalf, by the way......  Our mission was to fit them.

(Oh, and remove the old batteries.

We put a multimeter over their terminals, just for a laugh.

10.2 amps........

Ooh lawdy......

Anyway, I'm going to take them to the scrap yard off Newmarket Road on Thursday to get Mr Grumpy some money back.....

Do you think he'll be pleased?

What's the chances?.......... :-)

Anyway, James hooked up the spiffy new Elecsol jobs to The Gentleman's boat. (He, by the way, was out all morning, and hasn't yet rung me, so we don't know if he's noticed any difference.......)

But hey, things may just be looking a little, shall we say, brighter, even for one whose sole reason for existence seems to be to polish his impersonation of Eeyore to perfection...........

Then we got serious.

I'd taken Pippin's starter battery with us, as well as that from The Gentleman's boat, which we had re-charged on the way back from Ely the previous week.

(Pippin's battery was replenished off the mains using a most splendid battery charger that once belonged to James's Grandfather.

 I was particularly taken with the picture of Kitchener on the box......)

Using the the Mother and Father of all jump-leads, we wired the two starter batteries up in series, sprayed vast quantities of Bradex Easy-start into the air intake, crossed our fingers and turned the key.....

Well, it coughed again.

And it fact, rattled.......

(See me afterwards, whoever at the back said it was a 'death rattle!').

We chose to deem this 'progress', and hid the tools before adjourning to Tesco for a cup of tea and a wad.

(This was, you understand , to allow the starter motor to cool.......

And it was lunchtime............)

Anyway, we returned refreshed.

Another prolonged burst of Easy-start and churn of the starter motor produced only a lot of greyish smoke and more coughing.......

The coughing sound reminded me of that which a cat makes when a it is regurgitating a ball of hair it has ingested through too much grooming.........

In both Engineering and Veterinary colleges worldwide, this is known as the 'Fur Cough'.......

The unpleasant matt of hair that is produced is likewise known as a 'Quinelle'.......

A 'Fur Quinelle'.....

"James," quoth I, "I am tired, cold and bored of this.  That was the engine's equivalent of a "Fur Quinelle", so it is high time for us both to "Fur Cough."

And so we did.

More soon............

Solar Electric Dreams II: The Dark Knight is Banished!

A very long time ago, I posted a blog entitled 'Solar Electric Dreams'.

In it, I mentioned we were thinking about getting more solar panels, and was wondering what would we do with all the spare power......

I think I tried to re-write some basic laws of physics in a way which would have left deep cracks in the di-lithium crystals of Wb Pippin's warp engines......

(Renewed thanks to Mike P-J for pointing out the error of my ways and setting my feet upon the right path!

It could have been very nasty, otherwise......)

Anyway.............

More solar we have got.

And How!

Yes, we have gone for broke and installed another six panels. (This brings the total up to ten........)


Here's how it happened:

 Andy Rankin and colleague Dave meet wb Pippin at the 48's at Clayhithe.

First job: move the existing solar bank aft about 18"- 2ft in order that the new panels won't be too close to the pump-out ports in the roof..........

Andy Rankin and Dave from Midsummer Energy are absolutely brilliant.

I don't monetise this blog.

And I'm not taking a bung from anyone for saying so, but if you are looking for domestic or marine renewable energy, be it solar panels or wind turbines, look no further than Midsummer Energy.

Andy's modus operandi is that he's in business 'to make a living, not a killing.'

You won't go wrong ordering whatever you need from him.......

Here's the finished job:

So thats a lot of solar for the sunshine plus a Rutland 913 wind turbine for when it gets dark.......

Okay, now I expect some gruesome nay-sayer is going to question the wisdom of this......

I mean, you can buy an awful lot of red diesel for the price of the panels.......

And we'll never see our money back.....!

However, that's not what it's about...........

And neither is it about being a serial tree-hugger.

It's about convenience.

We sometimes need to leave Pippin for a few days.

It's nice to be able to do that, even in winter, sure in the knowledge that we can return to a 12 volt fridge-freezer full of preserved comestibles, not a science project gone wrong, (and a seriously knackered battery bank) without having to trouble our neighbours with turning our generator on, etc.....

And this, in winter.......

Yes, after the extra panels were installed, I noticed the battery monitor showing 7 amps charge

 Okay, it was a bright and sunny November day, but the fridge-freezer was running at the time........

The fridge-freezer drawers between 7 and 9 amps......

So the actual supply was 14 amps minimum.......

I am going to have a serious chat with Mr Rankin about a separate hot water tank with 12 volt immersion-heater coils in it to dump some of the otherwise wasted load, come summer time.

Or I could buy a telly....

Or a hairdryer.......

Or an arc-welder........

:-)

But for now,  in winter, 'De Profundis', we still ain't going to get that much off the solar.......

Which is why I want to augment our lone Rutland 913 with a twin brother in the bows......

BUT, Jackie doesn't want her boat turned into a Chinook.

And another narrowboater friend has opined that there is a very real risk that, in anything other than a light breeze, we'll take off.........

Phoo-ey!

Lets bring it on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can never be too thin, too rich, or have access to too many amps........

:-)

The Magnus Magnusson Principle.....

06:45 HRS Saturday 10th November.

wb Pippin casts off from its moorings at The Parish and heads through the lock bound for Ely.

Crew:

The Boat-man (Yawning, scratching, moderately hung-over......) 

The Engineer (Ditto.....)

Condition:

Beige.

Forecast:

Rain. Brighter later. Winds light to variable.

Mood:

Much improved by lashings of tea and bacon butties consumed at the helm.

Thought for the Day:

"There is no such thing as 'bad weather'....... just 'inappropriate clothing".

Clothing:

Appropriate.

And so it was that we made landfall at The Blessed Isle at nigh-on 09:00hrs.

Our mission?

Three-fold:

1) Tow The Gentleman's boat to the water point to fill up his water tank.

2) Pump-out Pippin's waste-tank.

3) Get The Gentleman's boat's engine started.

Easy-peasy, eh, readers?

Actually, er, no.........

We had forgotten to factor The Gentleman's possession of Absolutely No Usable Social Skills into the equation.

Thus, when we tied up alongside his boat, having got up at Stupid O'clock to drive Pippin through the dawn and driving rain to be there early enough to accomplish all we had set out to do, (before losing the precious light of a winter's day), he told us in no uncertain terms to "let him finish his breakfast and come back later".

!

I must confess that at this precise moment, a yawning chasm opened at my feet.

A yawning chasm down which all motivation, morale, and, indeed, any sense of wishing to continue to help the ungrateful sod, was about to disappear once and for all, never to be seen again........

UNLESS.........

Now, there have been some Interesting Times in my life.......

Times when the only truly appropriate response has been to punch somebody........

Really hard.........

Or........

Burst into a rather worryingly prolonged peal of totally hysterical laughter, complete with tears of non-mirth running down my face.......

'Twas the latter course I chose.

Natch.

And I thus avoided the blackening, not only of any eyes, but also, of my character.

Anyway.......

James, The Buoy Wonder, arrived, (having been allowed a lie-in on account of the fact that he's still growing.........)

Having been appraised of the situation, he sportingly offered to go looking for my sense of humour. I assured him this wasn't necessary, as with The Three Musketeers assembled, it would most surely soon return of it's own volition.

We upped-pins and returned to The Gentleman's boat. Mark and James began spannering immediately while I put a little distance between me and any further sources of profound irritation by the simple expedient of 'popping to Tesco for a pint of milk'.

I got back at about mid-day.

The sensible course then seemed to be to head up to the redoubtable Alan Fish Bar to get the lads some lunch. Pie and chips, saveloy and chips, fish and chips......... (Memo: when visiting the Alan Fish Bar in Ely, do not buy a portion of chips per person. One between three would have been adequate, two, a feast. Three was simply unmanageable........)

By this time, The Gentleman had mumbled something, which, (for him), sounded like an apology, so with a renewed sense of well-being that only about a pound of fried spuds, a grudging 'sorry', and a huge piece of freshly cooked haddock can afford, I wandered up to the car shop in Ely to get some Blue Hylomar (leaking rocker-cover gasket) and a nyloc nut for one of the starter motor bolts.

On my return, the engine was spun over on the new starter motor.

Over..... and over...... and over.....

(Kate and Anna McGarrigle had nothing on this..........)

James sprayed Easy-start into the air intake. Mark turned the key. Starter motor whirred. Battery gave up the ghost.... Battery was swapped for the good one in Pippin. Knackered one managed to start Pippin's engine, so was re-charged.....

You get the picture......

So did we get the halt, lame and crippled mud-weight that is laughingly referred to as an engine to actually fire?

Er, no........

It coughed ........

Okay, it coughed like a consumptive nonagenarian having a possible rupture investigated by his GP......

but it did cough...........

And that was deemed progress enough for this day, as we were, by then, running out of enthusiasm, Bradex Easy-start, and daylight.......

Time to go home.

The three of us left Ely aboard Pippin at about 14:45hrs, making the mooring just as the last embers of sunset went out.

And the Magnus Magnusson Principle?

Well, We had been asking ourselves questions along the lines of 'why do we bother?', 'is it worth it?', 'why not let the hopeless old git sort it out for himself? etc etc etc.

But we put such thoughts aside.

The Magnus Magnusson Principle is crystal clear:

We've started, so we'll finish!

:-)

P.A.T test? No, C.A.T test........

China Kit-Kat Fforbes takes the new chair for a test-snooze......

Hmmmm.

So far, so good............

Chair repair, the Witts way.....

We used to have a jolly nice tub chair which I bought from Emmaus.

Jackie bought new lovely red material for it from John Lewis and Mum and Dad very kindly paid a really good upholsterer in Bournemouth to do the honours as a Christmas present a couple of years ago.

It was a lovely chair.

Right up until the point where one China Kit Kat Fforbes, aka 'Kaos Kiten' (her spelling), started using it as a scratching post. (Oddly, Thomas, our other cat, was never that bothered by it, preferring to simply sleep on the thing rather than destroy it, but then, as Kipling so wisely opined, 'the female of the species is much deadlier than the male.........')

Here it is, in it's current and very shabby state:

It's day is clearly over.

I mean, how could we possibly,  in all good conscience, invite the likes of Pam and Trevor, ( Associate Priest of Waterbeach and Landbeach and her lay reader hubby) round for a glass or two of prosecco and expect them to sit on the likes of that?

(Actually, the sainted P & T wouldn't give two hoots about what they were sat upon, provided the prosecco was both cold and plentiful......

But that is hardly the point.

Mother would NEVER forgive me!)

Something, (quite clearly, therefore),  Had To Be Done........

Some sideways, or 'lateral', thinking was called for.....

There was absolutely no point in replacing the knackered chair with another upholstered one for The Dawnshredder to sharpen her talons upon, so I reckoned we should get a nice antique office chair......

You know the sort: wooden, swivels round, tilts back, preferably made of oak and very likely still smelling vaguely of fags and typewriter ribbon.....

I trawled ebay.

Plenty of that sort of thing available.....

Going rate?

£300-£400 quid.............

Ulp.........!

In the words of my late, great and revered Grandfather, 'Blow that for a game of soldiers, boy....'.

A few days ago, I was mooching round Emmaus, as you do, when I came upon this:

A quick photo sent via message to The Boss ensured that she didn't hate it and that I was allowed to buy it......

Three fivers flashed briefly in the weak autumn sunlight......

Why was it so cheap?

Ah...........

Well, it was a little bit on the low side, having, at some stage, been deprived of it's castors.......

So, how to fix it?

I started to think about trips to Mackays in Cambridge for to purchase threaded studding, nuts and washers etc to shim it to the correct height.....

Solutions of Byzantine complexity.........

Then 'the still small voice of calm' that was (and is) Grandad Eric came up with the answer:

Yes, two 3/4" sockets...........

dropped down the 'ole, brought the chair up to the desired height.

Genius.

Thanks, Grandad...

x