Hole Making a la mode

I've just got in from a day out with the Cambridge Touring Hole-Makers! I was asked last night at the end of my shift in the Hole-making Shop if I could go in and help the Tourists today. Loss of staff through re-location has left them short-handed. With a couple more off sick, they were truly up a tree. So I went in on my day off.

It was great fun! They are a very nice crowd.

On the way home, the Hole-Making-Session Manager rang me to ask if I'd go out with the Tourists again tomorrow, this time as far as the Cambs/Essex border. Lots and lots of holes need to be made in very quick succession....

After he'd assured me that my colleagues in the Hole-Making Shop weren't going to be left short as a result, I agreed. (I mean, it's flattering in a way, or would be if they weren't so short of bodies..., but a chap can't be in two places at once.)

The absence of a day off means no further progress on the various boat projects, the wood-pile, nor any sneaky trips to Emmaus to buy more toys.

Never mind, think of the money.....

Actually, thinking of it is all I'll be doing for nine weeks, as that's how long it'll take for today's overtime to limp and stagger into my account.

Still, musn't grumble, eh?

Logging On, and on......and on.........

Lots and lots of logs on the roof of our neighbours Andreas and Louise's boat nb Rowanberry.

Last night the Rowanberrys came to supper to help us demolish a very large Cottage Pie I had made, along with two bottles of very decent Rioja which they bought with them, along with Lou's friend Kate, who was up from Brighton for the weekend.

A very convivial evening's nosh.

This morning I was up and about and just starting the huge pile of washing-up when I received firm instructions to desist at once as it was 'too noisy'....

How odd...........

(Actually, washing-up on a boat is a fairly noisy business: pumps whirring, plates clattering, me whistling cheerfully......But Jackie never normally minds. I can't think what can have been wrong, but dutifully did as I was told).

During the previous evening's meal, we had decided that Sunday would be a good day to build up the reserves of wood for next winter. I duly chugged off upstream aboard Rowanberry with Andreas, Lou and Kate at about 11.00. Andreas wanted to leave earlier, but for some ( perhaps the same) unaccountable reason, the girls were having none of it.

Jackie, by the way, elected to stay aboard Pippin and continue the rather ghastly job of removing all the limescale (over a quarter of an inch thick in places....) and associated gunge from the inside of our loo macerator. It had been left to marinade overnight in a very effective, cheap and widely available industrial cleaner. It's marvellous stuff: loosens caked on deposits, cleans steel, brass and copper, unblocks drains, and will even unstick a seized-up piston.

It's called "Diet Coke".

Apparently, some people actually drink the stuff! Given all of the above, I have to say I find this a trifle unwise.

Anyway, we chugged upstream and moored up at the 48's at Clayhithe. Here, we loaded some very large and heavy logs which had recently been felled.

(Incidentally, Andreas had contacted the Cam Conservators, who said they were very happy for us to take it away. This made us feel much better when various tow-path walkers gave us dirty looks as a reaction to our assumed criminality.....)

The rest of the morning was more of the same, and when we felt there was enough, we chugged back to the pub at Clayhithe for a well earned pint.

I had a whole Guiness!!!! All to myself!!!

Bliss.

Here it all is, on the bank before it disappeared into The Stealth Woodpile:

Lou and Kate with next winters fuel

What a weekend that was!!

It's The Weekend!! Wooo-Hoooo!!!

Okay. It's been a bit of a week.

A struggle, in fact.

When I started on my career with The Hole-Makers Guild, I really enjoyed every aspect of the learning process. I have gone from humble Apprentice to Journeyman Holemaker in a comparatively short time and felt a very real sense of achievement in the process.

This of course, was in the art of Pure and Applied Hole-Making.

Nothing really prepared me for the rigours of Very Advanced Hole-Making. The paperwork, particularly, was frying some rather important circuits in my brain. I was getting really down about it, to the point of considering leaving the Hole-making Shop and practising the Pure and Applied Art out on the road with the gallant band of gypsies that are The Cambridge Hole-Making Team. In short, going all peripatetic, like.

But note use of past tense....

Today, one of The Grand Masters of The Guild, who is obviously blessed with the acuity to see when an apprentice is struggling, gently took me to one side, identified the areas of difficulty and went through it all with me, patiently and kindly (we bears of little brain respond to this sort of treatment) and made me see that I understood much more than I thought, while filling in some gaps and grey areas into the bargain.

I am a very lucky apprentice, to have such help and guidance close at hand.

So thanks to her and all the other Grand Masters, Masters, Senior Charge-hands, and fellow apprentices who make The Guild such a supportive place.

I am now going to have a glass of red wine with supper.

It is the weekend, after all........

Turbine Heaven

I have just got in from work ( I was on a late shift tonight), to be told the rather startling news that it is the thick end of 20 miles there and back. (Jackie has looked it up on Google maps)

I not sure if the news has left me feeling more or less tired than I was.....

Anyway, I cycled homeward, wafted along, I thought, by a gentle breeze. (This was a pleasing corollary to the headwind I contended with this morning).

Not so! It would seem that plugging the Rutland 913 wind turbine on the day before yesterday's post has had the same effect as scratching a back-stay or nailing a sovereign to the mast did in the days of sail, as it's actually blowing a good half-gale! I just didn't notice it as it was right at my back. How lovely!

Our wind turbine is humming away to itself very steadily, which is a pleasant and reassuring sound. Hope the new owner gets some good use out of The Ducks' one.

I'm sure it will: Scotland is rarely short of a good breeze..........

Plumbing the depths.....

.....of the void space under Pippin's bath, to be precise.

I cycled off this morning for a merry day's Hole-Making at the Hole-Making Shop.

Now the first part of the apprenticeship is nearly complete, I am being taught Very Advanced Hole-Making. This involves twenty times the paperwork and gives me a headache. I'd like to say I'm enjoying it, but I'm not.

Pure And Applied Hole Making was a stretch, but this is silly.

Never mind.

Anyway, while I was attempting, (and mostly failing) to increase my skill-set, my darling wife has, seemingly without effort, added yet another impressive string to her bow.

Yes, while I was at work, Jackie completely re-plumbed the bathroom!

(It's worth pointing out here, that being a WB, Pippin does actually have a full size bath, though I mention it only to underscore Jackie's level of achievement, not to brag, you understand.....And not everyone even likes wide-beams, but each to their own, eh?)

It all began yesterday when she got back from a visit to London around lunchtime, and decided, as you do, to dismantle and clean all the waste water pipes in the bathroom. This wasn't quite finished by this morning, so I had a stand-up wash and shave in the kitchen. I was very careful not to complain about this as not only would it have been churlish in the extreme, it would also have been very discouraging. And potentially life-shortening.....

I got back at about 9.15 this evening, having spent the day narrowly avoiding several major Quality Incidents, with spots before my eyes where I had over-focussed on self-adhesive bar-code labels, to find the whole bathroom waste-pipe system replaced with correct, large-bore piping, new fittings, chamfered joints and brand new seals throughout, the bath half-full of water to allow the new (and very spiffy) sealant to set correctly, oh, and the Gulper Whale pump relocated to facilitate the eventual fitting of the fabled Vacuflush 5000 loo for good measure.

Too clever by half, my missus? I think not!

However, I am now going to crawl under the duvet, curl up and feel inadequate for a while.

Chinook Dreams

I've just read on Lucky Duck's blog that they are selling their Rutland 913 wind turbine.

Just to try to drum up some customers for them, a word about ours:

We've had it for very nearly two years now, and jolly good it is too!

We are already noticing that the lengthening hours of daylight are pouring free solar amps into the battery bank, and with Windy the Turbine taking up the slack during the night and adding to the solar effort by day, we are waking to see the voltage traffic-light on green/amber rather than the more usual amber/red. The Duck's controller allows the addition of solar panels too, so you could augment the one with the other in the same way.

We went to a fair bit of trouble insulating the boat between metal roof and wooden ceiling, so the famous 'Marlec Moan' is now no more than a rather pleasing hum. If anyone wants the 'how too' details, just leave a comment and I'll do a retrospective post about it.

(Incidentally, even the experts, [well, okay, James Duck, actually....] have been confounded by Blogger not letting me comment on my own blog, so I can't reply that way, but will do so in the post itself. Computers, eh?)

Obviously, our exposed fen-edge location is ideal for optimising wind turbine power: There's basically sod-all in the way of a windbreak between us and the Urals! But even if it blows more moderately where you are, think on this: even when you're at work, away for the weekend, at the shops, or in the pub, if there's a breath of breeze, you'll be getting some power.

And as with all renewables, the initial cost of purchase means it starts at £400 per amp, and then just goes on getting cheaper and cheaper.

Some say it's not cost effective: You can buy a lot of red diesel for your generator with £400. True, but you don't have to be there to turn it on and off, it won't upset the neighbours (the only sound you hear outside a Rutland equipped boat is a rather delicious swooshy noise), and you can be away the whole weekend and come back to a fridge full of cold beer (whatever that is....) and not have shot your batteries to hell in the process.

And I haven't even started on the whole Green issue yet!!!!!

So go on, buy The Duck's turbine, quick, before I decide to ignore my Beloved's wishes, and splurge the proceeds of the Fuel Cube sale on turning The Mighty Pippin into the only twin-rotor-helicopter-boat on the Cam!!

Mother's Day Weekend.

Saturday was spent working away on the woodpile.

(I do actually have other hobbies and interests, though reading this blog, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise......)

It was a lovely sunny morning and I was up and about early. A trip to the lock weir furnished us with more wood for the pile. I arranged it to dry in the sun, then roused out all the previously salvaged wood. It was all sorted out: shaped timber that might be useful to one side, rough branches and logs to the other. The latter were then sawn up if small enough, or left for the attentions of our landlord's chainsaw if not.

Having unloaded another car-full of seasoned-oak off-cuts and stacked them in the wood store, I reorganised the rest and tidied everything away nicely.

While this was keeping me quiet and out from under her feet, Jackie changed the oil and filter on the generator, topped it up with diesel and took on more water.

Today we saw our Fuel Cube diesel tank on its way to a new home. We sold it on ebay for a creditable sum, (roughly half what they cost new), and the new owners came to pick it up punctually at 09.30. They seemed very pleased with it, so it was a deal with which both sides were satisfied.

We then went down to London for Mother's day lunch at bro-in-law David's. Very pleasant indeed!

Miserable March was let slide for a glass or two of wine and some dessert.......

I must punish this wretched excess with some severe cycling to work next week.

Lets hope it stays fine.......