The news is generally, er, good.......

This week, I am determined to accentuate the positive.

However, listening to the news on the wireless, there seems to be a dearth of anything remotely good.

Libya is in flames.

Doctors are saying the government must increase the price of alcohol to prevent a liver disease epidemic.

'Dave' Cameron is going to sell off virtually everything in sight to private owners under the entirely mendacious cover of "The Big Society".

More locally, some spotty oik in A Well Known High Street Electronics Retailer has properly annoyed Amy Duck. (See Lucky Duck's blog).

All in all, more than enough to send a grown man reaching for the Citilopram......

So now, the good news.

Mum and Dad celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary at the weekend.

We all had an an absolutely brilliant time!

Nigh-on seventy friends and relatives joined Mum and Dad for lunch at a local restaurant on Saturday, which was excellent, then went back to theirs for a continuation of the party. Everyone then had a short breather before coming round for a buffet lunch on Sunday.

It was all just lovely, so thanks Mum and Dad!! And well done for Fifty Years of happy marriage!

Further good news: The Conservancy of the River Cam has backed down for now on the highly contentious issue of charging powered craft an additional licence for having the bad luck to be moored in these waters.

(By the way, the wide-beam brethren I called on for aid in the January post "War is declared" have now been re-tasked. They're going round to Maplins to 'have a word'........).

Also, the Secretary of State has just been forced into the sort of screeching u-turn that used to be the sole province of T.V. detective Jim Rockford. (If you're under the age of thirty-five, you may have to Google that one.....) Yes, it seems The Big Society has delivered the biggest raspberry to 'Dave' and his cronies plans to sell off our forests and woodlands.

Y-E-E-E-E-S!!!!!! RESULT!!!!!! And, dare I say it, HURRAH!!!!!!

Reversing down Memory Lane..........

Last week I had some annual leave, which was nice.

I eschewed the bucket flight to Sharm-El-Sheik in favour of a "staycation" aboard.

(Jackie's working again anyway, and even if she wasn't, who would look after Thomas Cat?)

Also, we're skint........

I did manage a couple of trips into London, though.

The first involved supper and a night's stay with our chums Claire and Andy.

After booze-ban Jan, a torrent of wine was unleashed, so it was with a low-to-medium-level hangover that I left their place the following day.

(Incidentally, the high-level hangover is of the sort that precludes not only any semblance of sentience, but getting up at all....for several days. The scale stops there, because if you aren't actually dead, you really, really really wish you were....)

Jackie had preceded me into town to get to work, so I tottered from Waterloo station in the vague direction of Soho at about 10.30. (I'd arranged to meet my old pal Ellis for lunch at The French Pub.)

On the way, I took in the National Film Theatre.

Ellis and I used to work there in the '90's when it was home to the late, great, gone, but never-to-be-forgotten Museum of the Moving Image.

Memory Lane?

More like a six-lane highway........

Ah!

The work!

The nights of drinking and carousing!

The great friends!

The mortal enemies!!

The time of our lives!!!

Gone.

All gone.

Not a vestige of that once wonderful place now remains.

Walking around the NFT was actually disorientating. So much was familiar, but so much was simply....... missing. Perhaps it was the hangover, but I felt almost ill, like I was suffering from vertigo.

They say you should never return to a place where you have been happy.....

I crossed Waterloo Bridge and headed slowly up into The West End.

I had an excellent lunch with Ellis at The French: we talked of anything and everything.

Except the past.

That we left where it is, back-aways down the winding road.

No matter how much you might wish to, you simply cannot reverse down Memory Lane.

Loos women talk

This is a reply to Sue's question re: the new Vacuflush 5000.

We previously had an old macerator toilet that piped straight into a large waste tank. It was ok except it used a lot of water and we were trekking to the pump-out far too often for my liking - for us a 6 hour round trip. So, after lots of scraping together of pennies, we saved up for the much coveted Vacuflush 5048 from Leesan. As John's already mentioned, it uses a lot less water and electricity.

Our previous toilet looked much like a normal domestic toilet and the new toilet looks pretty much the same. So no change in space taken up there. The only major thing to think about with the Vacuflush is the vacuum generator itself. It's much bigger than I imagined c. 21" long x 10" wide x 14" high plus space for pipes to go in and out. So you need to find somewhere large enough to fit it between the loo and the waste tank. Luckily (and after lots of swearing and scraped knuckles) I managed to fit it into the only space available - in the bathroom cupboard. I was a bit concerned we would lose our only storage space but luckily my guardian angel was watching and squeezed the generator in with only mm to spare and we can still use the cupboard.

As Leesan will tell you, the Vacuflush is straightforward to put in but... like everything on a boat it's never that straighforward is it?

So far, it seems to be working well and, fingers crossed, the time between pump-outs will lengthen considerably. Now I just need to persuade John to drink less beer and explain to him that though the Vacuflush is very clever - it still needs cleaning every now and then...

Hope this is useful.

Jackie (the wife and ship's engineer)

Excerpts and Editing.

First a quick hello to Sue who left a comment re: the new loo (see previous post).

Sue, I have no idea!

I'll ask Jackie to post something about the loo replacement soon. She's down in London doing some telly editing at the moment, so it may be a couple of days....However, I do know she replaced pretty well all the existing loo and plumbing:basically everything from waste tank inlet outwards......

Other than that, I thought you might all enjoy the following excerpt from my new sit-com, "Boathusband"......

Jackie enters left, John looks up from computer screen:

John: I say, darling, that nice lady Jaqueline Almdale says "I dance to the sound of a different drum!!"

Jackie: Yes dear, but does she realise it's played by Animal from The Muppets?...........

New Loos and Happiness......

Well, I suppose it beats "New Bog Blog" as a title, but if Alexander McCall-Smith doesn't sue over it, I'll consider myself very lucky indeed......

Yes, I am proud to announce that the fabled Vacu-Flush 5000 is now not only in situ, but slurping away like a, well, like a slurping thing!

I wish I could claim some responsibility for this happy state of affairs, but all honours are entirely due to Jackie.

The Ship's Engineer has triumphed again.

It went in over the weekend, while I was up at Emmaus helping out. (She'd have had it done in a day too, but was thwarted by an insufficiency of Jubilee Clips. This necessitated a quick jaunt to Mackays in Cambridge on Sunday.)

I think it's great: press the lever for three seconds, and WHOOOOOOOSH! Gone!!!

My sole contribution to the proceedings was taking the knackered old macerator to the tip......

I left it in a corner, quite a long way from everything else, with all the other redundant bits of sanitary ware.

This wonderful new bit of kit will reduce our diesel bill by increasing the interval between pump-outs. It will also reduce wear on the fresh-water pump, give the batteries less of a kicking, and mean we don't have to fill up with water so often.

I feel a "Hurrah!!" coming on....

The Hums of Pooh......

or the wibblings of John.....

'tis all the same I suppose.

I've been thinking about what this blog is supposed to be.

Very Serious Boaters must consider this blog of no importance: there's not nearly enough boating on it, for a start.

I remember, a couple of years ago, one particularly arrogant blogger and self-styled arbiter of good blogs dismissing on-line diaries which didn't meet his exacting standards as mere 'letters home'..

"What's wrong with that", I thought, as I deleted his blog from the list of blogs I follow......

And yet there's more to it than that. If I wanted to simply to communicate on-line with friends and family, then I could easily do so through any of the available media, such as Facebook.

So why blog?

Well, I suppose it boils down to this: If Facebook is a letter home, then a blog is a message in a bottle; you cast it adrift in the datastream and know not where it will be picked up, or by whom.

I like that.

A few posts back (titled 'Apologies...'), I got a couple of comments from two very different people.

The first was pleasant and harmlessly bonkers, from someone who had had a dream in which they fought a deadly battle with a giant caterpillar called The Mighty Pippin. The comment had nothing whatsoever to do with the post, but who cares, it made me smile.

The second was from a lovely lady called Jaqueline Almdale, whose blog, "So this is love" I have been quietly following for some time. If you haven't had a look at it yet, do so. It's wonderful.

This is where blogging, as opposed to Facebook, comes into its own. It brings you in touch with some brilliant people.

It also proves that strangers don't always have to be strange.....

So while my bloggings may be as meaningless in The Great Scheme of Things as "The Hums Of Pooh", they allow this sort of gentle and positive contact.

That is good.

That's what matters.

And if you enjoy reading this nonsense too, then also good. If you don't, then there's loads of other blogs out there, but thanks for tuning in anyway.

First aid, wellness, illness, and a return to The Hole-making Shop

I have just finished a three day first aid course run by The Red Cross. I was sent on it by work. They need designated trained first-aiders on duty in The Hole Making Shop. It's the law, as we are an industrial process governed by the HSE.

I passed!!

Hurrah Hurrah!

I can now bandage the bleeding, treat the unconscious and put them into the recovery position, and perform CPR on people who have stopped breathing.

All very exciting.......

And what's more, it's another bit of paper in my hand to wave at Tories who want to make me redundant, or take with me if they succeed.

So a good result there, then.

While this was going on, Dad was briefly hospitalised, but is now out and fighting fit.

Wellness!!

More hurrahs!!!

However, I see from Maffi's blog that Mortimer Bones isn't very well at all, so definitely no hurrahs there.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Bones, and lots of 'here heres' to all similar messages posted as comments on your blog.

Tomorrow, I return to The Hole Making Shop.

I can't quite bring myself to Hurrah that one either, but we'll see how it goes....

Day off Friday, though.

Now that's a hurrah for certain sure!!