Strimming

As Spring has arrived I thought it was about time I did a few things to the bit of riverbank that I call my garden.  Being a bit rough (it is a riverbank, after all) I knew it would need the attention of a strimmer so I bought a strimmer. Being a cheap-skate I bought a cheap strimmer.  I should have learned that there is a reason an electrical article is cheap.

The sun was shining so I thought I’ll get the strimmer out of the box and do some strimming.  That plan fell at the first hurdle because I couldn’t open the box.  Half an hour later, scissors, bread knives and Stanley knives utilised I managed to open it.  Then I saw that the strimmer wasn’t ready to use, it needed to be assembled. After another half an hour of messing around I decided to fall back on the action of the last resort.  I read the instructions.

It seems I need a cross headed screwdriver and suitable personal protective equipment.  A screwdriver I have but what personal protective equipment do I need? Surely putting a strimmer together isn’t going to be that dangerous although the instructions tell me I have to be aware of the cutting knife.  I can’t see a cutting knife.  Have I been sold a piece of equipment with a vital piece missing?

Then it says I have to line up the spigot on the guard with the notch.  What the f***k is a spigot.  I can’t see any spigot-like appendages on the guard. So I’ve got a strimmer without a cutting knife or a spigot a fat lot of use that will be.  I think I can see how the guard fits onto the machine.  But it doesn’t.  I fiddle and faff and can’t get the guard on.  I bet it’s the fault of the missing spigot or even the cutting knife. I get more and more frustrated. I throw the guard across the bank. I throw the machine after it.  It doesn’t help fit the guard to the machine, quite the contrary, but it makes me feel better.

Then the Haulage Contractor passes by and shows me how to fit the two together.  It’s easy when you know how.  He tells me where the little wheel fits so I eventually find the cross headed screwdriver sitting on the roof of my car (why did I put it there?) and open the little plastic packet with the screws in.  Then I drop the screws. I can find one but the other is lost for ever.  Why can’t they make screws in a fluorescent orange so they are easy to find when dropped. I look at the instructions and discover the wheel is meant to guide a straight edge along the lawn.  What lawn? I don’t have a lawn just a patch of rough riverbank so I jettison the wheel.

Now I’m ready to go.  I hunch over the strimmer and start if off.  The Haulage Contractor passes by again and lengthens the handle for me.  It appears I don’t have to progress along the bank like a hunch-backed old crone. With the handle adjusted I can stand upright to strim.

I switch it on and pass it over the long grass. It splatters some dog shit around, scrunches up some nettles and then the battery goes flat.

The mean old Nene

The wind is howling around again, thumping the boat against the mooring, making the ropes creak and the doors rattle.  I did suspect that the easterly wind we had last week was all that was holding up the neighbours shed and if the wind changed direction it would come down again but the wind is now from the west and very strong and the shed is still standing, maybe he did use long nails this time.  Actually the shed is in the process of being painted green and it looks quite good, the strange angles of the corners and the doors adding to its rustic charm.

It seems that yesterday people were falling in The Middle Nene. The Nene is rather a grumpy river at the best of times with its Strong Stream sulks and tight turn tantrums, vicious weirs and short lock landings positioned at awkward angles.  It's a beautiful river but definately grumpy. When it joins up with its partner in crime the wind it changes from grumpy to vindictive.  Yesterday the wind and the flow were strong, so the Mechanical Magician and the Haulage Contractor decided it was just the right day to drag the engineless boat back to Fotheringhay.  For this journey a Cabin Girl replaced the Cabin Boy, sadly not me because I was off to work in London. I’d have loved to have been there, not helping just standing with a note-book in hand and a camera at the ready.  I’m told they had a little difficulty at Ashton with the boats blown in the wrong direction then at Cotterstock the Haulage Contractor fell in the river. ‘It was interesting watching my propeller go round’ he said ‘I’d never seen it from that angle before’. Something happened at Perio (I can’t remember what they said) and at Fotheringhay they got a rope and chain tangled in the prop. So it was a short but eventful journey. I read the blog of nb No Problem last night and it appears that Sue also fell in the river.  The Nene must have been in a particularly stroppy mood yesterday.

Last week when I drove to London the trees and hedges along the A605 were bare and bleak, this week the stark outlines are softened by a green fuzz.  Last week when I was driving through London the roadside announcements warned of traffic delays due to ‘an event’ on 17^th April.  It took a while for me to realise that ‘the event’ is Thatcher’s funeral.  Yesterday in London the preparations for her State (sorry Ceremonial) funeral were underway.  In Fleet Street, the barricades were already in place.  They all had blue stripes painted along them, I did wonder if they would paint red stripes if it was for a Labour Prime Minister and then thought they wouldn’t need to because they’d just stick a Labour Prime Minister in a hole in the ground. There were sniffer dogs (rather sweet spaniels) around St Pauls and men up ladders placing notices for the re-routing of buses.  The outside broadcast vans were thick on the ground. Businesses on the route have been advised to supply their own security guards.  Last week Parliament was re-called so they could spend six hours spouting tributes to her.  What a waste of time. What a waste of money.  The latest poll suggests 60% of people are against taxpayers funding a funeral which will cost an estimated £10million.  Margaret Thatcher: as divisive in death as in life.

Where are the keys?

At Fotheringhay there’s three blokes two boats and no keys.  I get a call in the morning to say they’re supposed to be bringing an engineless boat back and have forgotten to take the keys with them and could I bring them over.

I take the keys, there’s the Mechanical Magician, the Haulage Contractor and the Cabin Boy getting the boat ready to bring over to Oundle and then next week to take it up to Fox’s Marina at March. Anybody knowing the geography of The Nene will ask the same question as I asked. Why bring it to Oundle and then take it back to March? There is a logical explanation but I can’t remember what it was.

Fotheringhay looks lovely in the hazy sunshine and there is the smell of spring in the air. I am tempted to travel back on the boats with them because the journey from Fotheringhay to Oundle is delightful but there is a chill wind so I decide I have some paperwork to do.  The farmer, whose field the boat is moored against, materialises. There’re a few explanations about why the boat is being moved but he’s not concerned that we’re here to steal it, it’s just that he just noticed a strange car and boat so he had come to collect the mooring and parking fees.

Back on my boat I spend about an hour looking for my boat safety certificate and another hour getting through to the Inland Revenue to pay the tax they have deemed I have underpaid.  I have got a 'Pay up or else!' notice. My £68.60 going into The Government coffers will have helped the countries balance of payments no end.

I walk back into Oundle to post the letters and catch up with the two boats as they are progressing through Lower Barnwell lock.  The Haulage Contractor is complaining that that lot behind are slowing him down.  That lot behind are enjoying travelling on a silent boat.  I expect to be entertained watching them get the two boats into the lock but the first one goes in and the engineless boat glides in beside it, neither touching the lock walls or the leading boat. Spoil sports. They tell me that they’ve done it as perfectly as that through all the locks although something about their suppressed grins makes me suspect that they are telling porkies.

A Weekend Jaunt

It was good to be out this weekend, the sun was shining, the wind was light.  When I have had a five month lay-off from driving the boat I am a bit apprehensive.  Will I still be able to manage it? Will I have retained my driving skills? But everything was OK, nothing had changed during the time moored up, I was just as useless at handling the boat as I had been when I was coming down the Nene last October.

There were a few boats going to the pub at Wadenhoe to celebrate a birthday.  I borrowed a boy to help me along the way.  Nowadays it may not be the done thing to send boys up chimneys but they are useful for going up lock ladders.  I was travelling along with the ‘Man Who Knows Everything About Everything and Never Does Anything Wrong’ so I was ready to have all my inadequacies as a boaty person pointed out.  They were: every time I came alongside: every time we went into a lock: every time we came out of the lock: every time we came within shouting distance my inadequacies were aired.  He dawdled along: the following pack caught up: words were exchanged between boats and a poor couple on a narrowboat who got caught up amongst this melee must have wondered what was going on.

At the last lock I left my crew member with The Man Who Knows Everything and went ahead to moor up.  It was a perfect display of how to moor a narrow boat.  I stepped onto the bank and tied up to a tree.  It was a good job the tree was there because I’d forgotten I’d need mooring pins and they were still submerged beneath a winters worth of accumulated junk.  The Man Who Knows Everything came in behind me and made a complete dogs breakfast of mooring up.  He was shouting at the lad to jump onto the bank when they were about half a mile away, he did eventually get near enough for the lad to jump off and then left him to strain every muscle pulling the boat in.  I don’t usually point out other boaters errors (there for the Grace of God etc. …) but in this case I made an exception to my rule.  I might as well have saved my breath to cool my porridge, as my Granny used to say, because he didn’t take any notice.  And guess who was the first one to shout rude remarks about women drivers when a boat coming in from the opposite direction turned, mis-judged the flow of the river and ended up in the bushes? Not me.

The following day we travelled back together, both single-handed, we worked the locks quietly and efficiently and I wasn’t treated to a list of my faults.  I think a few hours on the river must have mellowed him.

I realised the flow on the river was still strong when I came to turn onto my mooring space. I drifted much further downstream than I intended before I was able to turn the bow.  At one point I thought I might bump my neighbours boat.  It wouldn’t have been a disaster because his boat is pretty solid, now if I’d bumped his shed………………….

One daffodil

Does one daffodil a spring make? The daffodil that is sitting outside my window is not a spectacular daffodil but it came into bud over three weeks ago and then remained frozen in that state.  At last it has flowered. 

If one daffodil does not a spring make but how about two lambs....

 

The first of the lambs have been born to the Herdwick sheep.

 

If two lambs aren't sufficient to make a spring how about three boats......

 

 

At last the river has been deemed navigable and a few boats went upriver for an overnight jolie in the local pub. 

 

If that isn't enough signs of spring how about four hungover boaters in the pub garden having bacon butties and coffee for breakfast ........

 

 

 

Yeahh .... that must be spring



today they are eating .................. cabbages!

I can always tell what the moorers upriver are eating because of the bits that float downstream and get trapped around my hull.  I hasten to add that they only jettison biodegradables, most sink to feed the fishes, some feed the ducks and some float passed my window (oranges, lemons and mushrooms are particularly buoyant).  I once got a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream but I don't think that went into the river intentionally. Today it is cabbage leaves and red roses. I hope the red roses were a romantic present and not part of the diet (although they’re an odd lot upstream so maybe …..).  I also know when people shower or put on a wash load by the bubbles that float past.  Of course I have no idea about the dietary habits and hygiene regimes of the people downstreamstream from me because their rubbish goes in the opposite direction.

The debris that has been washed downriver is piling up between my boat and the bank.  As well as cabbages and roses there was a shoe, various bottles and plastic containers and some coal bags.  I thought if I move my boat those coal bags could float off downriver and foul somebodies prop, then I thought if I’m moving the boat they probably wouldn’t bother heading off downstream to cause trouble they’d just wrap themselves around my prop.  So I got the hook out waded into the mud and retrieved them. I must add that the water in the river is still bloody cold.

....... now that's what I call a proper boat

It always happens, if I have to go to work in an over-heated office the weather forecast is for wall to wall sunshine. On Tuesday I crawled out of a warm bed at sparrows fart, showered in a bathroom that had ice on the inside of the windows and set-off to travel to the depths of Essex.  Then I sat in a conference room and looked out at glorious sunshine and wished I was back on my boat.  I finished early and decided to have a look at the nearby coast, stepped out the car, felt the blast of the icy wind and thought that maybe the conference room had been the best place after all, especially as they’d provided a good lunch.  I did manage a walk along Hythe Quay at Maldon, only a short walk because it was cold and I am a wimp.  It was still long enough to fall in love with The Thames sailing barges that were moored along the quayside.

They’re big and beautiful and I want one.