The Omnibus Edition

Aaargh!

I thought this blog business would all be pretty straightforward – a bit of harmless nonsense to pass the time – but it’s getting too complicated, and it’s making my brain (such as it is) hurt…

I had a pretty good idea that there wasn’t going to be an army of readers eagerly awaiting the next instalment – I suppose I sort of imagined that I could use it as a place where I could write stuff and keep everyone updated on what I’m doing without having to say the same stuff to everyone every time I see them. But that’s not as simple as it seems. I don’t want to say the same things to everyone (or put them in the same way), some people don’t read it, some people read it and I don’t know they’ve read it, others don’t know what a blog is… And then there are the people who stumble across it by accident and find themselves reading some random post that they know nothing about.

I’m forever stopping myself from writing “…as I was saying yesterday…”, “… person X thinks that…”, or other constructions that are meaningless unless it happens to have been you I was talking to yesterday (which might be last week or last month by now), or you happen to know person X. As a result, I’ve probably written stuff that’s out of sequence, or relies on the person reading it knowing things I haven’t put in the blog. Each person reading it is therefore probably getting a different picture depending on how they found there way here, which means I must be doing something (or lots of things) wrong.

So I’m going to have a stab at bringing things up to date, hopefully in a way that doesn’t rely on some conversation in a pub or an in joke that isn’t in anymore…

The boat

It started out grey, with green bits around the windows. It’s now resplendent in two coats of red primer. I like the word “resplendent” – it sounds as if you’re being complimentary without actually having to say anything nice about something. I imagine, for example, Bob Dylan singing about someone who would have been “resplendent” in a Brand New Leopardskin Pillbox Hat. (Not the original version – sorry, it was the best I could find at short notice)

Tigs

Tigs seems to be enjoying life onboard. She was ill for a while a few weeks back, which meant I had to spend more time in and around Braunston than I really wanted. She seems to be OK now, although hygiene is something of a concern since there isn’t often hot water available. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing medically wrong with her now, although, as one vet had suggested she might have kidney trouble, I didn’t want to take any chances. She’s growing a lot more comfortable around strangers she meets on the towpath (she was originally very shy) and also getting considerably more bolshy with passing dogs.

The journey

I’m currently in exactly the kind of place I like best – just outside one village and not quite into the next one, in this case Bugbrooke, in Northants. Following an incident in which I came close to having my laptop nicked through being far too casual about security, I’m not too keen on mentioning such things as my exact location in case I need to leave the boat for any length of time, but it’s not so critical at the moment as I’m not staying here very long.

I’ve been heading towards London since I picked the boat up in mid-May, sometimes with some imagined, or temporary, sense of urgency, at other times at a leisurely stroll. I now have a definite reason to be in London at some, as yet unspecified, time before the end of the month, because one of my tenants is moving out. (It’s a hard life being a Tory fat-cat property tycoon!). Given my self-imposed limit of around five hours’ travelling per day and about a dozen or so locks, that works out at around nine days to Kensal Green.

This isn’t the way I like to travel – I’m much happier pootling around and staying in the middle of nowhere – and just now I’d rather be doing pretty much anything than going to London, but it’s got to be done, and I’ll be glad when it’s all over.

Me

In theory, I’m waiting for my parents to arrive at some time in the next few weeks. In practice, they seem to be finding it difficult to arrange a suitable time. I’m also hoping that a friend might be able to come and join me on the boat shortly, although I’m not sure how she’ll cope as she’s been having quite severe back trouble recently. Now the painting’s finished for a while, this means that my next job will be to make some steps so that it isn’t quite so taxing on the joints to get on and off the boat. Even Tigs, with her almost cat-like agility, finds it challenging at times, so perhaps that’s a more urgent job than the plumbing, the wiring, the stove, the lining, and all the other contenders to be done next.

That’s the main things covered for now. Time is moving on, and I have to be too.