Quiet Days Away and Pubby Problems

We needed to get away from it all.

Organising a funeral is an exhausting business.

So to start our Bank Holiday Weekend Cruise I dropped my phone into the canal as I was casting off.
After half an hour of fishing with magnet and net, sieving mud we gave up and headed for Cropredy.
Apart from stopping to go to church in Coventry on Sunday and eating in The Brasenose Arms Cropredy and  The Wharfe Inn, Fenny Compton we pottered along and enjoyed every minute of it.

Monday was HOT! The Best Mate melted in her day bed and the Crew burned on the quarter deck. We had to cruise because we needed to meet a lift at The Old Royal Oak Hilmorton. Our chauffeuse was on the towpath to greet us as we arrived, very proud of having turned the right way down the path to meet us. (A landlubbers sense of direction and lost without a Garmin! Went the wrong way down the canal at the Wharfe the day before when meeting us for dinner.)

The Old Royal Oak lost our custom by telling us we would be waiting an hour before we got our food. The Cuttle Inn lost our Custom by telling us they wanted cash only. The Boat Inn almost lost our custom by serving only a hog roast or burgers at their Bank Holiday Cider Festival. But there again one has to eat!

I discovered that my contract had run out so I have a new phone "free". The Techie told me my magnet fishing was in vain because they are aluminum and if the magnet got near it it scrambles the insides anyway!

Been away.

This week SONFLOWER has been to Thrupp and back. Some of you boat watchers have wondered why the Best Mate has turned blonde and I have lost my beard. Its because it was not us enjoying the mixed weather of this English Summer! SONFLOWER was in the charge of friends and fellow BCF members and Waterways Chaplains.

They are waiting for their own boat (about 12 weeks late now) but needed to take their daughter boating while she was on a brief holiday in the UK from her work in Afghanistan. We were pleased to be able to help. They had a great time enjoying the primitive facilities that SONFLOWER provides as compared to a brand new Elton Moss fit out. No electric shower pump, macerating toilet, central heating, microwave, electric fridge, bags of storage and a wardrobe etc etc.

Still she had windows, upholstery and new paint!

SONFLOWER behaved impeccably as I knew she would.

Freshening up

We took our granddaughter to see another boat, smaller than ours, and asked "What has our boat got that this one hasn't?" thinking that she would immediately spot that the smaller boat did not have a dinette and table in the lounge. "Dust" she replied.

So, before we lend our boat to friends we thought we had better do a spring clean and freshen it up!

One of the pictures in our Sunflower gallery had seriously faded. It was an inkjet print of a copy of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers in vase" that I did in acrylic quite a few years ago. So I have "freshened it up" by repainting it in oils. Here is the result:

It is drying on the easel and just about ready to remount.

I am glad it is out of copyright!