Narrowboat Alacrity

Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!

Scene:  A cafe.  One table is occupied by a group of Vikings wearing horned helmets.  Whenever the word “spam” is repeated, they begin singing and chanting.  A man and his wife enter.  The man is played by Eric Idle, the wife is played by Graham Chapman (in drag), and the waitress is played by Terry Jones, also in drag………………………. Wouldn’t it be great if all Spam was as funny as that Monty Python sketch.

I get totally sick of junk mail, flyers included in newspapers and leaflets stuffed through my door.  I get bombarded with spam mail at home and at work not to mention cold callers on my mobile and land line….Before you ask I have installed software and registered with all the appropriate agencies to try and stop this…………

I am lucky on my blog as Wordpress uses a heavy duty filter “Akismet” but I still choose to moderate any comments I receive. I don’t want adverts for dodgy pharmaceuticals, deviant practices and the chance to make eye watering amounts of cash.

Sarah on NB Warrior in her post Moderation in all things writes that she would prefer not to moderate so as not to be accused of applying censorship. I am unfortunately not as tolerant as Sarah.

My father when he was alive used to take great pleasure in sending the days junk mail back to whoever sent him a reply paid envelope…….some may say childish but it made him feel like he was striking back is a small way.

My cupboard doors have come on well and have had their first coat of varnish. it’s perfect weather for varnishing or so I thought, i’d forgotten to factor in the Thunderbugs

The itching on my neck should have warned me……………….I only turned away for a few moments and the little b*****s had started their own synchronised swimming team on my newly varnished doors………………..

I’ve allways hated them one even got into my flat screen monitor and wandered about like a disembodied apostrophe even highlighting it and hitting the delete key didn’t work.

Oh well back to the sandpaper and midnight varnishing………………………………………

I was watching this mornings 6am Breakfast programme on BBC1, in their review of the papers the Daily Mail reports on:

  “The new age of the canal: More passengers now than during the 18th century heyday”

Ray Massey writes that:

Now however, 200 years after their heyday, they are booming again. A report reveals today that the number of boats on Britain’s waterways is greater than at the height of the Industrial Revolution.And this time round leisure, not business, is driving the boom. In place of the old horse-drawn barge there is the refurbished narrow boat, cruiser or sailing dinghy.

 Shhhhhh dont tell everyone……………………………………………………………!!!!

Read Ray Massey’s full report in the Daily Mail here

Report from British Waterways Newsroom (Going With The Flow - 60 Years Of Public Service)

The Full Report from British Waterways http://www.britishwaterways.co.uk/annualreport

I Started to make the swing out support for the saloon table today, using up some of the timber we removed from the dinette. I have to admit I pinched the idea from a picture in “Waterways World” with a few innovations of my own. My Idea of using a caravan type leg foundered with all hands, as when the table was down it would imprison one of the diners.

The main problem was edging the raw board, getting thin strip dark hardwoods is almost impossible locally so I had to machine some up from larger stock. The DeWalt band saw I inherited from my father is working overtime not bad for a thirty year old bit of kit.

To make best use of space we decided to fit a folding dropdown table to the saloon side of the galley bulkhead. This will give us somewhere separate to eat, use the laptop play cards etc.

I had already cut the old table to a suitable length but was having problems thinking of a support to make it stable.

I saw this leg for a caravan table on ebay for £12 so I thought I would try it, if its not suitable I can always bung it back on ebay. and as for chairs we chose these from IKEA.

With seat pads these are comfortable and stow away easily in a small space.

So far with the refit I have fitted eight packs of solid Oak flooring (Twelve Sq metres) using three litres of Evostik PVA adhesive.

Before I get told off Jo did all the matching of lengths so the overlaps and colouring looked right (she’s good at jigsaws).

We had planned to fit the flooring in the Saloon, Galley, Corridor and Bedroom……………………….

but little unforeseen things happen…….I forgot about under the fridge…….how would we get it out if I floored up to it………so we removed the fridge and I fitted the floor into the recess but now the fridge was too tall to fit so I had to replace the wooden battens which support the worksurface with steel angle supports ……..the fridge now fits again.

“John”………err….yes?……………wouldn’t it look nice if we had wood flooring in the bathroom……………..

The bathroom now has a fantastic looking floor. A lot of time was taken cutting and fitting the planks to allow for the expansion gaps which were filled with cork strip and will be conceled with oak scotia strip to finish it off. The other time consuming bit was rehanging the sliding doors in the bathroom and bedroom and adjusting the track so it ran free. At the rear of the bedroom I have fitted a trapdoor to allow me to remove any water that accumilates at the lowest point of the cabin bilge ( there has been non to remove in 19 years ) and to enable me to adjust the trim with more lead ballast.

Where the L shaped part of the dinette was I have fitted a cupboard and bookshelves, which as you see Jo has already started to use. I plan to fit the doors next week and re varnish the saloon sometime in the next few weeks.

Having just read Lesley K’s post about her new washing machine not fitting on Caxton reminded me about when I changed the fridge on Alacrity. The original fridge was an Electrolux RM360 gas, 12 volt and mains which was seriously losing its will to chill.

Taking careful measurements of where the new fridge was to go and of the size of the front door I visited John Lewis in Welwyn Garden City. Tape measure in hand I measured up all their fridges……………(The staff were very helpful to an obvious lunatic muttering and measuring) and yes I found one, a Lec, perfect fit……………………..

Guess what I hadn’t taken into account……….the curvature of the bow, on Alacrity the front door is set to the right and not in the center………………………Oops…….every way we tried to get the fridge through the door the bow curvature caused it to catch on something.!!!! the air turned blue even the ducks blushed………….later after removing the front door, the door frame and some interior trim we got it in. There was only just enough space to tape some paper to protect the paint.

I also nearly came unstuck last week when I was laying the new oak plank floor…… space above fridge 15mm oak plank thickness 18mm. the result was I had to remove two wooden support battens and replace them with angle brackets to keep the ventilation space………….I told Jo that I had calculated for that……and yes, she didn’t believe me either……………someone was looking down on me favourably that day…….

Well I have just got back after a week working on Alacrity’s refit. I took everything I needed with me or so I thought but forgot my laptop so be prepared for an avalanche of posts.

My favorite slippers are no more………………………….

Jo had bought them for me at Christmas, very expensive and oh so comfortable a Rolls Royce of slippers……………

Having had quite a hard day at work and had eaten more than was probably good for me at dinner, forty winks were in order. Kicking off my slippers I settled down for a doze on the sofa. I can’t have been asleep for more than ten minutes when something woke me, reaching down to put my slippers on I noticed that one was darker than the other…………wet in fact…………. Jo mentioned that she had seen Katie (one of our cats) in the room for a few moments…………normally she puts her head in one slipper and goes to sleep, (Jo says it’s the smell that knocks her out) but what made her pee in one God only knows????