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.

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…….

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????

Ouch…I didn’t get up today I sort of fell out of bed in a groaning heap. All of yesterdays kneeling and bending were taking their toll.

Tim (MD of Braunston Marina) must have pre-ordered the weather as it dawned fine and clear promising a hot sunny day. The smell of frying bacon wafting over from the moored working boats making breakfast a necessity.

As the show wasn’t due to open until 11 o’clock we had breakfast and did a leisurely tour of the stalls. there were all the usual attendees with some great Morris dancers.

Author Geoffrey Lewis was on his stand signing copies of his books, Jo bought three of his books (note… I must build a bigger bookcase onboard).

The number of ex-working boats attending this year far outstripped previous years and at one point you could cross the canal just over the boats.

Against my better judgement (I was so stiff I couldn’t make it up the hill to the Plough) we took a slow walk along the towpath to the Mill House which as you have seen in a previous post I was rather scathing about, BUT!!! they must have listened………….. The service was much improved despite the ongoing problems with the cold water supply because of the CryptoSpyridium found in the water supplied by Anglia Water.

The food order arrived in a very reasonable time and on Hot!!! plates no problems with the quality and taste.

Just one gripe the draught Bass was off again but on talking to the manager I found that he has to boil up eight gallons of water to clean the pipes, so fair comment with the ongoing water problems, I would prefer to have a decent pint than a poor one from unclean pipes.

I found an odd sock after this mornings wash………never mind I’ll just mate it up with the odd one I found last week………………..No I won’t…………..it’s gone missing aswell…….Upon interrogation SWMBO addmitted that she had found an odd sock in my draw and had humanly disposed of it in the bin.

I only ever buy the same black socks (M&S) so I can match up the ineviatable “odd sock” or when one becomes to holey, a new mate can be found  (Its the Yorkshireman in me).

The odd sock saga seems to be an affliction we all suffer, an equal number of socks go in the washer but an unequal number come out. Is the washing machine something other than a washing machine, is it a portal to a parallel universe, with whom we swop socks on alternate weeks, is it possible that we don’t actually lose a sock but gain one………….Do people in parts of the world who don’t use washing machines lose socks?

The UK’s population is around 61 million people and if each loses one sock every time they do laundry the mind boggles………………………..

We started on Alacrity’s saloon refit today, with the removal of the water damaged window linings, its lucky for us just the linings are damaged and need replacement, this was mainly because the boatfitters had used steel nails and these had rusted causing the staining, the steelwork and battens were in perfect condition.

Removal of the old dinette went on apace with Jo wielding the cordless drill to great effect removing even the most chewed up screws with little effort.

We were again lucky that the boat fitters had not glued the support battens to the sapele cabin lining so only leaving us with a few holes to make good before varnishing.

It makes a great difference with the old dinette out, so much space…………

After an exhausting day spring cleaning Alacrity we decided to eat out, we hadn’t visited The Mill House Inn at Braunston for a while so decided to eat there.

It was a warm evening so we walked along the towpath the canal was still busy with many boats passing.

 There was a sign propped up at the entrance to the Mill House “Chef required apply within” we should have stopped there…………. It was quiet inside as it was just six o’clock only about twenty people in, mmmmmmm my favorite beers were on draught, Bass and Abbot…… we ordered a glass of wine for Jo and a pint of Bass for me the barmaid dissappeared to open some wine she came back five minutes later….. “The Bass is off”… no apology….ok i’ll have a pint of Abbot……………………….

We found a table and looked at the menu (which had changed a lot) and decided on a pasta dish with chicken, duly ordered we waited…..It took about twenty minutes for the food to arrive ………………The plates were stone cold and the food luke warm………yes I know I should have sent it back then, but having waited I was hungry, I must say the pasta tasted great but a little heat would have helped. We told the waitress but no apology was forthcoming.

Jo decided she wanted desert so we ordered a chocolate fudge cake with Icecream and a Pineapple upsidedown sponge with custard ………very tasty but again on cold plates……..

It will be a long time before we visit there again!!!!!!!

We only decided to visit Alacrity first thing on Saturday, the weekend looked promising weather wise and the back pain Jo had been suffering from all week was on the mend and she felt well enough for the drive up.

It had only been three weeks since our last visit and already the spiders had decided to move back to their old haunts and breed………………thus a mass spider cull was in order we tried the humane method of chasing them out of the windows but as one was persuaded to leave two more would scamper in on the other side .

Afters general spring clean Alacrity was pronounced habitable. next was a shopping trip to Tesco in Daventry to stock up on staples as some of the tinned food was showing a sell by date of 2004. and the cleaning materials had taken a serious hit.

Fortified by the thought of a coffee in Tesco before shopping we set off only to find the store had totally removed the coffee shop in favour of a larger customer services area……………oh bum…………

I  noticed this morning when doing my usual scan of incoming links (people who have linked their posts to my blog) that the Blog Meister Andrew Denny of Granny Buttons had mentioned in his post “How to start your own website or Blog” that I had learned the self taught hard way.

Remember that Matthew Stibbe is an expert. If you want advice from someone at the self-taught-the hard-way end of things, you might ask John of NB Alacrity. He seems to have taken this same route to getting his blog going including buying the book, so would be a useful second opinion. 

Yes I bought the book, its a good guide but if you use “Wordpress” as your blogging platform their support on the web is second to none, if you are more of a try it and see person who learns hands on like me give it a go.

I found that if you are contemplating your own blog or website the first thing to do is find a domain name.

What you have to remember that it will be the first thing people will see and what seems a good idea at the time may not seem so good in 5 years so “choose wisely” (as the knight said to Indiana Jones).

For us Boaters try looking up nbyourboatname replacing the yourboatname with the name of your boat with no spaces as in nbalacrity you will probably find it available for use.

As Matthew Stibbe suggests use 123 reg to check that your intended name is not in use. Don’t do what I did and register the name and buy a hosting package then find the package doesn’t cover what you want. I tried using the free blog registration from Wordpress.org but found it to limiting in the themes you could use, so I went independent.

I chose  VARiHOST to host my blog on the basic package  they are so helpful and will sort you out in no time, just read what other people say about them. VARiHOST will register and manage your domain name and provide space for your blog and give you your own email addresses for £3.99 a month (no I don’t get anything for this plug I just believe that they offer best value for money).

If you go the independent route you can customise your blog how you want and have total control of what you see on your blog, yes it’s hard work getting it how you want it and yes you may want to throw your PC into the cut but blogging is addictive, fun and all yours, gripe if you want, your blog is your voice on the web……………………………………………………….

If you want any help or advice on starting your own boating blog use the contact page, I will try and help if I can..