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Week 188

Sunday

You probably won't believe this and nor do we! We woke at around 4am on Sunday morning and did what our bodies were telling us to. The next time that we looked at the clock it was 8.41am. Amazing.

We decided that we'd better get up there and then otherwise there'd be some comments made by the Boss who had been already painting in the nearby polytunnel for a couple of hours. In an effort to make amends we offered him a cup of tea but he'd just made one.

Mrs. Fitter spent much of the day on vegetation control, leaving the fitter to work on boats or in the office, still trying to locate a replacement controller for the electric trip boat. The first thing that the fitter did was to get the trip boat ready, a job that took a little while by the time that the windows had been cleaned.

From there the fitter headed for the office to assist the Boss with a bit of paperwork. Finally the fitter returned to his own boat for a shower, a change of clothes and lunch. he was back at the trip boat by 1pm.

The party were a bit tardy joining the boat so we were a few minutes late leaving. This delay seemed to haunt us for rest of the trip as we kept encountering locks against us and, towards the end of the outward leg of the trip, were following a fairly slow moving boat so much so that we turned the boat about ten minutes late, time that we never managed to recoup on the return leg.

It also seemed to take ages to clear the boat up, not helped when the rest of the crew deserted, leaving the fitter to drive the vacuum cleaner with one hand and hump the furniture about with the other.

It was 6.30pm before the fitter returned to his boat. He changed and managed to snatch a short while to read a magazine. The Boss and one other came for a meal and we sat talking afterwards until it was almost dark. After the guests had gone the fitter sneaked thirty minutes on the Internet to check mail and to catch up on another boater's blog before we had our bedtime drink and shortly afterwards went to bed.

Monday

We were repaid for Sunday's lie in when we we woke at 2am on Monday and that was after a large glass of wine with our meal on Sunday evening. We managed to go back to sleep but woke again at some unearthly hour and only dozed infrequently until we finally threw in the towel around 6.45am (and it was a Bank Holiday!).

We washed and dressed and then had breakfast. Then we started to pack the few things that were going home with us later in the day. The fitter then set about replacing the adhesive foam strips on the drop back vents as the original foam on the starboard side was showing signs of parting company with the window frame - the port side vents, which don't get the sun for most of the day, were fine and could be left alone.

The foam replacement wasn't too difficult once we realised that we could remove the residue of the old adhesive with white spirit.

With the windows completed, which included refitting one of the curtains inside out! - the fitter went to see a fellow boater who has had problems with the rubber strip that disguises their window's fixing screws in much the same way that we have had - the rubber strip shrinks over time and leaves gaps at the corners. The other boater's windows were slightly larger than ours so we thought that we could cut down their old rubber strip for our windows and they could have the new strip that we had recently purchased.

We removed one of the other boater's strips and compared it against the new strip. They were so similar that we thought that the plan would work so we just had time to do a swap on one window. The fitter left the remaining strip for the other boater to use and returned to his own boat with the discarded length which he then attempted to fit on one of his own windows. It wasn't a complete success so the fitter stopped there and then as he had to go and pump out the electric trip boat whilst the pump out machine was available.

The fitter returned to his own boat after completing the pump out, changed into more presentable clothing and then with wife, Boss and one other wandered round to Pitstone Green Museum. Monday was the first Bank Holiday that most of us had not been needed to work for some time so we were determined to make the most of it.

We returned from the museum around 2pm and the fitter checked and cleaned the filter and sump pump in the shower whilst Mrs. Fitter was preparing lunch. After lunch we packed the chilled and frozen stuff, took everything that we wanted to the car and made our way home, calling briefly at daughter's on the way. We had a cup of tea as soon as we got home and then settled into our more normal routine of catching up with the grass cutting (before the rain) and then using the laptop.

Apart from eating and watching some television, much of the evening was spent searching the Internet for a new throttle control for the electric trip boat. The new motor controller requires something different to what we previously had as it needs separate speed and direction controls. We want to try and retain the previous combined control feature if we possibly can.

We called it a day around 10.30pm, without too much success, had our bed time drink and toddled off to bed.

Tuesday

As is usual on a Tuesday, Mrs. Fitter was volunteering at church, leaving the fitter home alone so we didn't get much of a chance for a lie-in. However, we took advantage of the early morning by cutting the fitter's hair.

The fitter returned to the laptop after breakfast where he had to try and source some replacement components for the domestic burglar alarm - why does everyone sell white when we want brown? Then we had to chase up an order for some sweatshirts that we'd placed several weeks ago and, finally, had to update our milk order ready for our next trip to the boat.

At around 10.15am the fitter made his way to IKEA to collect the outstanding drawer dampers that should have been posted. Luckily the Returns area was quiet and the fitter was third in the queue and was seen within five minutes. He was fortunate enough to see the same assistant he'd seen previously and they knew the story of the defective drawers.

They apologised for the non-delivery of the missing items and suggested that the fitter go collect and purchase them, take them back to the returns department and the money would be refunded. The fitter did as he was bid, fought his way around the store, collected what he needed, managed to extricate himself from the sales area, found a check-out quite quickly and was soon back at Returns where we saw the same attendant as before without the need to queue.

The refund process took ages and the queue for service gradually grew. Nonetheless, the fitter eventually got his money back (for which he had to sign) and walked out of the store clutching the required items and fearful that he'd get pulled over by the store detective because he now had on his person a document that said that he'd returned the items that he was carrying and had got his money back. He escaped unscathed.

The fitter returned home via the garage (to buy petrol), made a cup of tea, and then settled down to finish writing up the last few day's notes on this page, interspersed with a few phone calls, lunch and a visit to the supermarket to collect Mrs. Fitter with the bagfuls of shopping, much of which would go to the boat with the fitter on Wednesday.

We managed another cuppa once we'd unloaded the car and packed everything away. There then followed a spell on the computer where we're still investigating a solution to the simplification of the trip boat's controls. This investigation was interrupted by the evening meal and early evening television before the fitter avoided the soaps on television by returning to the computer.

We eventually called it a day around 10pm as we'd both done as much as we could, so we made the bedtime drink, sat and read for a short while and then turned in.

Wednesday

Mrs. Fitter was awake at 5.30am and decided to get up to finish the ironing and the cake decoration that needed completing before the fitter set out on Wednesday morning. The fitter got up around 6am, showered, dressed, had breakfast and then did some packing. He was en route to the chandlers at Braunston as soon as he could and wanted to have everything ready. As it happened, he ended up leaving home around ten minutes later than planned which the chandlers probably appreciated, otherwise they'd have had a queue (of one) at their door when they opened.

There was some mix up over the order from the boatyard so the fitter had to call base before he could get checked out. All was soon sorted and the fitter on his way back. He arrived at the boatyard at 10.45am, unloaded what he'd brought from home and chandlery - some of the latter was still incorrect and will need to be returned - then set about getting the trip boat ready.

Both boats were due out at 2.30pm so the fitter had time for lunch before he had to start loading his passengers. Both coaches arrived together although they were different parties and the fitter managed to get away about ten minutes early and expected to be caught by the other boat at the lock. Instead he was caught by a narrowboat that had passed the boatyard a few seconds before the other trip boat was about to leave.

The rest of the fitter's trip went without any significant problem, save that we were delayed slightly towards the end of the outward leg by another boat in front of us.

It is customary at the end of trips on the electric boat to vacuum the floor. Try as we may we couldn't find the said device until the other trip boat returned, when the skipper admitted that he'd borrowed it to clean his caravan.

The fitter was soon re-united with the vacuum cleaner and had the trip boat cleaned. He returned to his boat and cooked his evening meal, followed by watching some early evening television. He then headed to the portacabin to work on the accounts with the Boss for a couple of hours before returning to his own boat and trying, unsuccessfully to install the IKEA drawer dampers. That's not exactly true. Installation possibly would have been alright but the drawers needed to be removed and it was this that proved impossible, no matter how brutal the fitter was with the drawers. It doesn't help that the corridor through the kitchen is less than 25mm wider than the length of the drawers.

The fitter eventually gave up, made his bedtime drink, sat and read for a while and then went to bed.

Thursday

The fitter woke around 6.30am and then lay in bed until 7.30am before deciding that it was time to get up. Even though the boiler is at the foot of the bed with the control panel clearly visible if you look at the boiler, the fitter had failed to note that the ignition light was flashing - it does this when it is trying to ignite the burner.

Still oblivious to the flashing light, the fitter wound up the thermostat and flicked the switch to start the pump. It was then that he noticed the flashing light. Oh dear, has the boiler broken, he thought. Never mind, we'll make a cup of tea while we get dressed and worry about the water later. Why won't the hob light?

You've guessed it. Despite what he thought was a fairly recent purchase of a new (full) gas bottle, the fitter found both bottles empty when he went and checked as soon as he'd dressed. Luckily, having the keys to the office and, thus, the keys to the gas locker, the fitter was able to go and get two full bottles and exchange them for the empty ones.

The previous weekend the fitter had had some discomfort in the left side of his groin whilst out on his boat. It had been quite painful at the time but had then eased and hadn't re-occurred since. The fitter had woken on Thursday morning and experienced some discomfort in his right hip but put this down to sciatica which does reveal a degree of stiffness and discomfort in the hip first thing in the morning from time to time.

The groin discomfort, on the opposite side of the fitter's body, suddenly re-appeared with some force whilst the fitter was manhandling the gas bottles and stayed for much of the day. However, a couple of painkillers seemed to ease the situation initially.

As part of the excuse for opening the building to raid the gas locker keys, the fitter chose to open the windows on both trip boats. It was already quite hot and the insides of the boats would soon be like saunas if they remained closed up.

The fitter spent a large chunk of the morning working on the accounts with the Boss, a process that required a lengthy seated period, during which time the painkillers started to wear off. By the end of the session the fitter was once again quite uncomfortable.

Part of Tuesday afternoon had been spent chasing ideas for a new control for the electric trip boat. One very nice shop had suggested the throttle controls from a radio controlled unit and had gone so far as to send same on Wednesday. The parcel arrived on Thursday and was inspected quite eagerly. And that is as far as it went for the time being because it needed dismantling further, something that would have to wait until the fitter returned home and had access to his tools. Also, the throttle lever itself was quite flimsy and whilst it may suffice with a light handed operator, anyone a little more heavy handed might easily break it. As it turned out, this option was overtaken later in the week by something a lot more robust.

The day's trip passed off uneventfully although the temporary control facility has a tendency to slow down the boat's operation and this helped to contribute to the slightly extended nature of the trip. The other cause was passing boats at the wrong time, resulting in the locks being full when we wanted to go up, and empty when we wanted to go down.

The fitter had attempted to check his mail on Wednesday night without success so he wasn't surprised when he managed to connect to the Internet after his evening meal on Thursday to find that he had 21 mails waiting for him, a fair percentage of which were from persons or companies attempting to sell certain medicines not normally available in this country without a prescription!

The fitter also just had time to check the forum whilst he was connected, before disconnecting, switching off, getting changed and heading to the pub for the weekly quiz.

We have in recent weeks not been able to sit in our normal seats as these have been occupied when we've arrived. And so it was on Thursday evening. We bought our drinks and sat talking and were soon joined by our arch rivals from the boatyard with whom we exchanged friendly banter until the quiz started. By this time the fitter was getting decidedly more and more uncomfortable a situation that got worse as the evening wore on.

We managed to converse with one of the other pub regulars before the quiz started in furtherance of our aim to improve the control on the electric trip boat. He gave us a couple of ideas to follow up and also suggested speaking to a couple of other regulars when they arrived later, which we did.

The fitter was so uncomfortable by the time that we'd finished the quiz that he waited a few minutes for the marked papers but when they weren't forthcoming, he decided to return to his boat. He walked slowly across the road, pausing a couple of times due to the discomfort. He got as far as the boatyard gate (which was locked as expected) and decided that he needed a rest.

He leant on the fence by the gate for a good five minutes with sweat pouring from him. He expected some of the other quiz participants to arrive, but they didn't. In the end, the sweating stopped and the discomfort eased and the fitter was able to open the gate, pass through it, lock it behind him and walk steadily over to his boat with only a slight discomfort.

The fitter unlocked his boat, took his tablets, sat and read for a while and then went to bed feeling much more comfortable than he had just a short while before.

Friday

The fitter first woke around 5am, roused again at 6.30am and finally made a move at 8am having definitely drifted back to sleep in between times. The previous day's discomfort had eased and all but disappeared.

The majority of the morning, after opening up the trip boat, was spent photocopying paperwork that would be passed to the new man. This took until midday by which time the fitter went and prepared the trip boat for the impromptu trip that had been hastily arranged the previous weekend and had filled quite well from just a mention on the company's website.

A shower, change of clothes and lunch followed with the fitter returning to the trip boat an hour prior to departure. The trip was eventless and we returned within a few minutes of time.

We'd spoken to a couple of fellow moorers over the previous two days and agreed that we'd try and organise a communal Chinese meal for Friday evening as the weather looked like holding. Eight people partook of the meal, which we ate alfresco using crockery, cutlery and glasses from the fitter's boat

The temperature dropped around 9pm after the sun had spent a while hiding behind clouds so we cleared everything up and took the non disposable stuff back to the fitter's boat. We then hastily changed and walked over to the pub to meet the regular with whom we'd spoken the night before for he had managed to locate a couple of surplus fork lift trick controls that he thought might be of use. Initial inspection certainly suggested that might be the case and we would examine them further on Saturday morning.

We didn't stay in the pub too long and returned to our boat around 10.30pm. The fitter fired up the laptop, managed to download his mail but then had significant problems doing anything else. He washed up the things from the earlier meal whilst trying to get the Internet connection to hold which it did eventually allowing him to scan the forum for the latest posts.

He'd finished with the Internet by about 11pm, made his bedtime drink and sat and read for a while before turning in.

Saturday

The fitter was pleasantly surprised when he found it was 8.15am when he first checked the clock on Saturday morning. He dressed and had breakfast straightaway and then went and emptied the bins around the boatyard before preparing the trip boat, during which time the discomfort from earlier in the week returned.

He then spent a period on some accounts for the Boss before taking the trip boat for a pump out so that it was fully ready for both the afternoon's trip and the longer cruise on Sunday.

Friday evening's meal had resulted in one of the fitter's glasses disappearing. Questioning various people and looking here and there had failed to reveal it until the fitter remembered that some of the chairs that had been used had sockets in the arms to accommodate glasses. He checked the chairs and found the glass safety stowed in the socket of one of the now folded chairs.

The lunch period followed the example set earlier in the week where the fitter showered, changed, had lunch and spent a while reading in the hope that the rest would ease the discomfort. It did to a certain extent.

We had a full boat for the afternoon's trip with the last party of ten people being slightly delayed en route - they were further delayed between their cars and the boat where they showed no signs of trying to make amends for arriving at the time the boat should have departed! The fitter almost had to be refrained from departing without them such was the delay they were causing to the other 49 passengers on the boat.

A boat passed in the few minutes between scheduled and actual departure time and we expected to be delayed at the locks whilst they worked through them in front of us. However, after we departed we found them moored nearby and were expecting no further delays for the rest of the trip. Some hope.

We got to the first lock to find it full - we need it empty to enable us to use it on the outward leg - and a boat all but moored up in the lock chamber. Further investigation revealed a second boat about to enter the lock above (heading downhill) and the initial boat was waiting for the second boat to join them. We sat waiting for about 15 minutes whilst these two boats eventually worked through the lock, by which time a narrowboat had arrived behind us.

We didn't hang about and were soon through the two locks, with the narrowboat in the lower lock by the time we vacated the upper chamber. We completed the outward leg of the journey not passing any moving boats but noting one particularly badly moored boat - moored within a few metres of a bridge and obstructed from the view of oncoming boats by the bridge.

We turned and made our way back to the locks, conscious of the fact that the narrowboat that had been following us had yet to appear - it did so as we approached the blind bridge mentioned in the previous paragraph. Fortunately we were close enough to the bridge to be able to pass beneath it first.

Where we weren't so fortunate was the boat that had earlier been moored near to the bridge had moved off and, as the first lock of our return journey came into view, we could see said boat just entering the chamber so we knew that we'd have to wait (again) whilst they worked through the lock. By the time we got to the lock we could see a boat heading towards us in the lower lock so we had to wait for them to pass through the upper lock before we could carry on and complete our journey. This boat had been the one that had passed the boatyard just before our trip started.

We finally returned to the boatyard thirty minutes late with the late start the main reason for all of that delay. We cleaned and closed the boat to save Sunday morning's crew having to run around and then the fitter returned to his own boat where he started the packing process. He also moved some loose bits and pieces and placed them in slightly more secure surroundings as the boat is to be slipped on Monday for the bottom to be blacked and we don't want things sliding around the place.

The fitter cooked his meal and afterwards sat reading, still finding it uncomfortable to move around too much. It rained briefly at one time and then somewhat more heavily for about fifteen minutes during this time, causing the fitter to shut the side doors and lower the cratch cover, both of which had been left open to help lower the temperature inside the boat.

The fitter then washed up and warmed the laptop up whilst he did so. The Internet connection held enabling the fitter to check his mail and the forum. He then searched for ideas for removing the IKEA drawers and managed to locate several articles, all of which indicated that the drawers needed to be pulled quite hard and lifted at the same time. The fitter had several attempts at this and finally managed to extract one drawer, allowing him to fit the drawer dampers. With renewed effort and vigour the fitter then successfully tackled the other two drawers, fitted the dampers and then refitted the drawers.

The washing up was left to drain whilst the fitter spent a couple of hours writing up the previous four day's notes on this page before making his bedtime drink and drying up whilst he waited for the kettle to boil. He shut the computer down and sat and read whilst having his drink and then headed to bed.

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