Staying afloat

Slow boat to Little Venice

If things have been quiet on this blog recently, there's a very good reason for it.  Naturally, you'll be thinking, spring has finally arrived and so Sarah will have lots to do in her garden and her customers' gardens, and it's lighter in the evenings too.  But no - just as that ought to be the case, I'm engaged in a different enterprise altogether.  Jon and I are off to Little Venice, near Paddington in West London, for a canal festival - Canalway Cavalcade - over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend, and because narrowboats only move at four miles per hour, we have to go now.

Actually, we've gone.  Jon and the boat are down in Rugby after a week spent cruising the Trent and Mersey, Coventry and North Oxford Canals, while I'm home briefly to attend college, round up the post, deal with essential emails and then catch the train back to rejoin him.  There is no time for gardening, though I did find time to give the publishers the 'OK' for the final proof of the sequel to 'Severe Discomfort' to be released into the world.  You can find it here, the opening few chapters at least, but if you haven't read the first book, don't start on this one unless you want a major 'spoiler' from part one: check out 'Severe Discomfort' first (there's a Kindle version now, Amazon users).
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/continual-supervision

Hopefully, relief crew permitting, I'll have a whole week at home next time to properly manage the 'launch' of this volume and catch up on some paid gardening work, and to plant our main crop potatoes, though I haven't been idle on the boat.  The paints have been out, inside at least, and if the opportunity arises to barter one or two of these for boatyard services such as fuel and WC pump-out, that will be no bad thing.



Our boat, 'Uplander II', is very much a Luddite ship, with no TV, mains electricity (unless connected up to a shore line) or Internet access, so it'll be silent running for the rest of the week.  You might be able to catch some of our adventures on another blog, as we are due to rendeavous with friends on another vessel which doesn't reject the evils of modern technology shortly.  You might find a few photos and references to us turning up on Chrissie Smith's blog at:  http://cavalcadeodyssey.blogspot.co.uk/

In the meantime, he's the answer to one of those age-old questions.  If you've ever been at a football match and the chant 'who ate all the pies?' has started, the answer is actually me, at the Greyhound pub at Hawkesbury Junction, near Coventry.  Here's the proof...

A trio of supposed 'mini pies'!

Good job there are so many locks to work through on the next stage of our journey!