The washing machine!

For those of you who wondered, this is a full size washing machine/condenser tumble dryer. Hanging from the ceiling, just out of shot, is a beautiful clothes airer. The blue heap is towels about to go in, after the sheets are out :-)

Josie's feeding station

This is one of Josie's favourite spots - the port side, just aft of the lounge (that's the wooden floor in the bottom right), just under the cupboards opposite the COOKING section. The odd shaped basket on the left is the potato & carrot basket. It just slipped a little into the lounge from the kitchen (or Galley :-).

Still moored and not flooded

It's a little difficult to think of what to put on the blog while we're still moored and waitng to get moving in the Spring. One reason the blog is so quiet is that we are still in the same place! In addition to what we did while in a house (live, work, eat, drink, pray, flickr, facebook, talk to Josie, meet and eat/drink with friends, etc), we have a few more regular tasks.

• Pete goes to the Elsan point 2 - 3 times a week to empty cassettes from the loo. Don't worry, this is as decorous as it can be and a lovely green fluid makes sure it's all as far as possable from what we think this could be like! We are closer to some parts of nature than we have previously been, but anyone who has ever been in a caravan will understand.
• Pete (usually) fills us up with water every other day. Elizabeth enjoys running the washing machine while this is happening ("Is that tank not full yet?!").
• Pete (we told you he was chief ship's management!) fills up the scuttle with coal every day and goes to Rugby fuels about once every two weeks. Unless, of course, fuel comes to us, as you saw in a December blog post.
• Pete (again!) makes sure the central heating runs...

A usual morning is:

Pete gets up, stops at the plumbing, turns on the central heating, gets the ash out of the stove and puts on more coal.

Elizabeth gets up, stops at the plumbing, begins to open curtains each window until she gets to the lounge, takes the kettle from the stove and puts it on the cooker for boiling for tea, continues to open curtains until she gets to the back door, puts Josie's snuggle (soft muzzle) in place then lets Josie do her version of visiting the plumbing.

Pete continues to get the fire back to roaring and then logs on to flickr to see how his photo world is going.

Elizabeth prepares breakfast (yogurt, fruit, walnuts, home-made bread for toast, tea...), while also wiping condensation off window frames.

Pete gets the vitamin boxes full for the day.

Both eat breakfast while reading novels (Pete is on a Jan Grissen book and Elizabeth is now on to Alexander McCall Smith, having finished Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eyes.)

So, all quite boring really. But its lovely.

We're all on shore power at the mo!

Our New Year neighbour's bows & sterns

Pete's Birthday and Christmas - TV with built in DVD

Where has the time gone?

Suddenly we are on the 14th of January. How did that happen? We've got stuck right in to work and spent another weekend in Oxford visiting dear friends. And Bella? We're in conversations now about adapting the forward steps, from the bedroom to the forward deck from the present single useless step into stacking drawers which also act as steps. We've also got plumbing to adjust, the bottom of the hull to review/repaint, the top to clean properly, the windows to lift out/clean/replace, etc... It will surprise few of our readers to know we have a 'ship's log' with all the engineering tasks to be done let alone the 'household' adjustments (sorted by best time of year, etc). For those who are not quite ill at the thought, this gives us great pleasure!!

Happy New Year!

Day one of 2008. Happy New Year to all our blog readers!!

As suspected, we are still moored, with hardly a move. Just right for the cold and frozen canal. However, we did move to the other side of the marina yesterday to fill up with diesel. The toasty central heating is a bit hit and miss at the moment, and we realised it was a little low on fuel! Not quite back up to scratch with the re-fuel, but we're getting there. It was a lovely jaunt through the marina, nonetheless, whetting our apetite to move ... very frustrating waiting out the winter!

Hopefully like us, you had a wonderful Christmas. Sadly, Bella was on her own as Pete, Elizabeth and Josie went first to James' for Christmas day, on to Andrew and Sarah (one of Pete's brothers and sister-in-law) for Boxing Day and to our friend Clare (missing Mike on board ship) for the 27th. Home to Bella for the 28th, we rapidly fell into cold and flu. But what better place to be cosy and get better?

New Years Eve found us breaking open the bottle of bubbly while standing on Bella's stern to take in all of Rugby's midnight fireworks. Wonderful!!

Pictures will follow.