Been very busy at work at the moment!

Been doing lots of jobs round the house!

A lot going on in my life at the moment!

My computer has been down!

Been on holiday!

Been to see my new Grandson!

I thought of all these excuses that I could use for not blogging for the last five weeks when the actual truth is I could not think of anything to write about. I have never professed to be any type of scholar or academic and writing does not come naturally without I have a subject that I think worthy of writing about. I will sometimes think of some snippet of subject matter and then as quickly as I’ve thought of it, I think naw, nobody would be interested in that. I sometimes get directed to other blogs and read what I consider to be absolute twaddle, then there’s others that I regularly read (daily) such as Dove’s and Chertsey girl’s and am amazed how they find such interesting things to blog about. So excuses over and humble apologies made here we go and so to waffle on about nothing in particular other than a quick catch up of what little has happened over the last five weeks after returning Minnow to her home moorings at Kings Bromley.

Went down to St Ives, Corwall to spend a few days with my eldest daughter and son in law and more than anything see my latest grandchild Sam.

Drank lots of Rattler cider, ate loads of Cornish pasties, went to Land’s End on a rainy foggy day and saw nothing and spent loads of time with Sam!

Since coming back from St Ives have spent most Saturdays down at Minnow carrying out lots of little jobs that needed doing as well as polishing brass and black leading.

As we had been having quite a bit of rain in the last couple of weeks I went down the boat this Saturday and pumped about 9inches of rain water out. Quite early in the day Jim and Sarah returned with Chertsey after their jaunt up the Trent. After helping them to tie up and a quick chat they were off to Shardlow to fetch their car back before heading off home. I had decided the next job would be to re black the false floors with creosote mixed with black bitumastic. On Sunday afternoon both Dawn and I went down and made a start. Dawn sat and kept Bruce occupied and worked really hard on a book of wordsearch puzzles while I lifted all the false floor panels (some call them shuts) from one side and stacked them on the other side of the hold then proceeded to wash the bottoms out removing all the accumulated crud.

After washing down and again pumping out, the floors were all put back down and were all given a liberal coating of my special brew. On the Sunday afternoon I managed to finish all the one side. On Monday I took a change of clothes to work with me and went straight down to Minnow after work to start on the other side.

Dawn turned up about an hour later with Pizza, wedges and garlic bread for tea so we sat on the back end boards and devoured as much of this feast as we could, leaving one slice of the ‘Spicy chicken’ pizza. After stuffing myself I started blacking again and Dawn said she was bored so asked where the fishing pole was. I fetched it and set it up for her, stating we Had no bait but undaunted Dawn set about fishing using small pieces of the spicy chicken. ‘Never catch anything’ I thought when Dawn cries out shad had one.

A nice plump 8 inch roach! She went on to catch another five and dropped two off, all in about half an hour. (beginners luck) Tonight I again went straight down Minnow from work and finished off the floors, all done, so Need to think of next job for this weekend. So till next time

Don’t bang ‘em about.

Blossom