Flecknoe (the effects of solitude)



The water was still frozen over on Monday morning so I decided to stay put at Flecknoe. 

Over the weekend Karen made a wreath and wove solar powered LED lights into it.

Testing the wreath before hanging it outside


I had had the lights charging on the roof for about a week as the instructions had said that they must be fully charged for at least 16 hours before using in order to have maximum battery life.  The wreath is now hanging on the front of the boat outside our bedroom but we’ve yet to get a picture of it.  It does shine brightly at night and it brings a smile to Karen’s face when we go to bed as she feels decorations are homely and it shines into the bedroom as we have no curtains at the front.

Our current neighbour has a really friendly cat; whenever it hears a car pull up at the bridge and park it goes bounding down there to see if it’s its owner coming home from work.  It does mean I have to be very careful leaving the boat with Buddy in case the cat is outside as he will probably try and chase it.  He doesn’t forget because as soon as he is out his ears prick up and he stares down the towpath to the neighbour’s boat hoping to see the cat.

Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before but the new boat is so warm and snug compared to the old one.  We did go up to the full 12tog duvet for a couple of nights a few weeks ago but have gone back to the medium 9tog one again, even in this colder spell.  We sometimes wake up with ice on the inside of the bedroom windows but we do shut the door to keep the heat out and often have a window open.

The new boat is really well insulated with spray foam whereas the old one had the odd bit of polystyrene in the ceiling.  We also have the stove positioned centrally whereas before it was at the far end of the boat.  The other big impact is being 13 feet shorter – not so much area to keep warm.

I saw no one all day Monday despite going for two long walks so suspect I talked aloud to myself and Buddy rather a lot.  I used to talk aloud to myself at work and people just got used to it and ignore me – in fact, they tended to ignore me when I spoke to them as they could use the excuse that they thought I was talking to myself!

As it was Monday we went off to our weekly bridge lesson at Stratford bridge club in the evening.  Karen had been in Manchester so had done a lot of driving so when she picked me up I took over driving.  These sort of car journeys are quite funny if you heard them from the outside as Karen is still in work mode and I am in ‘talk inane stuff about my day’ mode.  We end up having two conversations for the first ten minutes or so before realising that we are on totally different wavelengths. 

We hadn’t realised that it was the last lesson of the term so were pleasantly surprised when we walked into the club to see the tables laid out with wine and nibbly bits. 

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