Although Karen doesn’t work
on Fridays, she has tended to either go into the office for a while or work
from the boat. Now she is managing to
pass on responsibility for her work we were able to have a proper Friday for a
change. That means that Thursday becomes Friday and we get a three-day weekend.
Being the festive one
of the pair of us, Karen wanted to put up some decorations. We searched high and low but could not find
them. For some bizarre reason we must have taken them to our storage unit at
some point during the year. This meant a trip to Solihull and, as we were out,
we got some more coal and did a bit of grocery shopping. The plan is usually not to use the car at the
weekend unless we move the boat, but we had no choice apparently.
 |
The poinsettia is standing in as our indoor Christmas tree, complete with baubles made by Karen's mum, Ann. The photo was taken at ten past six in the evening by the way, not in the morning, and I obviously
didn’t feel like being a scrooge as usual, as I had put on a Santa hat.
On Thursday, Lewis had FaceTimed
me asking if he could marry my middle daughter, Lauren. This has been a long time coming but, pleased
as I was, I had to play around and ask him how long I had to make a decision
etc. They were off to Cologne for the
weekend and he wanted to propose to her there – which, of course, he did 😊
During the day on Friday
we walked into Alvechurch and were glad it wasn’t snowing as heavy as had been
forecast as the wind was blowing the snow into our faces the whole way there and, for some odd
reason, seemed to be doing the same thing on the way back.
The original plan had been
to cruise back to Lapworth over the weekend but that became out of the question
with the ice and snow forecast, but we moved the boat closer to the water point
to be on the safe side anyway.
 |
Moored just up from the
water point at Hopwood
|
At about four on Sunday morning
we were woken by the constant revving of an engine. Looking outside, I saw a petrol tanker had
become stuck in the snow on the bridge you can see behind us in the picture above.
It’s on a slight incline on the Redditch to Birmingham road and, as it
was a bridge, I assume had iced up before other parts of the road. Amazingly, within an hour, a breakdown truck
had pulled the tanker free. Not sure if
it was a local truck or if BP have their own fleet but it must be a costly
service.
The water in the canal
hadn’t completely frozen before the snow started so, with the heavy snow, it
was more of a gloopy soup that had frozen over by Sunday morning:
 |
When I went to take Buddy
out for his first run, Karen asked if I could switch on the lights on the
outside Christmas tree we keep in a pot on the boat all year. I must admit, that I didn’t see much point 😊
 |
Thinking of Karen winding
down at work reminds me she only has thirteen weeks left and she is having
three of those off over the holiday period too 😊
No comments:
Post a Comment