Friday was an early start
as Karen, Buddy and I went up to Yorkshire for our weekly visit to see my
parents. Things are still pretty much
the same, but Dad is now keen on doing muscle exercises, so we were able to
help him with those.
Saturday dawned icy, but it
started raining heavily quite early on so the ice on the water soon disappeared
– well, there was a layer of water on the ice, so it couldn’t be seen. The ice
was very thin by the boat because of the flow of water from the lock and when I
opened the side hatches the usual gaggle of mallards appeared expecting to be
fed. I know gaggle is not the correct
collective noun for mallards; it’s the term used to describe a group of geese
that are not flying (skein if they are flying).
The collective noun for mallards is commonly a flush, but other nouns
are also used like sord and suit. I know
all this because I used to collect collective nouns for non-human animals –
there’s nowt so queer as folk as they say in Yorkshire 😉
In amongst the mallards was
a solitary mandarin duck – it was just as tame as the mallards, so I got a good
look at it:
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Female mandarin duck
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The males are much more colourful,
but I haven’t seen any around here – the last one I saw was down at Alvechurch
when we had the heavy snowfalls at the start of winter.
When I took Buddy out for
his first walk I took the rubbish up to the boaters’ skip at the lock. Stupidly I forgot how frosty it had been and
that the water laying on the concrete was deceptive. When I jumped off the lock gates (the skip is
the other side of the lock), I slipped over and fortuitously fell away from the
water – I could so easily have fallen the other way and got a nasty shock.
Anyway, we wandered up to
the next lock to see if there had been any progress on getting the old gates
removed. To my surprise, the work on lock
27 had proceeded at what seems quite a pace. In one day, the old gates had been lifted out
and taken away and the new gates had been dropped into place.
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Crane still suspended over
the lock – the old lock gates now removed…
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…and the new ones are in
place
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That’s some weight: 3,250
kg, or over three tons in old money. I
wonder if that is the weight of the gate before the massive balance beam is added
– I rather suspect it is.
Before I finish this short
entry, I must mention a major milestone that happened in our family this
week. Sophie, the eldest daughter
finally finished her thesis for her PhD – congratulations Sophie – what are you
going to do with your time now? 😊
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