Peasants afloat

Well we're settling into our peasant lifestyle. We are now planning a trip at Easter; probably the Warwickshire ring or something like it. I have a tendency to do 10 hour days at the tiller and am quite happy with that (in the good weather) but Lisa wants to take it a bit easier stopping at relevant places. STOPPING. It's a trip. The whole point is the journey not the stopping.

Terri is coming back at the weekend from uni and we are going to hang around here until see gets fed up with the old fogies and makes an excuse to leave for her metropolitan life and posh, artistic and gregarious friends. We are enjoying our pathetic little lives on our half finished (if it's that) boat. Lisa is currently on the blow up mattress reading and has just said that she's changed her mind and that she now want to live in a small flat in Hinckley. Tough. This is how it is and how it is to be for the foreseeable.

Yesterday the outlaws and Katia, our strange French friend, came over for a drink and something to eat. We can only imagine what the conversation was on the way back to Newark in the outlaws car. "Have you seen what state he's got her in". "I can't belive he's got her living like that". Katia, on the other hand, claimed she was getting motion sickness/sea sickness. Something about her ears apparently. I did say she was strange.

It is much harder working on the boat when all our stuff is loaded in boxes stored along the sides of the boat but I am getting on with it slowly. Today I have been rigging up the electrical cupboard ready for the fuse box, inverter and battery charger. The space is very narrow (well it would ne wouldn't it) at that end of the boat as the lining timber boards are stored on one side and my tools on the other. As soon as I lift something heavy to bring it down the other end of the boat and turn around Sam is there standing in the way with nowhere to go. She then has to back out the scurry away before I shout at her. If I hear myself shouting, "Get out of the bloody way Sam" or "Move dog" (depending on my mood) I'll send myself mad. I have to take her for a long lunchtime walk to tire her out so she's in the basket in the afternoon.

We are getting into a routine and shuffle up and down the canal (we are bridge hoppers after all and proud of it) but I cannot wait to get off and put some miles under the base plate at Easter and have some adventures. But it's much easier for me as I can scruff around all day and don't have to look neat and tidy for my day job. It really is much easier for me than it is for Lisa. Still we may have 12 volt electricity and running water within the week. Then again...