26 11 15
FREDDIE'S ARRIVED
The most important news of the year.
Here is the terrible trio! Brilliant!
Spent a lovely day meeting him and all the Fiona & Michael family.
There's no doubt a young family keeps you young.
And infinitely more interesting than bilge pumps.
22 10 15
BILGE PUMPS
The other day a sudden loud non-stop roar came from the depths of Lady
Cate. (!) I opened up the engine room space to find a museum piece of a bilge
pump vigorously shaking itself and demanding attention. It was working and
pumping out a little bilge water. The little automatic pump switch had
activated as the bilge water level had crept up to the critical depth. Not a
problem. Lady Cate is a wooden boat and a little soakage is normal. However the
din was really too much.
The aged pump was attached by one screw to a loose bilge board which acted as
a sounding board! I tried screwing it down with the other two screws, which
reduced the noise somewhat but I have now taken it off the board and it is much
quieter being suspended in mid-air by its substantial inlet and outlet pipes –
a temporary solution only. I’ll make up a proper low acoustic mounting. (Shades
of my navy days where I worked on acoustic mountings for submarine
engines.) I found another little bilge
pump, newer, in the forward cabin, with an independent automatic switch and there is a
larger 1400 gallons per hour pump in the engine compartment, which appears to
have a built in switch.
As the wiring was chaotic and the switches proved unreliable when I
tested them I asked Tony to help. He has tidied up the wiring and I will get
two new switches in the hope of improved reliability. [Later: I can now confirm they working perfectly.]
16 10 15
MORE
REFLECTION
Where have those last ten days gone?
I went to Rafiki for a bit of
clearing up, rubbish discarding, tai chi and shia tsu. That was five days. The
rest?Here is Debbie, the tai chi and shia tsu maestro (?maestress?) outside her garden studio.
I feel I am going through some kind of transformation. If my peace of mind and
blood pressure are anything to go by, it is for the better. Not exactly bug to
butterfly, but the slow shedding of a carapace. Though Lady Cate needs my
attention in many ways, they are not, at the moment, comfort threatening
matters. So I am beginning to think more freely, as writing this shows.
Currently reading ‘Valuing the Earth’, a collection of great essays edited by Herman
Daly, the Steady State economist and Kenneth Townsend.
It’s 1045 and I haven’t had breakfast yet!
I like knowing that I am consuming close to the least energy necessary to
keep me comfortable. I am not heating a whole house, just my snug. It is so
good knowing it takes about 10 minutes to vacuum and dust the whole boat.
It is good to know that the girls are coping so well. I am magnificently
proud of them both. I can’t believe my good luck.
Is my little snug like E M Fortser’s hexagonal ‘room’ in ‘When the
machine stops’? Not really. ( See e.g. http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html. It was one
of my school Eng. Lit. GCE studies. Did that stick in the memory!) My snug
is my freedom. I can move it wherever water allows.
Undated
Tony and I took Lady Cate out to sea on a blustery day. A lovely river
journey and some fine bouncing around across the river bar and out to sea!
There were few boats on the move. Most are heading back up to the marinas
to be stored ashore for the winter but this pretty Cornish Shrimper was
enjoying the best of autumn wind.
06 10 15
PAUSE FOR
REFLECTION
Playing
Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. A brilliant work, one of my Desert Island
Discs.
Seems like no
time since I wrote. Time is flying so very fast.
Something in
me is telling me to take it easy even though there is so much to do. It has
been a very busy and change ridden year. First Pop and Pammy dying, the
funeral, the estate to manage, working out a new life, finding Lady Cate (that
was uncanny timing), then working on the simple essentials to get boat life
working comfortably, which it now is. Time for reflection on progress to date
and thinking out the next steps, I suppose.
Later: Not
very good at reflection when there's a huge To Do List, albeit none is vital.
But somehow the command is there. I'm split in two!
My one man wok
is great. This evening pork fillet, onion, pepper (red), spinach with noodles.
A colourful plate is a healthy plate. Not too much quantity, but my weight is
stable at a bit too much.
I switch from
Radio 4 to ClassicFM at 7pm to avoid The Archers. Some music new to me this
evening, choral, very soothing, cool even.
The Call of Wisdom by Will Todd apparently. Then I switch back when
ClassicFM runs its adverts, which are mostly insulting to anyone's
intelligence: it’s the repetition that irritates most.
