Thursday 28th April
What have we done today? Well, I have cleaned the neglected side of the boat at last, although the other side seems to be just as bad again now! I did dangle over the side while laying on the roof and wiped it as far down as I could reach but I’m not one to hang off the gunwhale cleaning on the water side so the rest of it will have to wait until we moor the other way round again. Painting the Forth Bridge comes to mind!
I also had my hair cut – bonus! Yesterday evening we took George for a toddle (rather a long trek as it turned out) to the Hapton Inn at the top of the village. There are 2 pubs you could trip up and fall into from the moorings but unfortunately – one is closed down and the other one never seems to be open, although there is an advert outside for something which is happening on Saturday so they must open some time!
Anyway, on the way to the Hapton Inn we spotted a hairdressers, called rather unusually, Totti Lime Juice, in a side street. As it was getting on for 5 pm I said I would get the phone number on the way back and give them a ring to see if they could fit me in today. As luck would have it, on the way back there was actually someone in there and she had a space this morning. So I haven’t got to resort to the bag on my head just yet!
Talking of going up to the Hapton Inn – we were astounded to discover, after getting our poor old dog to struggle all the way up there, that not only was he not allowed in the pub, not entirely unexpected as it is a bit of a ‘foodie’ pub, but he was not even allowed in the beer garden! The bar person came out with a load of old crap about it being against the law to have dogs where they are serving food. What a load of tosh!
There were a couple of tables out the front of the pub, by the road so we had to sit there with him, bless. He was a bit tired after his walk and needed to recover otherwise we would have told them to stuff their pub and gone home!
Back to today, Ken has put the D rings on for the fenders. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth during this process and some of the drill bits have found their way to the bottom of the canal! However the fenders look a lot better tied to the D rings than they did tied to the foot rests.
Tomorrow we are hoping to avoid wedding fever, a forlorn hope I fear and may go somewhere on the bus. We could get a train to Blackpool from here but would be gone too long for George. Nice idea though.
