Saturday 20th August
We decided not to move on today and this morning Ken finished the blacking, hurrah! I was going to touch up the red but as we had decided to go in to Hanley on the bus I had to go down to Tesco’s, where the bus stop is and find out the number of the bus which stopped there and the times. However there was not a timetable at the bus stop. As luck would have it a bus came past while I was there so I was able to look it up on the internet when I got back. Hence I didn’t have time to touch up the paint!
We all went off to Hanley (30 min journey and £3-50 for me) on the 10-40 am bus. We have walked there before, from Festival Gardens, but only to go to the fishing tackle shop, which we had to go to this time as well! Barbara was meeting a friend so Ken and I went off to do our shopping and we arranged to meet in the Wetherspoon’s later on.
Among our purchases were a couple of pairs of those cheap shit reading glasses from the pound shop for Ken. There is no point in our spending a lot of money on these because most of them end up in the canal or just mysteriously disappear! In fact by the time he had got back in the boat and unpacked the shopping one of the two pairs he bought today was already lost! Hopeless!
We did the usual trip to Wilco’s for painting supplies and oil, then we went in Curry’s and made an impulse buy of a DVD player, which we have wanted for ages but never got round to getting. We also needed to find a book shop for a new Thesaurus and a Crossword Completer, ours are both falling to bits (they get a lot of use with me). Would you believe there are two bookshops in Hanley, Waterstone’s and Webberley’s and they are one each side of the Wetherspoon’s, what luck! We got a Thesaurus and a Crossword Solvers Lists Book but couldn’t find the right sort of Crossword Completer so I have had to stick ours together for the time being!
B and B joined us in the pub later – two days running we’re a bad influence! Back at the boat we were all having a cup of tea and taking the piss out of Ken for losing his new glasses already, thinking they had fallen in the canal. I then put a container of biscuits, on top of a container of Jaffa Cakes, on the roof of the boat, stood on the gunwhale and the biscuits slipped over the hand rail into the canal. This would have been ok had I have sealed the container but the lid wasn’t on properly and they all got soggy! At least it was only Ken’s Fruit Shortcake and not my Jaffa Cakes!
Tomorrow we are going to Congleton.
