Saturday we moved to Willington and moored by the marina entrance. We had the idea that we would either, go over to the other side of the canal or turn round in the marina entrance and moor back in the same spot on Sunday to do the painting.
After mooring we went to Burton on the bus and did a bit of shopping, via the bacon roll stall! Later we went to The Locomotive to watch the football. The Locomotive has changed management and reopened after a fire in the kitchen but is still pretty much the same, a good place to watch football.
Sunday morning was dull, drizzly and very cold so we abandonned any plans we had about doing painting! I can’t actually remember much of what we did do (except that Ken made a curry) so it was not memorable. We did walk down to The Dragon at lunchtime and as usual it was heaving with ‘people what lunch’.
Monday it was still wet and cold but, needing to empty cassettes and get water, we headed for the sanitary station in the village. We left just in time as it happened with the boat opposite breaking his neck to leave before us. He failed miserably as did the one moored opposite the sanitary station, losing out to us too! We got there first and did the necessary then moored outside The Dragon on the 48 hour moorings.
After mooring we went off to Burton again for several reasons. One was to get a magazine rack/table which we had spotted on Saturday outside the shop where they sell restored wooden furniture. When we got there we discovered they had 4 such items, all a bit different to each other and of course I then took ages making up my mind which one to have!
I also had to go to the bank to generate a phone banking security number so I could register for online banking. Very complicated but apparently necessary to keep being paperless! I did try to do this on the phone but after two 10 minute sessions with their ghastly ‘on hold’ musak I was losing the will to live! A trip to the bank did the trick although the wait in the queue was quite extensive at least there was no music blasting my eardrums into oblivion!
We went to CEX to part exchange Season 4 of Game of Thrones for Season 5. Us non Sky subscribers are a year behind everyone else! We got £10 off the new one so that was ok.
We also had to take our digital tv recorder back to Argos as it had stopped receiving a signal. We did think this could be because the aerial had moved but the signal directly from the tv was ok so it was definitely the recorder. They hadn’t got one the same as the Hitachi one we took back and for some reason were unable to order us one. And due to the length of time we had had the recorder we couldn’t get a refund but we could get the money put on a gift card.
However this would mean that not only would we would have to go and find another recorder elsewhere (we had tried Curry’s before to no avail) but we would then have a spare £140 gift card to spend in Argos. We don’t need anything at the moment apart from a tv recorder! So we bought a Panasonic recorder, which was more expensive and paid the difference.
Today (Tuesday) has again been cold and showery, some of the showers have been wintry so ………. still no painting! However we have not been idle as we have walked down to Midland Swindlers at the marina, then walked up to Betty’s egg farm and then to the Coop. A nice round trip of a few miles and quite pleasant when it wasn’t hailing!
This afternoon Ken has been wrestling with a splitter to connect the tv and the recorder to the aerial separately so we can use them independently without having to keep swapping the aerial lead round but it just doesn’t seem to work.
Tomorrow we have to leave the 48 hour moorings although the boat in front of us has been here 4 days that we know of! We are off to Shobnall.
