At Hillmorton, but problems with my blogging program is annoying me

Moored Hillmorton, Oxford Canal

We settled here for a couple of days while I have been trying to shake off a nasty summer cold.. summer? … huh, well it is ‘spose to be summer.   I think everyone is getting fed up with the constant rain.  Certainly Lucy is, everytime I go to go out for a stroll down comes the rain, and the towpaths around here are dreadfully muddy again.

The flowers on the top of No Problem are struggling for sure, although they look OK from a distance, some are rotting at the roots because they are just getting waterlogged.  It would be impossible to take them off the roof and put them inside!

I phone Tim Salt of Staffordshire Canopies yesterday to pencil in a slot for him to make and fit the new cratch cover and pram canopy (wigwam for whimps) on the stern, and we are due to meet up with Tim and Lisa in a couple of weeks time at Great Haywood.

They did an excellent job of putting the canopies on NP1 back in October 2005, Lisa makes the canopies aboard their narrowboat Hundred Akers moored at Great Haywood …

A familiar named narrowboat came by today, but again it was absolutely pouring down at the time, so didn’t rush out with the camera, it was Director’s Cut.  Ian and Nikki Potts sold the boat so John Sinclair tells me.. I do know they have stopped doing their blog.  Having seen that narrowboat for the first time, it sure is nice and the new owners looked happy enough as they passed.

Not only am I having trouble with my program that publishes my blog, but also I am having trouble signing in to my windows messenger (msn).. so to those I normally pop in from time to time to say Hi, I am sorry I can’t!

I will sort it!

Anyway, I wondered what these were…..

I say these, they are on the lockside, or at least in the middle of the paired locks here at Hillmorton.  By paired I mean that there are two locks side by side here, and there are three of those.  They were built in pairs to make passing through this area quicker for the working boats.  I was looking up on google to try and find out what they were when I came across an interesting article..

The work here would include the removal of vegetation and the placement of redundant canalside coping stones to form benches and tables together with the horizontal placement of some original lock gates to create a feature.

Well i didn’t remember seeing any picnic tables.. although I had noticed the scrubland bit had gone, being replaced by what I thought was a mini Stonehenge.. surely not?

So off I went in the semi darkness to investigate this area that £50,000 (no that is not a typo) has been spent on… no way!!!.. no way is that gonna work as picnic tables!  Photos to follow tomorrow for you to decide!

Looking for the link to put on this blog to Directors Cut I happened on Andrew Denny’s Grannybuttons site and saw his first post about Maffi wondering if it was worth doing a blog.. well it is but ..

I think like him sometimes.  Sometimes I think what I write is boring, but then again some days not a lot happens.  I was thinking today well nothing is happening really, I am just miserable with a cold, its raining, and still I have not used any sun tan stuff, nor unpacked the bbq.  I was wishing I was over in East Anglia on those lovely rivers and the space, and no boats rushing by.. then I thought I don’t have anything to write about on my blog.. (humph see all the lines above!)

But Andrew says that each blog should be about one subject or one day, even if there are many blogs in one day.  I think this blog is different to others though.  There are many different subjects on tonights blog from me, and sometimes there are a few days on one blog, but hopefully it is a style that is interesting enough with lots of subjects within it.  I don’t think it would work in any other way.. all I have to do now is hope that it will actually post!