Friends and memories at Fradley and Post Restante jobs worth..

Wood End Lock to Fradley, Trent & Mersey and Coventry Canals, 1.5 miles 3 locks

We got really buffeted last night above Wood End Lock, so I was pleased to move this morning to a slightly less blowy mooring above the next lock at Shade House.  There are some nice visitor moorings there, although there were two spots available where it is possible to get the dot in the sky for the satellite tv both were taken unfortunately.

But we would moor there for now because Paul and Christine Balmer were about to arrive for a quick visit.. in any case we had not long put the pins in when a knock at the door, and Alan and Sheila of NB Andante stopped by to say hi.. regular readers of this blog and many others, we had a good ‘ol chat about this and that as you do!.. Nice to have met you both

I made some soup the previous evening and after welcoming Paul and Christine aboard we consumed that while catching up on news before pulling the pins and dropping down the two locks to Fradley central..

Plenty of help after lunch then, and although the wind was wicked, No Problem behaved impeccably when I asked her to turn south into the Coventry Canal.. you have to smile because narrowboats and high winds do not go well together, and you never know quite what is going to happen!..

Lots of memories of Fradley Junction for me.. I suppose it is the one place that means Inland Waterways to me.. Fradley Junction IS the Inland Waterways.  I hired my first boat from here.. Swanline Cruisers from outside the pub back in 1975.. my first time on the tiller.. round the Leicester ring.. the Soar was in flood too on one day. The following day when the water went down I remember one narrowboat half way over a weir, and another astride a cattle trough about 50 yards away in a field!.. I remember trying to find the channel through the tree line.. 

I remember Fradley Junction as the last place I saw a treasured friend Pat.. a lovely man who died later in the year, and I remember Fradley Junction as a place I happen to be when the funeral of Kevin (Scraggy) took place.  He lived on NB Monarch once moored here.. Ah lots of memories of Fradley..

I shoved Paul and Christine off in the early afternoon as I knew Paul had to drive to North Wales.. so it was a quick photo shot for the blog then away..

It was lovely to see you both again, hopefully might meet up when we go down the flight to Northampton later..

I have some mail coming to a Post Office during this week, so thought I would give them a ring just to inform them, not that I have to as every post office in the UK MUST hold Poste Restante mail for 2 weeks waiting collection, but got met by a bit of a telling off! 

I won’t mention the name of the Post Office because that is not the point, but I did have phone Royal Mail to inform them that my post was not welcome.  “I don’t do Poste Restante, I don’t get paid for doing it, so I don’t do it.  I don’t have to do it, I won’t be doing it”.. I had to be a bit careful with what I said, because my mail had actually arrived and I didn’t want to upset him enough for him to send it all back it wasn’t worth it..

It got sorted in the end, but I was quizzed by Royal Mail as to whether I paid Council Tax or not, whether I had a houseboat or not, whether I lived on my boat and where I moored, did I have a licence etc etc..

The whole episode took over an hour to sort out what with phone calls to and fro, the final phone call to me from Royal Mail told me that Yes I was entitled to have Poste Restante mail at any post office in the UK!  Well Yes I knew that!!

It seemed to me that neither the Postmaster nor the guy at Royal Mail really knew the rules!  The guy from Royal Mail said “It’s not a service that is used very often, I am not familiar with it”.. “Well I am” says I “I have been using Post Restante for over 4 years”..

So here is the bottom line for those who do use this service. This is from the Royal Mail and Post Office web sites…

The Post Office CANNOT refuse to look after your mail.

Onward tomorrow, I need to visit the docs I have picked up a chest infection probably at the Birmingham Show.. But I can’t shake this off and seem to be getting worse so some antibiotics I guess is required.. I don’t have time for being ill, and it is stopping me from doing much walking!!