I learn about Napton Lock Cottage and it's too windy to paint

Moored Napton, Oxford Canal

I got a surprise when I went to the butchers in Southam this morning, it was market day!..

The bus was full of those with shiny new bus passes, everyone was showing everyone else their own one.. I found that quite odd because they were all the same looking ones!  Vic didn’t get his yet, our main address is in Hampshire, well Winchester City Council look after our affairs of bus passes and the like, and they have made a cock up mistake with the timing and they won’t be sent out until the weekend… Of course, I don’t have one yet!!

Smashing fishmonger there too and it was smoked haddock steamed with leaks and mushrooms and lemon with a mustard/parsley sour cream sauce to go with it.. yummy, and not too many calories either..

Got what I needed from the butchers and waited at the bus stop for the return bus to Napton.  Got talking there, as you do, to a lady.. I do believe she is called Mavis, I know that because this evening I spoke to the new owner of the lock cottage at Napton who is having it renovated back to the same as it was originally… Anyway… Mavis was telling me that her father went off to fight in the war, and she was sent to live in that cottage with her Aunt and “Uncle Ginger who was the lock keeper”.. she told me all sorts of interesting facts about the locks, and also recalled how, when she was trying to sleep in her bedroom,  she used to hear the horses hooves on the stone floor in the stables which were located underneath the house!

But then the bus came, see you never know who you are going to meet and where..

I got back well ladened about lunch time, and noticed Hadar moored just up from where we were, and when I got on the back deck there were two pairs of unfamiliar boots… Jo and Keith were aboard No Problem sipping coffee with Vic.. Lovely to see them again, and I joined in the banter for a while before lunch.

I got No Problem ready for painting, firstly I thought I would do the black, but the waves…. yes waves were so bad they were crashing against the hull…

There was no way that I could put the black on, so I decided to do the blue.  By the time I had made ready, the wind got up even more… no chance.  I think if I had even tried to paint today then there would have probably been more paint on the boats behind me than on No Problem.. Heh, I envisaged some cartoon with the brush taken out of the paint pot and all the paint fly off…. gone in the wind!

So dogs went out instead.. much better way to spend an afternoon anyway.. and later after tea we collected a bag of coal from Hadar..

Oh the dogs got on well by the way, although Jo’s Paddy was a little wary of Meg’s playful lunges… she has got big now and towered Paddy.  He soon got used to her though..

This is interesting.. Earlier when this narrowboat passed.. there was a rope in the water at the stern, and now it is moored I can see it is attached to the rudder….

Keith thought it was to stop the rudder from banging from side to side when the waves hit the back of the boat, but I am not sure.. it doesn’t seem tight enough.  It is wrapped very neatly around the tiller arm you can see… be interested if anyone else uses this while cruising along, or maybe some clever person knows why?