New Things

We have some new things - the boat is feeling more and more like a home. Each new addition reflects the current economic climate. 

A broomstick and string 'wardrobe'. The string was fivepence a piece from the Crick boat show last year, the broom handle was 20p in a garage sale in Bradford upon Avon. The hooks attaching it to the ceiling were found in one of those icecream tubs that is hiding under the sink of every rented property in the country - the ones with the radiator key, curtain hooks, assorted knobs, and a locked padlock in. 

A little set of shelves to put a laptop on whilst we watch films and to keep a few books and bits on (including a great little lamp from Simone's mum.) We made these, and a second little set of shelves for the bedroom, out of the old shelves that used to be where the 'wardrobe' now is.

 A new sofa, which was rescued from Gumtree and then re-covered with a Chitenje I bought in Malawi. The awful futon that used to be here was taken to pieces and the ends used to make a shelf for the coal to sit under, and the ends of the broomhandle - there's enough timber left to make a new set of bookshelves. Simone is hard at work on her PhD. She is definitely not on facebook.

Flood

Oops. Christmas festivities in Cambridgeshire were interrupted by a call from a neighbour to say there was four inches of water in the bottom of the boat. It got down to -12 degrees on boxing day night, apparently, and the subsequent thaw burst loads of pipes on boats all around, and also the thermostat unit in our shower. We'd stupidly left the water pump on, so the crack then emptied our water tank into the boat. 

We were lucky on so many counts: our neighbour heard the pump going and went on and turned it off, the water ran around the sofa, avoided the printer, and damaged pretty well nothing, and about half the water in the tank was frozen so didn't come through. The same neighbour who heard the leak has a great little wet and dry hoover, so a quick hole in the floorboards and we'd soon got all the water out. Since, it's just been a case of keeping the fire going and keeping the boat as warm as possible; we're only too happy to be doing that!