Busy weekend

We went to a family wedding, we stayed overnight in the hotel where the reception was held. The room and ensuite were bigger than our entire boat.

All very posh, but the rooms were very hot and we were glad to get home.

 The food was delicious, this was the starter, a terrine.

The main course was chicken.

The Winter Wonderland room where the reception was held.

 There were six bridesmaids, two flower girls and two pageboys, twins four years old, one of them did the best impression of John Cleese silly walk I've ever seen as he walked ahead of the bride scattering petals. This is the sort of thing, for me that makes a wedding special.

The bride and groom.

We went to our room after the meal and before the dancing started at 8:30.

I had a raging ear/tooth/jaw ache and my beloved was pissed as a fart having started drinking at 2 o'clock!

More weird things to learn

Our new engine has been ordered and should be fitted around 22nd 23rd January. Mind you that could be canal time, in which case it could be February or even July.
We may also have a buyer for our old engine, we will know in the new year.
We have had many visits from very important technical bods, there has been much sucking of teeth and many conversations about pythons and hospitals, I've only just mastered sacrificial anodes and now there is another vocabulary to learn.

We had our black water pumped out before we moved back, hopefully that will last until we move back to the work area to have the new engine fitted.

Chortle chortle, snigger snigger.

Yesterday when  I arrived to collect my beloved from work I was an hour too early.

I had done some shopping and some other errands, it didn't seem worth driving home only to turn around and go back. So I popped in to see my old work colleagues, some of whom were more pleased to see me than others.

What really made my day was when I found out that there have been numerous complaints about my replacement.

I did make recommendations to my line manager when I announced my retirement, but of course these were ignored. After all what would I know an out the job, I'd only been doing it for 13 years!

The complaints are not the person concerned but the change and reduction of hours and also the lack of handover which has left my replacement struggling. She is getting no support from her line manager and no support from the company who supplied the crap equipment that is making her life so difficult.

We are a butty

The engine was removed yesterday, so we are now a butty until the new engine is fitted.
The engineer who removed it took a video of it running, he will post it on YouTube and advertise the engine for sale. The gearbox we have is designed to go in a deep-sea fishing boat as is the engine!

The marina is frozen over and this morning we had a beautiful sunrise.

You keep me hanging on.

Because space is limited, everything that we can hang, we do.

There are hooks everywhere, these hold our keys

Hooks for our mugs.

Magnetic knife holder

Three saucepans and two frying pans hang on the fire surround.

Coal glove and ridge monkey hang above the companion set just below the co2 alarm.

A pocket wall hanging organiser hangs beside my chair.

I bought this from Ikea, the buckets hold cutlery, the one on the end holds baking parchment, straws and cling film. Above the buckets is the solar panel monitor and the 'clock' that confuses so many people as it has no hands, that's because it's my weighing scales.

We even hang up the toilet rolls!

Thawed out now

We had a couple of days where the water in the marina was frozen, it was minus 5, I heard it freezing over it makes a distinctive sound.

The ducks were most confused, the swan managed to stagger over to the boat for his breakfast.

CHS fitted secondary glazing to the bedroom windows, it's made a huge difference to the temperature at that end of the boat.

It's thawed now and chucking it down with rain, I've spent most of the day indoors, I've changed the bedding, an exhausting job that means leaping to and fro across the bed to tuck the edges in.

I've also stripped the vacuum cleaner down and put it together again.

I'm not sure how I'll cope if life gets any more exciting!

You've got what!

I've been following a thread on the MSE forum about simplifying live. Mostly it's about people who want to life with less stuff.
Obviously we have less stuff than most because we got rid of everything that didn't fit on the boat.
One post made me chuckle though, someone posted that she only had six handbags and that once she had one more that would be enough. 
I don't think I've ever has six handbags at once.
I have a rucksack for when I'm shopping and a small black clutch bag for posh. That's it and I manage very well with just those two bags.