My face has gone all crispy round the edges from the sunshine at the Crick Boat Show.
I
t was a three day window of wonderful weather supporting the monumental efforts of all concerned. We had a stonking good time enjoying music, exhibitor stands and the opportunity to sticky-beak around other people’s boats. Being on site for the build-up of the show gave us an insight into how much work was involved in creating the ‘show village’ and we witnessed cranes and lorries and proper boy things for a whole week before the show began.
As a first for us (what isn’t a first for us lately?) we and our also first-timer friends squeezed every moment out of every day in every effort to experience every thing available.
In preparation Mark and I made bunting. There’s nothing like coloured triangles to raise the spirits. We have a 51ft boat so we made 100ft of joined up coloured triangles. This was in reality rather an excess of bunting. Gusty winds prevented us from trooping the colour as we had envisaged so we made do with just half hitched up.
No matter – surely another opportunity will present itself to wear bunting in the future. (I ran up an additional tiny bunting set with the left over material for Father’s Day. It’s called Shed Bunting. What do you think?)
At the show we bought things. LED lighting to replace ordinary bulbs throughout the boat: very sensible. Brass cleaner: very necessary. Beer: essential. A Thermal Cooker: cosmic.
We only thought we needed the LED lighting but oh! the power of other new shiny things! The lovely chaps at Miracle Brass Brite gave an award winning service using our roof mushrooms as demonstration models showing how one’s ‘shrooms can be revitalised with their magic potions. From beyond the grave our ‘shrooms will live once more! The new bulbs are illuminating our nocturnal habits with wondrous cost saving efficiency thanks to Bedazzled and we are creating dinners with thermal power using Mr D’s Thermal Cooker which retains your dinner’s heat and continues its cooking with no further energy consumption. We’re blown away by this one. Proper eco grub.
The show has packed up and boats have been low-loadered off. All things spangly have left the marina and we too are leaving for our trip to Bristol.
The lovely Sarah and Rory (ever concerned for the welfare of others) have given us a plug in washing machine to keep us fresh and sparkly so I’ll let you know how that goes (the anticipation!) The details of daily ablutions is of constant concern and now having been disconnected from the convenience of the marina clothes washing is added to it.
It feels like winter has stolen too much of the year’s time but sunshine and sock-less weather is now upon us and so we will begin our slow pootle down the Oxford soaking up this new environment and feeding you snippets of action and information as we cruise on down, cruise on down the road…
Donna, Mark and Inky the greyhound have recently become canal liveaboards. They are sharing their enjoyments and enlightenments with us, thanks for their permission to publish!
Next, Donna, Mark and Inky start their journey south.
