Our week at home culminated in a lovely evening of dining out with close friends before we headed  out to the East Riding Theatre.     There we were warmly greeted by two FOH volunteers who have both known Storm and I for many many years.    We were there to see  As We Forgive Them written by Richard Vergette.  I knew the director, Andy Pearson, and one of the cast members, Marc Pickering, from my days at Hull Truck.  We can thoroughly recommend this to anyone who can get tickets before next Saturday.

Our route back from Beverley to our mooring yesterday took us through snow covered hills and over various canals: the Market Weighton Canal, the Pocklington Canal, the Aire & Calder navigation twice, the Calder Hebble, the Rochdale Canal twice, the Ashton Canal, the Bridgewater Canal and finally the Shropshire Union.  I’m not sure many motorists would realise this.

The air back on the boat felt particularly chilly and our first priority was to light the stove. I sorted this out while Storm unpacked the car. I put the central heating on too and turned up all the radiators to maximum to help take the chill off.   After making up the bed and having a cup of coffee, we closed the boat back up and headed off to Laura’s for a couple of hours leaving the fire to work its’ magic.  There we were pounced on and spent two hours playing.  We returned before tea to a lovely snug boat and spent the evening catching up on the Saturday papers and watching telly.

This week we’ve been back at home.   I’ve been absolutely full of cold and, not wanting to infect anyone else, we’ve been quite antisocial keeping ourselves to ourselves.  After a trip to the docs I’ve been diagnosed with Sinusitis and have been sent away with some antibiotics so hopefully I’m going to be feeling a whole lot better soon as it’s many years since I’ve felt this bad.

The sale of our house is taking longer than anticipated.  This hasn’t been good for our blood pressure levels but we think we’re nearly there and hope to exchange very soon.   In the meantime, we’re hoping that we may also have found the next housing project that we’ve been looking for but won’t know for sure until next month.  Fingers crossed.

It looks like we’ve missed some excitement back at the mooring though as another car appears to have missed the bend at the bridge and plunged into the canal.  I think this is the third in the last year.  Thankfully, no-one has been hurt.

We’ve been back on the boat since Monday and were glad that our ordered coal had been delivered  in our absence as we’ve had the stove going full-time since keeping us warm and snug. Our winter duvet has come out too.     We have a stew slow cooking on the stove.

The short days seem to pass quickly as we try to get most things done in  daylight.    Max has enjoyed some nice sunny walks and we’ve managed trips to the park with Summer.

There are no plans to cruise at the moment as we are in demand elsewhere.