Quality Street

Isn’t it funny how things are never the same as how you remember them.  At Christmas, we always used to have a tin of Quality Street.  After seeing them advertised on the TV, and some reminiscing, he came home with a tin.  After much cursing as I tried to get the lid off, we rummaged for our favourites, mine being the purple ones with the nut in the middle, or the green triangles, and his being, well, the ones I don’t like.

I always thought that there would be equal numbers of each type of sweet, but as I rummaged, it seemed that there were not as many of the ones I liked as there were of the one’s I didn’t.  So, being a bit sad, I tipped them out onto the carpet, and sorted them into little piles.  Here’s the result.

The numbers were quite varied.  5 green triangles against 12 toffee pennies.  15 strawberry creams against 1 orange cream, and so on.  The purple ones, the one with the toffee and the nut in the middle are actually now called “the purple one” on the leaflet, and contain pieces of nut, rather than a whole nut.  Funny how things are never the same as you remember them being.

So, next time you put your hand in a tin of sweets and think to yourself “someone’s eaten all the hazelnut whirls!”, chances are they haven’t and there were only two in there to start with.

Pleased with Progress

Saturday saw a trip to Great Haywood to see how the boat was coming along.  Unusually, it was a nice day, the sun was shining, and there was no wind – good boating weather.  Every other time we’ve been there it’s been bloody freezing.

Anyway, on to the boat.  The portholes and Houdini hatches are in,

and the lining out of the inside, including most of the trim, has been completed.  It looks like a boat now, as opposed to a bare shell.  Ben has also divided up the space so you can see how big each room will finally be.

Taken from the front doors, lounge towards the galley.

  From the galley towards the front doors.

Galley itself.  Ben had drawn the units out onto the floor, and there is going to be loads of room.

Bedroom at the rear, leading into the bathroom.

Nice chunky trim – 35 mm, apparently.

Nice big lounge.  You can just see the back end of NB Dutch Barge Trudy-Ann through the doors.

Only small change has been the dinette which is now 5’, as the size we had specified wasn’t quite big enough.  We’re not planning to use it as a second bed in any case, so that’s fine.  We were pleased at how light it was inside with the portholes, having 3 hatches does make a lot of difference.  It’s all looking really good.

Reminiscing

Whilst rummaging in a box for something yesterday, I came across a CD with some photos of our last boat, Chaos (shows how long ago it was when we were all saving our pictures to CD!).  So, in a reminiscent moment, and in the absence of anything else boaty to post, here they are.

 

The letters are actually stick-on ones (I know, I can see you all wincing from here), but not long afterwards we took all these off and had the signwriting done properly by Phil Chalker, which looked much better.

One side of the boat actually had something like 8 coats, because he wasn’t happy with the finish.

 

and of course, I won’t mention the time he polished the roof (which didn’t have any non-slip stuff on it) and the gunwales!  It looked lovely and shiny though.

Note the flower boxes?  With the roof nicely polished, they used to slide from side to side as the boat rocked!

 

It was a nice old boat!

Sprayfoam

So, it seems we’ve been sprayfoamed, and I never felt a thing!  Firstly, nice picture of boat in the sunshine.

I can see a head at the hatch, but it’s not me!  Then, along comes a figure in white…

  and as far as I can tell, makes a right old mess!

And the finished article, I think.

Paneling out next, I think?

Progress Decisions

A small moment of excitement this morning!!   Ben called with a question – boaty decisions already.  So, today’s big decision is, what kind of radiators do we want?   He is about to start the fitting the panels, and this will make a difference to where the trim goes.

So, the options are:

• Radiator Covers hiding ordinary radiators
• Swanky Radiators
• Fin Rads 

Luckily, we’d already talked about this at some length.  We have a radiator cover at home in the hallway, and while it looks nice, it does restrict the amount of heat that comes out.  We had already discounted fin rads – well, in fact we hadn’t considered them an option.  So, of course, our radiators of choice will be Swanky!!

Mundane Stuff

I am very conscious of a) not turning this into a cat blog, and b) not going down the road of got up, cleaned my teeth, looked out of the window, etc.  That said, having a narrowboat built (this being the main purpose of the blog), involves a lot of limbo time.  Waiting for the shell to be started, waiting for the shell to be finished, waiting for the fitting out to start, etc, etc.  It’s all waiting, and right now is the worst kind of waiting.  The shell is finished, but fitting out hasn’t really started yet, so there’s nothing to see, and hence nothing much to write about.

So, some mundane nonsense to keep us all going.

I made some rolls.  Isn’t it funny how when you buy bread from the supermarket, it keeps fresh for days.  When you make it yourself, it’s almost stale before it’s cold.  Or maybe it’s the way I make it!!

Second mundane snippet of the week – the conservatory finally arrived.  Three hours work has resulted in this, although it’s not actually screwed down yet.

He says it won’t take very long to finish, which is good, as climbing out over the unfinished footings to the washing line is starting to get a bit of a trial.

Finally, the Cat (I know, cat blog!!) comes home on Friday!