There's a storm a comin'....

 

Storm ‘George Eustless’, aptly named after the Environmental Secretariat minister, has really made a mess around here with conditions having deteriorated all week. From the endless annoyingly lashing midweek rain to the weekend warnings of an incoming stupidly named storm as gusts build to ‘very windy’ on the big grownups wind-chart with records recording that it’s worse than the very old, stiff winds first recorded back in the blowy day’s of 1764 when wind was quite strong.

The climate change is happening under our very runny noses and is also happening a bit quicker than he thought and us boater’s are feeling the brunt of it.

Waves reaching up to 4 inches were recorded breaking on the banks of the very full Lancaster canal and all towpaths have now been re-classified as ‘treacherous’ by a government sauce.

A 78 year old dog walker was seen battling the winds and struggling with the pooh bags billowing and blowing about uncontrollably, splattering startled fishermen with canine faecal matter, cold chaps who were already struggling to cast in the unseasonably high gusts due to Brexit.

As a swan blew past, The Canal and Rivers Trust immediately tweeted to close off all water-points in case the stupid people decide to ‘nip out for a top up’ and end up wedgin’ their longboats under a tiny bridge and they have also used the opportunity to warn of severe delays to hedge cutting and dredging work as volunteers get re-classified as ‘furloughed’.

As the eye of the storm moves into the North West, the CRT have also urged boater’s to ‘hunker down’ and issued warnings to us to secure windows, hatches, ropes and ‘all that crap and clutter that you keep on the roof’ to avoid flying debris that could include common items such as ‘unused’ life saving rings, massive tv aerials, plastic plant pots and bags of cat litter...

Here, on the mooring a ‘Critical incident’ was declared when an old oak tree up the top o’ the field toppled over and narrowly missed one of Farmer Jim’s best mule ewes but unfortunately took out 3 fence posts and bust his new lick bucket....a local quickly and informatively tweeted...

“ It wer’a big bastard...!”

...and then a chainsaw drowned out the rest....

BBC community news indicated that ‘significant disruption’ had occurred in the southern reaches when apparently a shed roof blew off in London village and townsfolk had to be evacuated to Germany but here in Lancashire, my shed stood firm with felt intact. 

Like an old pensioner that prioritises fags, I have been left without power, as my gas bottle ran out, but on the flip side I have acquired 2 trampolines, 6 umbrellas and half a tent..

Amber warning to be updated at 21:00 

Ratcliffe Wharf will remain closed until April 2022

Todays track from the wonderfully talented Richard Hawley, finishing off a live set in Leeds and finishing my blog too....enjoy!

Old Man...

 Todays technical blog is about engines so if any girls are listening you might want to turn over as its probably going to get a little too complicated for you to comprehend the ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ of it all....

The ‘head’ is back on now but while attempting this complicated surgery he severed a main artery and diesel started to piss out uncontrollably so unfortunately, under current NHS post -Covid rules, the operation had to be cut short. This ultimately means that another slot will have to be booked to finish the job off, thus allowing the head doctor to legally demand that I pay even more money 💰 than intended to pay in first place!

By the end of all this he will, however, have completely pimped my ride and I’m sure I will fully appreciate the level of comfort and reliability that a newly refurbished BMC1500 diesel performance engine offers.

The head has been completely lobotomised and skimmed with “seven thouw” shaved off, new injectors fitted and valve guides guided. With new heater plugs and filters fitted and a sump full of clean lubricant it will soon be time to ‘fire her up’ once again.

But this comes with a warning..⚠️

This is that when the turbo kicks in and we are at ‘top dead centre’, my induction stroke will now return to create a massive load of frightfully powerful compression up past my ‘ring’ so there is a good chance it will ‘blow the arse’ out of my bottom-end and il be piston-broke once again..

At that point I will  hear the immortal words of the late great Fred Dibnah laughing, with a fag hanging from the corner of his mouth, saying “Did yer like that!!??”

Oh the joys of boating...

Iv always liked messing about with engines, ever since I learned of all the comedic words associated with this practice. I remember as a lad, flicking through what should have been boring Haynes manuals but coming across a whole world of unusually bizarre words with such gems like ‘dipstick’, shaft, con-rods, big-ends, horn and fluids. Not to mention the one that always provoked uncontrollable laughter that was ‘blowing a seal’...

...it still creates a smile even at age 56, today!

I uncovered an alternative universe of incredible words with interesting connotations that involved practices like  ‘bleeding’, damping, pumping and lubricating’. Then throw in the odd job that involves ‘sucking on a pipe’, ‘oiling a worn shaft’ or ‘greasing a rubber’ then my childhood lesson from my dear old perpetually oily-faced grandad was complete.

Thanks to him, I learnt what it meant if my brakes were ‘spongy’ or my ‘flange’ was worn out and I knew what to do if my ‘oil was creamy’ or if one of my ‘plugs wer’oiled up’ and I was only running on ‘3 pots’...

When he diagnosed my problem once as “shit in the carburettor” I remember thinking to myself ‘how often do I need to do that?’....This pupil had a lot to learn back then!

 

The song today has been chosen from‘Harvest’ as Neil Young’s album is 50 years old this month being released in 1972 so Iv chosen a relevant track from it for my dear old dead Grandad...

 

Where’s your head at....?

 

It’s not all about performance...but i do have an expectation that things will work, especially when you have spent so much time and money and investment on them so when they don’t it’s very, very annoying.

But today, I  still find myself waiting and waiting to watch the machine spring back into life and start to purr again. The anticipation of this happening is driving me mad and I’m still not sure whether or when I will witness such an event?....dark days indeed and powerless despair down here on the cut!

It’s bad enough to have witnessed the breakdown first hand in such a harsh environment but then to have to wait such a long time so see if someone can fix it is frustrating to say the least.

Are you not supposed to be the ‘man who knows’ when it comes to getting things to work?...I’m beginning to lose confidence in your abilities especially when you are supposed to have all the tools to hand and the best workshop in town.

Yes, I understand that there are lots of moving parts that all have to be synchronised in order for the whole thing to work properly and if just one fails then you are not going to get very far, I get this, but I didn’t realise it was going to take soooo bloody long to find a solution!

Hopefully, by the weekend all the faults will be rectified, batteries charged up and the propulsive power will be restored to give an injection of hope.

Well that’s what you have promised so let’s just see, eh?

I really don’t want to hear any more excuses of what you should and shouldn’t have done or how bad the faults were....so c’mon Eddie, just fix the bloody thing and get it working properly again....Otherwise I’m going have to start to support Scottish 🏉rugby...Yes, it’s got THAT serious....

Remember what Basement Jaxx said, “we can evolve, evolve without you...”

Oh, by the way....my cylinder head should be back this weekend from the head doctor so that’s quite exciting too...

The road to the 6Nations and the blog continues...

California Dreamin’...

Well...after thousands of emails demanding “Why don’t you write them witty and informative blogs anymore”.?...and littered with worthy praise like “as I found your literary skills littered with bad grammar and your misguided observational musings so amusing and informative, not to mention enlightening.....and the world is such a grim place without them”

Really...?...so I have relented and bowed down to peer pressure!

View from the bow

Really...? Well...not really....I was just talking the other day and remembered that I used to enjoy to write occasionally and thought I should maybe give it another bash and do an update. I then made a New years resolution, there and then on the 26th Jan that I could at least try to produce at least one blog for each month of the year for 2022,,,can’t I?...we’ll see, can’t promise but I will try.

So here goes...I have revamped it and rebranded the product to freshen things up but it will be the same old me moaning about stuff, littered with inspirational pics and misinformed musings with a song based theme of my choice....

why change a winning formula?

I had better start with an update from where I left off.

After living and working in Italy I returned to blighty as I did each winter following the olive harvest. This time it was to serve a 2 year jail sentence thanks to Covid19...well it certainly felt that way! 

As the problem with the dreaded lurgy got worse, returning was not a viable option so I found re employment here and finally, after all the lockdowns, I was tagged and released and arrived back on Nb Andromeda as my weekday residence once again. 

I had a few bike trips to blog about but not much else inspired me so I thought I’d feature the boat life a bit more...for now.

She started up on only the second time of asking and was dry as a bone inside when I returned. She had suffered over 4 years in solitude on the mooring but had ‘wintered’ well’ so I was pleased with her general condition following my neglect of the trusty craft.

I had a few sails up and down as restrictions allowed in to 2021 but things weren’t going very well in the engine department. The old BMC 1500 was becoming to get a little too warm and a little too smoky for my liking 🧐something menopausal was up with the owd lass...

Today, she sits in navy blue livery, still unnamed, still off-grid on the same private mooring but with half the engine block missing. She had a few ‘temperature’ problems that were diagnosed as ‘the cylinder heads gone, mate”...so now, the cylinder head HAS gone...to the head doctor!

He came, he diagnosed and then promptly left with it, last seen pushing it up the field in an old wheelbarrow....

Like a reverse Father Christmas!

Life goes on....slowly.

It’s never my favourite time of year but it’s a mild, wintery scene that I’m painting for you here with the hedges cut short, the muddy towpath, the odd quack from a lonely mallard and the occasional red nosed rambler lurching past the window clutching a bag of warm dog pooh....followed by a happy, relieved fat labradoodle!

The Azzurri skies are a distant memory...

All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey

The rain patters on the steel roof

The solar panel is hopelessly inactive 

Candles flicker

The mooring is slippy

Empty fields 

Frosty mornings 

This is the time when Pikey’s patrol the towpath with their stiff rods, wrapped up like mummies in camouflage pants and six coats trying to catch a wiley pike.

Did I mention the overbearing grey skies?

Nothing is “unprecedented’ anymore.

The parties are over...

And then an odd splash in the night...I wonder what that could be...Boris, is that you?

On the water, not many boats pass by, only a lonely young swan patrolling the cut these days looking for a mute mate that keeps stopping here to polish off most of my weekly edible groceries, snatched through the kitchen window.

I will probably contract Avian Influenza from the big greedy sod!

As the Ecofan spins furiously on the hot stove the log store continues to deplete....

Oh Madonna!, I’m depressed now...Iv turned into one of my heroes, Jon Richardson.

As my sad log store succumbs to the winter months, the cheery media now warn of rising fuel costs so, the good news is that the strong winds brought an old Ash tree down opposite so I reckon that’s me heading for carbon neutralisation. With the Ying and the Yang perfectly re-balanced, Putin can turn off the tap for all I care....I just need a hand to get the big heavy bugger over this side of the cut before the thieving boater’s in the area get wind of it and try to steal what i class as...all mine!

Storm ‘Alwyn’ also kindly ripped the felt off the shed roof so that was another job to do, so thanks to the windy Welsh wizard I spent a happy afternoon mopping up rain and then slopping bitumen about and nailing on a new membrane.

So, shall I conclude for January?

It’s a start, isn’t it?...not too political, not too topical, or rude and even kept on the ‘boating’ theme for most of it...for now!

Ok, See you in then February shipmates!

All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown) 

And the sky is gray (and the sky is gray) 

I've been for a walk (I've been for a walk) 

On a winter's day (on a winter's day)…

I chose this song to open with as its subjective meaning is simply, “dreaming of California.” The first verse mentions warm Los Angeles, and contrasts it with the local cold and wintery weather. And dreaming is not literally REM stage sleep, but rather, thinking of being in L.A. (Or some other warm place) rather than the bleak place they are experiencing at present....I know how they felt...but what a bloody haircut!

Things can only get better...

Ok, that’s the end of the trip. We had gone out in the sunshine and returned back in the rain passing once again the thought-provoking plaque to little Clare and Paula before we boarded onto the morning ferry.

The synopsis of our visit to Northern Ireland was very positive, the people we had met and spoken with along the way had been friendly and the drivers very courteous to us cyclists. 

Some flag waving Nationalist and Republican areas still seem uneasy and are a reminder that trouble could quite easily return and the gates could be closed overnight if the peace process was upset in any way...fingers crossed that this never happens.

On the whole, we had a great time so thanks to Buster and Pongo for the company and the ‘craic’...just need to get a few repairs done to the bike for the next one!

Today’s final title track from Derry band D-Ream that included a young Professor Brian Cox on keyboards.

https://youtu.be/V6QhAZckY8w

Chasing Cars...

Today was to be a jaunt taking the riverside route and cycleway down the River Lagan from Belfast to Lisburn.

Breakfast stop off at the Lock keepers Cottage by the overgrown and neglected canal

At Lisburn I stopped for a chat with Eric Morcambe, the comedic inventor of the defibrillator!

A few miles from Lisburn was affluent Hillsborough, with its royal residence for the Secretary of Northern Ireland and somewhere that Liz and Phil can stay when they visit the territories.

When they go out for a pint they usually visit the trendy Smithfield House bar in downtown Lisburn, so we did the same.

Todays track by frontman Gary Lightbody from up the road in Bangor, Northern Ireland lead the successful band ‘Snow Patrol’ that I once saw as a support band to ‘Athlete’ back in the early nineties. 

https://youtu.be/GemKqzILV4w

A Lady of a Certain Age...

Today, was going to be easier as it was not as far to make the return journey back to Belfast up the west side of the lake. We left an overcast Ardglass after a good breakfast. Downpatrick, Killyleagh and then a brew stop at ‘Daft Eddies’ at Whiterock.

From here it was back to Comber and returning down the Greenway towards the cranes on the docks.

The evening beverage was taken in certain lovely old famous Belfast pub owned by the National Trust that was opposite the most bombed hotel in the world...The Europa, bombed 32 times!!

Today’s track is by the the lovely Neil Hannon and Divine Comedy born in Belfast. Some of the best lyrics that you will hear in a beautifully crafted song.