Life is full of events.
Thursday afternoon. I was in a Saturday-night's-party-arrangements summit meeting with Genevieve next-barge, when Boat Husband sent this thrilling message...
We rushed over to see the illuminations
..and the wall sockets. Plugs can be put into them and exciting things happen!!
Boiling water and brown toast for example!
Our toaster, until now browning on reduced voltage, has never produced anything more than a slight crisp - this is revolutionary!
Look - night at the windows and our own miniature suns inside!
Steve has cut and tied and joined the numberless metres of trailing leads, the spaghettis of wires. No more volt drop when the kettle goes on! No more fumbling about in the shadows or dazzled by work lights! No more tripping or garrotting in the gloaming!
Although some scenes, it is true, had always looked better in the twilight...
And when the lights cut out (for testing purposes), the emergency light activated!
Steve had been beavering all day to finish electrifying all Davenham's living spaces...
After several weeks, 600 metres of yellow and blue cable,
400 screws
and approximately 3500 nails,
we are electrified!!!
And he had also found us a good deal on a chop saw - a marvellous invention - which slices through wood like a hot knife through butter! Methinks Boat Husband and I will be squabbling over our shiny new toy...
He and I had had quite a busy day ourselves. While poor Scotland was being ravaged by 100 mile an hour gales, some tempestuous weather had been forecast here too and, although nothing in comparison, the wind was blustery and became wilder as the morning wore on.
Its exertions had lifted and shifted the PVC shroud which, with each lunge, was gradually sidling from the port side and over the wheelhouse roof to starboard. If the wind so inclined, the enormous sheet could take off like a parachute and our concern was the damage it could do to the other boats.
Our puny pullings and tuggings were no match for the wind which would agitate at the sheet for a while and then, having lulled us into thinking calm had returned, surprise us with violent jerks and billowing.
Bunching a corner with rope and full body heaving from the quayside proved futile. By this time, the PVC had been dragged further by its own weight and an enormous curtain was hanging over the water.
A pretty sky that would not have been visible if the shroud had still been covering the engine room roof...
We couldn't decide whether to remove it completely - so disheartening after everyone's efforts last weekend and quite a challenge in itself - or try, somehow, to keep it in place. It was the somehow that we couldn't work out. What we needed was a cherry- picker to be able to reach and yank it back into position. Since that wasn't an option, we focused our attentions on securing the existing cover which, now exposed, was also being worryingly roughed up.
The Captain, against orders, clambered up to the roof in what was, to say the least, boisterous gusts, to reinforce that with battens too.
In the end, the wind made the decision for us when it wrenched the sheet into the air like a gigantic sail and flung it into the river...
During that night, the tidal surge which caused devastation along the east coast and in towns not far from us, also briefly struck the marina. Boat Husband said he had woken to a cacophony of creaking and banging and had watched his shirts swinging on their hangers. I had slept through it all.
Evidence of its visitation was the old gangplank's displacement...
and wheel tracks indicated that the Splendid Gangplank had moved an unusually long way and that Davenham must have been carried very close to, or against, the quayside. That, perhaps, would explain all the noise.
A scar in the mud seemed to describe the arc of the PVC sheet's drag by the swell...
Most of our neighbours had also been deeply slumbering and so had no experiences to report but someone said that someone else had seen one of the car parks temporarily flood and a lot of swimming rats.
So, there the shroud remains, half on and half off.
Henry had retreated from all the drama, ruminating on matters of interior design...
For two or three days low tide was exceedingly low and revealed the islands in the middle of the river...
On Sunday morning Rolf came to help us haul the shroud in. Water had filled it like a balloon and it was like trying to move a blubbery, beached seal. Impossible.
We would wait for high tide to float it.
But it was the day after the huge fun of the night before and high tide would be darkness so Project Re-Re-Shroud will have to wait in the mud.
Rolf said, in his mischievous Rolfy way, "I told you so!" And he was right. We should have immediately and rigorously fastened it last weekend but other chores and the waning light were against us and when the weather is clement it can't be imagined behaving differently a few days hence...
Lesson learned.
Here are some cheery pictures of our party food creations to lighted the mood....
Genevieve with her scrumptious roulades...
And some fabulous, firey Sunday sunsets to close this post...
