Winds were forecast for last night, but nothing like the ones that arrived and stayed for the duration. Last night’s winds were, methinks, stronger than the winds in any of the recent “Named” storms. I am, of course, moored in Windy Alley, with wide-open flat fields to port and starboard, but even so…
The Cardinal rocked and tugged at his mooring ropes, the covers were flapping like flapping things, and Mr Stove occasionally went into “blast-furnace” mode when an up-gust or down-draught or something caught the flue. As is usual in these parts (England) the winds blew neither in one direction nor the other, but in all directions at once, sometimes twice.
One or two of the wavelets were of sufficient height to gargle up at me through the sinks, the wave tops (such as they are, we’re not talking North Sea here!) must have been significantly over the hull outlets and with enough force to “plop” up through the pipework.
Had the winds been at all forecast then I might have nipped out in “the prior” to bung on an extra rope or two. As it was, I was lucky that I hadn’t yet bothered to remove the extra “storm bungees” on the rear cover, so there was lovely for you, yes indeed.
Yesterday was a shopping day as in, a grocery delivery of the usuals. Tissues out of stock, rice a 500g bag instead of a 1kg, pasta some strange “other brand” and… two punches well below the belt, one to left, one to right…
French coffee substituted with Italian coffee, and broccoli out of stock.
If only the Greek and Roman gods knew how we suffer here in the foothills of Mount Olympus. Tsk tsk. 😉
Italian blend coffee is a weak little thing in comparison to my favoured French, but better than nowt. I have to snort three lines of dry coffee grounds through a rolled-up ten-bob note with Italian, rather than just the two with the French.
Broccoli? Are people (finally) panic-buying (my) broccoli now as well as Les Roll de Toilette? It’ll end in tears, unless they’re life-long broccoli-chompers they’ll find that they have no immunity to its green goodnesses. Tis lucky indeed that cabbbage and leek and sprouts were in.
Messrs Halsall of the Fuel Boat cruised by and left me six sacks of dinosaur remains on the well deck. I am trying to understand why, when previously I had eight bags on the well deck, just six now makes it seem cramped. Perhaps I’ve lost my stacking-mojo?
Today, once my litre of coffee has settled and the caffeine worked its magic, I plan on walking up past the lock to re-fill some potable (coffee & cookery) water cans, and then – in that order, for obvious reasons – I’ll wander up to the chandlery and do the necessary with a gazunder. Just in case the marina is ordered to put up the barbed wire by Lord Sir Admiral Prime Minister this afternoon – there have been rumblings of His Majesty “escalating” the “virus response”, whatever the heck that means. All businesses with the exception of food and drugs are, we are told, closed for the duration in Italy, perhaps Ingerlund is headed the same way?
The local fish-nibblers are still around – although I have yet to see them today, I wonder how far away the winds blew them?
Praise be to Sue at Venetian Hire Boats and Chandlery, I also have a sufficiency of Sprouting Brussels… thank’ee kindly! 😉
The trains are still passing on the (quite busy) railway line just up ahead – I wonder how long that will last for, will the Prime Minister bring them all to a screeching halt? One thing that I have not spotted at all so far while here is the usual twice-daily, once to Cumbria and then back, nuclear “waste” trains. Are they still running or are we sending that all by sea now to North Korea or something?
Right, I’d best get on with my jobs because if I don’t do them they won’t get done.
Hope that wherever you are, if you’ve had wind, that it amounted to nought but a fringe in disarray, or a mild and brief ballooning of the underwear.
The forecast here says 40mph for this afternoon. I laugh at such winds now, ha ha ha.
I wonder if the forecast is as (in)accurate as it was for last night?
Oh well. Perhaps that extra rope, Justin Case, eh?
Chin-chin, chaps.
Ian H. &etc.
[This blog post has been Approved under the Emergency Orders Act of 2020]
The Diesel-Electric Elephant Company. 
Tinned Brussels Sprouts? As if it isn’t windy enough!
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Ah but I’ve been veggie/vegan since the seventies (the nineteen-seventies, not earlier) and so have guts that can cope with greenery. 😉 In moderation…
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We are, at least, trying on this side of the pond, to keep it down to a slow crawl in it’s spread. Schools are closed, public gatherings are cancelled, including the college basketball tournament, which is nearly sacrilege. If too many people get critical at once, we will be screwed. Mostly I think we don’t know how many people have it because the test kits are being deployed well or aren’t working. So while my city nominally doesn’t have it, it turns out that’s probably because the bulk of the test kits don’t arrive until Monday. Hopefully we will be successful at slowing the spread, but at this rate I wonder if the company I work for will survive the pandemic. Our business is so bad right now that it’s sort of terrifying.
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I went briefly apoplectic this morning when I read that Dickie Branson, the Virgin fellow, wants the tax-payer to bail his airlines out to the tune of £750,000,000,000… The man ought to have been drowned at birth.
Meanwhile, as is usual, our government is doing its very best to judge things and gettting them so, so wrong! All change no change there.
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Politicians grasping at straws to save their arses, and spreading egregious information! It’s getting so that one might just start doubting their integrity, soon.
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Yes indeed so. The PM just announced – in not so many words – that all of the oldies (my generation and up) are to die for the cause, but everything will be fine because the cult of youth (i,e, the tax-base) willl survive happily ever after. Truly, the last string that made England feel in any way like “my” country has been cut. Sixties and up (or rather fifty-nine and three-quarters and up) are to be piled without thought, grace or regret (the Three Stooges) into mass graves so that the country can achieve “herd immunity” as soon as may be arranged. Life as usual, no restrictions on movement, no restrictions on mass gatherings, just all please do wash your hands a lot.
The Canal & River Tryst Charity (Only Joking) Ltd are parroting the same line – move move move, let’s moor in those towns, solialise at those lock flights. Apparently, if we have a “medical problem” (COVID-19, two gallons of fluid in each lung and/or death?) we must telephone our local Boat LIcence Support Officer to crave an “over-stay”… Yes I’m sure that this is the very first thing I’ll think of, should I contract a “medical problem”.
Jesus H! I despair – and England can do unto itself what it effectively just told me to do!
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Our electricity provider announced yesterday that they will, out of the goodness of their hearts offer ‘generous’ payment plans’ for those unfortunates who cannot pay their bills in full and on time. I was rendered speechless at their open-hearted response to the crisis.
A friend of mine commented that she felt like she was in the opening sequence of a science-fiction disaster movie. Unfortunately the ‘surreal’ is now real.
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The cities and large towns are going to get very, very ugly very quickly indeed. The U.K. government appears to have remained in Cloud Cuckoo land and completely mis-judged this one, trying for some sort of “immunity” experiment, when China and most scientists say that having this virus once doth not immunity confer (like flu and the common cold).
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Wind can be mighty disruptive and even productive (postwise). I was surprised with my shop delivery on Weds when there was nothing missing my panic buying of another pack of fresh brussels arrived (didn’t order any broccoli) as did my 2.5 kilo of potatoes (I think that’s 5lb in old money), had to pick the smallest one for a jacket potato last might as the other 4 potatoes in the bag were too big!
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I do like a nice jacket spud, but they’re very energy-intensive to cook. I never seem to be able to get them with thick, thick skins on the way that my mum used to. Might be me, might be the spuds! Probably me…
My sprouts with this latest order were enormous too – like mini-cabbages, more so than usual! The software for the world has become corrupted. 😉
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We are in proper panic here. Not one confirmed case in my city, but we can’t be left out. We declared a state of emergency in the city anyway. Honestly. They do this so the access to funds doesn’t require legislation. But calling a preparatory measure an emergency seems ludicrous. Or merely making it easier for politicians to dip fingers into money while everyone is in a blind panic.
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Politicians and fingers is the most likely scenario.
The Prime Minister here in Ingerlund has just announced lots and lots and lots of nothing. No measures will be taken yet because not enough people are sick or dying and “they” – the system – can only tackle the peak, in perhaps ten to fourteen weeks’ time… In other words, let’s all carry on as normal spreading this about for a while. The Chief Medical Officer made the most extraordinay statement about the average person infecting two to three people, so most infection occurring in the home, not at mass gatherings such as football matches… Um, that average doesn’t mean that the infection in one infected person somehow “gives up” infecting others after three! It just means that the infection’s “success rate” averages two to three! One typhoid Mark or typhoid Mary walking through a football crowd coughing would have a much higher success rate.
Causation and correlation are not the same damned thing! I despair, really I do.
The canal rozzers meanwhile are insisting on full movement of boats, no more than fourteen days in one place – move through those towns, lick those balance beams at locks, spread that infection!
The devaluation of individual human life and the prioritisation of money money money is glaringly obvious, written in neon! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
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