Mr God also get his electricity from the sky, but he doesn’t bother with solar panels.
I can’t remember exactly when or even where I took this phomatograph. The church and gravestones are very real, the light-er-ning is fakery of course.
Did anyone else love most things that Hammer Films Ltd turned out? I generally watched them in bed, on a 12″ b/w “portable” television and with headphones.
Whatever.
Treated myself to another splendid cruise-ette yesterday, untying and away very quietly at 05:45hrs, with just a smidge-o da light mist and some low sunshinery. After the queue at Nantwich Services though (see previous posts) I took no liberties with the time of day, being careful to manoeuvre into and tie up as far to one end of the Calveley Services wharf as could be… as I always ought… and another boat did indeed oik up at about 06:30hrs.
Nothing is sacred anymore, not even emptying the Elsan cassettes down the sluice.
Half-past Sparrow-Cough O’Clock and I have to smile and make ruddy small-talk as I snap off my gloves, tear off the plastic apron and spray myself under the arms with biodegradeable Flash-with-Bleach.
I really ought to get some pyjamas, and then I wouldn’t have to sleep in plastic apron and gloves.
The sunshinery was, of course, misleading the witness, Yer Honour, since while the season may finally be turning (from Winter to whatever it is we’re going to have next), the past few days and indeed the week to come look sunny, cloudy, cool, and with precipitation abounding. Thus far the rain has been relatively clean, and I’ve not had to persuade eight tonnes of Saharan sand off the solar panels. If it’s not blowing from that direction then this probably just means that it’s blowing in via Chernobyl instead.
I remember well that when someone in Pripyat kicked over the morning’s bucket of radioactive feed intended for the carbon rods in the barn yours truly wasn’t satsified with just being in England. Oh no, I had to get closer to the fall-out action; I was in Norway. This probably accounts for why my eyes glow in the dark. We digress though.
As well as sharing the Services with SS Happy Wanderer I shared the Bunbury winding hole with a swan and a large floating island of weed*.
*No, sadly.
The swan was at least active in keeping out of my way, the floating island wanted nothing more than to home in on the Cardinal’s prop and begin an intimate relationship.
The Cardinal and I turned – under the piercing gaze of the cat living on the boat so conveniently moored right on the winding hole approach-next-the-encroaching-reeds – without actually making Swan-&-Weed-Soup.
Space was available – praise be to Zeus et al – on the moorings down by the bridge, so I done bunged us on them. There’s an Internet Tree growing in the field on the offside; splendid.
The towpath – after The Ra-a-ains Down In A-a-a-frica – is mudful, but nothing like the oomska quagmires of our previous visits. So far. Will only be here a couple of days anyway, so if Quag’s Mud Pudding it wants to become then so be it. I soon have other places to meet, people to be.
There’s some electrickeral work to organise, Pizza Night at my favourite marina next week, and – when I can raise the mental oomf – arrangements to be thought out and put in place for blacking the Cardinal’s bum (renewing the protective paint on the hull).
I need a sit down after just thinking about that.
A sit down in front of something soothing.
I’ll be complaining about being too warm soon enough. Ruddy summer.
Moan moan moan, it’s all I ever do. You’d think that I’d been trained in childhood by watching too many Hammer films.
Grr.
Argh.
They just don’t make ’em like that these days, sadly.
Chin-chin.
Ian H., & Cardinal W., neither of us owned by a Chinese shipping corporation.
The Diesel-Electric Elephant Company. 
That’s a wonderful picture and no mistake, reminds me of my youth….but that’s another story!
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I well remember those floating islands – the Laputias of the Lancaster Canal – often occupied by colonies of arrogant looking ducks using herons as tillers, sometimes by sleeping tramps, unaware that their sections of bank had torn away in the night and were now heading for the nearest aqueduct where extra caution was needed as to which side of the bed you got out of in the morning.
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Of particular concern are the floating islands of weed that have obvious heavy industry developing on them and… little people. I avoid those with more than usual energy.
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Aaah. Nuclear. If only there wasn’t any fallout.
I will go to my grave surprised that it was Russia and not the US that spawned that disaster. But give us another minute. We’ll get ‘er done. Bigger and Worse. Because it’s a race you know.
Sigh. If only there was a decent country to be from. But as all of them are filled with humans, there isn’t.
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I think that all nuclear nations have so far had an attempt of some sort on destroying our Planet A – imagine the genuine figures and incidents were politicians and civil servants to actually tell the truth. Heck, in England we can’t even keep old reservoirs from collapsing, we have no chance of containing any power source more volatile than a D-Cell battery. Even then if there were a problem with it we’d have to borrow the bucket of sand…
Humans as a species have quite the most insanely skewed set of life-values.
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Re Chernobyl you needed to have been living in France. The government’s chief scientist – well, that’s what they said he was – assured the nation that the contamination had been turned back at the French frontier…no risk at all of contaminated pastures, unlike places like GB whose frontier defences were clearly inadequate…
When he retired some years later he said he had lied….one imagined that the French must still have been relying on the Maginot Line…
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The whole thing seemed (to me, at least) to have been rather understated then and still so now, we all just had to accept the inevitability of fall-out (and be like good little sheep that couldn’t be sold on the market for fifty-thousand years). The odd nuclear-waste train occasionally thunders north past these moorings, presumably with the waste headed for burial somewhere in Northumbria or Cumbria or somewhere else where no politician lives. Between one to three “flasks” each on its own flat-bed “carriage” and always two engines, presumably to guard agin breakdowns and steep inclines. A horrid sight.
I seem to remember La Belle France embracing nuclear power with some enthusiasm back in the day – are they still enthusiastic, or is there a wind turbine and two solar panels atop the Eye-Full Tower these days? I suppose that having once committed to nukular they have to keep running the beasties. All part of the delightful (!) insanity of the Human species I suppose.
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There is a nuclear power station near Chinon….an area nearby – Ile de Veron – was known for market gardening. Its produce is now bought in by the state and the rate of leucaemia is well above the national norm. The thing leaks like a seive, and it’s not the only one. The oyster producers round the south of Brittany and the Vendee make their living from the compensation for not being able to sell their bivalves thanks to pollution from yet another power station…and I believe the same happens up in the Cotentin….information from a friend who works for IFREMER.
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Madness, isn’t it? Japan already has or is about to discharget tonnes and tonnes of radioactive water into the oceans – oceans that we all share, it’s not as though the water all turns back at the borders, a la Monsieur French Chief Scientist! We’re like children let loose in a laboratory with no parental control. If we survive as a species then it will be by the skin of our teeth and completely incidentally.
We are not unlike a baboon, lazing in a tree-top, showing off by twirling a stolen revolver around – totally unaware that the safety catch is off and there’s one up the spout.
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There’s nothing we Brits enjoy more than a good moan. I’ve been moaning about the elongation of winter. Still got heating on in mid May! Never heard of before. But suddenly it’ll be summer and far too hot. The weather in this fair land of ours can never make up its mind. Indecisive, that’s what it is.
What happened to us getting a Mediterranean climate, that was suggested some years ago?
Still, at least you’ve not got half the Sahara Desert on your panels.
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The calendar certainly needs some major re-alignment – the beginning of summer moved to perhaps June, and a two-week portion shaved off and declared to be Summer in February for that short spell of short-sleeve whether we seem to get then these days! That, or all of the seasons need to officially overlap by six months. Still, it’s only been about 11,000 years since the previous ice-age, so who knows?
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The need for pyjamas has done scary things on my imaginating eyeballs. I’ll pop back later…
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There’s really no need for panic, as well as the disposable plastic apron and gloves I also wear sunglasses and a French beret when sleeping. It’s the full outfit as recommended. I really ought to dress fully before cruising though. 😉
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Reading your latest report about the jolly life to be had on the gut brings to mind the story of my dearly loved mantel clock for that too has a winding hole, pure coincidence or something stranger, if the latter perhaps I should say hello
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My parents had a mantelpiece clock, a whyndy-up one with splendid Westminster chimes. There was some ritual when Father wound it up – weekly I think – and others were discouraged from winding it. The key to a good winding is to turn at the correct rate. [Do you see what I did there? eh? eh?]
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