A Magical Mooch a la Cruise-ette Domesticus

If a scoot to the services can ever be described as such!

There’s one thing about oiking up the Bunbury Windy-Windy Hole at this time of year – never forget, when attaching the waggle-stick and otherwise preparing the boat, to also lay out the sun shades. Cruising there will see the sun on your back (if it’s up at all) but the return will see it right in your eyes, bouncing off the canal water. I wonder what that would sound like, if we could hear the Sun? Probably best that we can’t. P’doinnnngg-zap?

I began, quite deliberately and as is my long felt wont, when most (but not all) were still a-bed, wrapped in the alms [sic] of Morpheus. Cool, misty, and moisty was it then.

The it of it quickly became Sun Factor Ugh of course, into the high eighties of the Fahrengezundheitings and fetid with it (the word ‘humid’ doesn’t seem to live up to the ughness of the hoo-mid-e-tea sometimes). Moan moan moan. 😉

I enjoyed by far the better part of the day, setting off before six o’sundial and being serviced and on slightly fresh moorings not long after eight o’hundred hours. Messrs Supermarket & Co are scheduled to call here today, which is wot is why I &etc’d yesterday.

The light at the start of these interesting days changes swiftly.

Calveley was a veritable jam-packedness of boatery from one end, madam, right to the other. There was, of course, the complimentary peasant moored alongside the reed overgrowth, right next to the winding hole. Isn’t there always one, or more such? ‘Moored’ is perhaps a strong word to use for the loose, hairy string attaching the boat to the planet, for the beast swung out a yard or so as I bumbled past, taking up much of the space twixt bank, boat and reeds. Some people only carry a brain a-top their spine because it acts as stuffing and prevents their head from looking like a deflated badger’s ar*se.

So long a line of sleeping boats took me longer than I’d thought to cruise past, tickover doesn’t half become boring after a while, even for a slowth-merchant like me.

I think that my presence on the service area perhaps annoyed the only other boat I saw moving, even though there was plenty of space for them too and at the “pump-out” end, which is what they needed. My god, from the niff wafting in my direction did they ever need a pump-out! They certainly weren’t overly-effusive with the good mornings and the nods.

Mind you, not many folk are these days. The insanity of the past two years has seen a distinct change, methinks, and ‘hello’ and a wave (all that used to be required; we’re not after Caesar’s address to The Senate or anything) has become some sort of rude challenge. Once upon a time it was positively de rigueur to acknowledge a fellow creature in passing, but the behaviours of London &etc seem to have (been) spread (deliberately), and such is now de rigor mortis.

Progress, eh?

I surmise that the Membrum Virilis of the World Ecognomic Forum might consider it so. The baboons of the troop now no longer show one anther their pink and blue arses in the cause of tribal (troop) cohesion, but instead wave their mobiles in the air, displaying a “Covid-19/20/21/22/∞ Vaccine Passport Papierre Bitte QR Code” as some sort of “new” “cultural” totem. Personally, I preferred the arses; much more honesty involved.

Tis my vague plan to slip slowly across the M’wich Branch and mayhap – if keen – set baseplate upon the waters of the Twent & Mersey as my own version of a symbolic totem (a Churchillian two fingers). We shall see. Time and tide wait for Gnome-Man. Wim is my weh of deciding where the lion sleeps to-night.

I’ve had my email from Messrs Supermarket. There are a couple of substitutions but nothing that will see me reaching for the nuclear codes. It will be a horridly hot and humid meeting, but there’s nowt that can be done about that, those who book (of necessity) last minute can’t be too choosy. I shall maybe get trolley and crates ready, and then crouch waiting in any shade the Cardinal may afford me, running out into the blasted landscape only when necessary, and holding a palm frond aloft for protection.

Whether I shall screech, bare my teeth and show my arse or not remains to be seen.

I can always have a cold shower when things are stowed away.

Then I might do nothing at all until the excess of warmth wears off. Tomorrow and onwards are forecast to be less ergful.

We ought to be grateful for small Murphys.

Ye gods, three (hire) (Angloid Welch) boats in quick succession as I type, followed by a privateer and then a (an?) “historic” boat and butty creeping around the junction, and there I was daring to imagine that the canals were returning more to the Norm now that the skule hodilays are done with for a while.

Chat fance.

Norm? You’ll have to wait a while yet.

Make that four hire boats, add an ABC to the mix, an ABC with a broken “tick-over”…

Chin-chin.

IGH.