Ups and Downs

I guess I should expect life to be full of ups and downs considering I live on water, but this month the contrasts have been particularly marked.

My best friend Maggie died of cancer, having only been diagnosed a few months ago. She was the best person I knew. She was a Christian as Christians were always meant to be. I mean that she was kind, hopeful, forgiving, sensible and sensitive to others, as well as being generous and modest with a lovely subtle sense of humour. She helped people but kept quiet about her good deeds. She had a straightforward and deep faith but did not pressure anyone into believing what she believed and was extremely understanding of me when I quit my ministry and turned my back on the Church. She was honestly unafraid of her impending death as she believed she was going to be with her God and that faith gave her immense comfort. I shall miss her more than I can say.

The upside of my month came when my stepmother decided to give some of her money away. Thanks to her generosity I now have a certain level of financial security that I haven’t had since I left land living. I also have a car that works! She is a bright yellow Peugeot 107 and is now adorned with eyelashes (she has a face) and some hippy style flowers and butterflies – I am revisiting the 60’s as I was too young to enjoy them first time round!

On Monday I cruised in the boiling heat from Fradley to Shobnall boatyard in Burton Upon Trent. It was worth a truly sweaty day as, on Tuesday, they fitted a brand new, shiny 135w solar panel! It is so exciting – I am currently at work and I know that back on the boat, as the fridge slowly runs the batteries down, the sun will be filling them up again – and it’s free power! Well, it will be when I recoup £600 odd pounds in diesal costs. It is also totally clean energy which is a bonus. It will take some experimenting but I think I will be able to run my engine for half as long as I do at present. If true, then I will have recouped the initial expense in just over a year!

I want to post photos of both the car and the panel but I haven’t figured out how to load my camera software on my laptop yet!

Pictures at last

I have finally managed to transfer my pictures to my new laptop so I thought I’d give you a bit of a flavour of the area of my mooring…

 

This is Alrewas – the next village from Fradley Junction and our nearest winding hole (for turning the boat round). The river Trent runs through it and the canal actually crosses the river – see the weir in the next picture…

We have some great walks on our doorstep…

We are surrounded by farmland and there are footpaths everywhere. Bonny loves racing down this path as rabbits live just the other side of the ruined barn!

And of course a lunchtime walk wouldn’t be complete without popping into our local – The Swan – locally known as The Mucky Duck

Now, I haven’t figured out how to shrink my pics on my new laptop so they don’t take ages to upload, so I better stop there and see what happens.

flash new blog tool

I have finally bought myself a laptop computer and within its programme I have discovered a tool that lets me write a blog entry and include photos etc while I am offline. Then I only have to go online long enough to post it up. This is great for me as I only have 500mb a month on my dongle and it will save me using any of it while I am writing. Hopefully it will also encourage me to write more often, as well as post some photos! We will see….