One Week

Last week was half term holidays in the UK, so Mary had some time off to recover from the stresses of her job at an inner London comprehensive. As a caring husband, I thought what could rest and relax her more than slaving away on a cold rusty barge.

Misterton seems to be at the stage where you can work on her for days at a time and she still looks largely the same. We did however clear out both the rear and the front crews cabins. These were each full of junk including items such as rusty oil lamps, lengths of greasy rope and rotting wood. There was even a small marquee in the front one.

Here are a couple of pics of us clearing out the rear one.

The pale blue cylinder in the picture above is a second seacock for water for the engine. According to Alan (boatbuilder) this is for use in shallow water when the main one might not be effective, as its on the bottom of the hull.

The front cabin was more of the same, you can see my technique for creating an 'ant hill' of rubbish around the hatch opening which Mary would then cart to the recycling center (up to trip 51 now).

One very suprising discovery was a brightly coloured butterfly in all the dross. I've no idea how it got there, but I was pleased to see it all the same (I'll let you draw the obvious symbolism yourself).

My mum and dad came up to visit, and while dad removed 100s of screws from the ceiling battens, mum and Mary cleaned and painted some iron and steel implements such as mooring anchors and spikes.

The only problem with this was that they insisted on having a paintbrush each. I suggested they could do the job with just one, but this then kicked off a lengthy 'discussion' which I resolved by the masterstroke of giving them each their own brush.

Finally, as someone who has come from the narrowboat world, this shows how things are on the canals up north.