I have been too busy to post recently and I am finding it quite frustrating. I have a concert coming up and the music I have been given to prepare is fiendishly difficult! This has meant that I have been putting in several hours of practice every day, just to learn the notes. That is just one piece, which is a wind and piano quintet and in addition to this I have several accompaniments to learn for the soloists, who don't usually give me the music until a few days before the concert. Add to this the project I am working on with a jazz saxophonist, who wants to do a gig in April and also to put down a CD and my time is fully taken up. Such is the lot of a pianist - everyone wants a bit of you!
I have now been given my work schedule for this year and I will be away overseas in May/June and October/December, I shall be glad to get away for a rest!
I am not happy with the infrequency with which I post my blogs, so I am going to try and post once a week on a Sunday and see how it goes.
On the boating front, much of our time has been taken up with keeping warm in this icy weather. The canal is frozen on most days and looks very beautiful:
The ducks slip and slide across it in search of food:
We have nearly run out of burnable wood, although we have two wood stores full of unseasoned wood. We have spent many an enjoyable hour chopping the wood we have collected along the tow path. There is much tidying up of overhanging trees going on at the moment and every time we hear a chainsaw, we follow the sound and usually are rewarded with a pile of wood kindly left by the Canal and River Trust! Our new chainsaw has proved to be very easy to use and is efficient at cutting through even quite thick trunks, but splitting them down further has been problematic. The axe doesn't always work, so we have bought a log splitting 'grenade' from ebay and will see how that works:
We are now in urgent need of wood we can burn and the best place for that is the estuary, which is only about 2 miles from the canal. One of our fellow boaters on the marina works at the local tip and had an old bike trailer which had been dumped. I bought it off him for £20 and Phil has done a great job of turning it into an attractive wood collecting chariot!! Here are before and after pictures:
On the wildlife front we have heard the otter swimming about between and under the boats on many occasions in the middle of the night but still haven't captured it on camera. I have now moved the camera to the end jetty after we found a half eaten fish there the other day which could only have been left by the otter.
The kingfisher is also proving elusive and as his favourite perch is currently surrounded by ice, there is not much hope of catching him there and I'm too busy to stake him out at the moment. Here is the empty perch:
There is not much else to report, but I do hope that posting regularly on a Sunday will provide more information on a regular basis. We are about to do a calculation of costs this winter and also hope to have news on our council tax status soon, so that may be interesting and useful for prospective boaters.
All for now. I will leave you with a picture of a beautiful sunset over the marina a few days ago:
Al :)
I have now been given my work schedule for this year and I will be away overseas in May/June and October/December, I shall be glad to get away for a rest!
I am not happy with the infrequency with which I post my blogs, so I am going to try and post once a week on a Sunday and see how it goes.
On the boating front, much of our time has been taken up with keeping warm in this icy weather. The canal is frozen on most days and looks very beautiful:
The ducks slip and slide across it in search of food:
We have nearly run out of burnable wood, although we have two wood stores full of unseasoned wood. We have spent many an enjoyable hour chopping the wood we have collected along the tow path. There is much tidying up of overhanging trees going on at the moment and every time we hear a chainsaw, we follow the sound and usually are rewarded with a pile of wood kindly left by the Canal and River Trust! Our new chainsaw has proved to be very easy to use and is efficient at cutting through even quite thick trunks, but splitting them down further has been problematic. The axe doesn't always work, so we have bought a log splitting 'grenade' from ebay and will see how that works:
We are now in urgent need of wood we can burn and the best place for that is the estuary, which is only about 2 miles from the canal. One of our fellow boaters on the marina works at the local tip and had an old bike trailer which had been dumped. I bought it off him for £20 and Phil has done a great job of turning it into an attractive wood collecting chariot!! Here are before and after pictures:
On the wildlife front we have heard the otter swimming about between and under the boats on many occasions in the middle of the night but still haven't captured it on camera. I have now moved the camera to the end jetty after we found a half eaten fish there the other day which could only have been left by the otter.
The kingfisher is also proving elusive and as his favourite perch is currently surrounded by ice, there is not much hope of catching him there and I'm too busy to stake him out at the moment. Here is the empty perch:
There is not much else to report, but I do hope that posting regularly on a Sunday will provide more information on a regular basis. We are about to do a calculation of costs this winter and also hope to have news on our council tax status soon, so that may be interesting and useful for prospective boaters.
All for now. I will leave you with a picture of a beautiful sunset over the marina a few days ago:
Al :)
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