Space

It has been a busy and varied weekend, but very satisfying.

Yesterday I got lots of jobs done - the usual stuff, chopping wood, sweeping out, washing out the bow deck and filling up with water:

As I was working in the bow, our pair of resident swans came around looking for food:









 

We always keep food on the boat for the ducks and swans and not just bread as it doesn't contain any proper nutrition. We believe that we should feed these birds in winter as they are part of our community and we have a responsibility towards them.

Yesterday afternoon I went up to our local university to play my piano. We moved out of a large four bedroomed victorian terraced house and so had many possessions to get rid of before we moved onto the boat. I didn't have a problem with this, in fact I found it quite liberating. Over the space of a year we managed to sell most of our furniture, ornaments, books etc either on ebay, or through the local newspapers or by car booting. Finally we gave a lot of stuff to charity. However I just couldn't bear to sell my beautiful piano. It is a 5'8" Steinway design grand, so I arranged for the university music department to have it on permanent loan for use as a teaching instrument, provided that I could go and play it whenever I want. The arrangement works really well.

There is some other stuff that we can't get rid of. I just couldn't part with the boys old exercise books from school, paintings, toys, first clothes etc. and also some work books and a lot of music. We can't keep all of that on the boat and had asked friends to keep them in their garages. We soon realised that this wasn't practical, so now we pay £20 a month for a small storage unit nearby. This has been a life saver and has allowed us to only keep absolute essentials on the boat. Some people do manage without extra storage but they are generally people who don't work and who don't need several changes of clothes and work equipment etc.

Having said that people shouldn't think that a boat is so small that it is impossible to function. I have written previously about the kitchen which, although compact is highly functional. Today I decided that it was time to address another area of my website for which I need to arrange and record music. This morning I managed to set up a full recording studio in the bedroom and successfully put down a number of tracks.

We spent the afternoon with our two sons as youngest son is 21 tomorrow. We had a lovely meal at a local canal side pub and then went to watch the football and have a game of pool at another pub. The landlord of the canal pub was telling us that he had recently seen a family of Otters on the canal and also the Kingfisher. I am going to have to get up there with my camera and see if I can spot them.

Another great sunset finished the weekend off beautifully:

 

Al :)