September 2020

Bringing Things Up to Date

End of August

Well, I ended August by locking myself in the Marina loo!

I had trouble unlocking the door to get in, getting out was near impossible. The key wouldn’t turn in the lock, no matter how hard I tried. I poked the mechanism with my key and continually tried the key many 10s of times but It wouldn’t budge. I opened the small window and waved and shouted to the Office which was mere yards away but to no avail. Eventually, someone else came to the door, unlocked it easily (I must have doe all the hard work and freed it up) and I managed to escape. I did let him know and the Marina Office and I obtained another key, just in case it was at fault.

September

No further lock-in episodes.

It turned out to be a glorious month weather-wise. There was sun, warmth and little rain. The mornings were colder but nothing too onerous. We purchased more gas in the form of a large orange cannister from the Marina Chandlery. I drove the old, empty cannister around and drove a new, full one to the end of the marina path. From there, mu and I manhandled it, rolling it along the path and nearly into the canal! Lifting and lowering it into the gas locker aboard Silverdale required Herculean strength. I had to slowly lower it, into the locker, not wanting to scape the beautifully finished inside. It had been cleaned and blacked by the marina before we bought it. The trusty Gas Spanner, purchased last time I had to do this worked a treat and gas was back up and running.

Beside the Seaside

This is also the month we made progress with our project. We’re making a game: Beside the Seaside. It’s going to be a pixel art seaside side scroller and beyond.

mu is busy creating pixel art. I’m learning to use the game engine we’ve chosen for this project and documenting it.

It’s our virtual visit to the seaside. You can follow progress here

Electric

We also met with Mark, a boat electrician who used to work at the Marina but was now self-employed – Weedon Narrowboat Services. He came to evaluate our electrical setup to see how we can solve a problem of flickering lights and diminishing 12 volt power. We’re hopefully going to upgrade a bit, bring it up to date.

He’s returning in October to replace the batteries and install a new Solar Controller. This will give us more visibility into what’s going on.

We’ve been watching Rain and Borgen on Netflix and had a lot of Drive-Thru coffees to keep us sane in these crazy Covid times. We also got a new, new Spin Dryer (don’t ask) and a new monitor.

Well, that’s about brings things up to date for September. It shot by but we got a lot of stuff done. October’s calling…

rp – peace and narrowboats