Friday 15th January 2019



I had gone to bed very early last night, at ¼ past the hour. Brenda followed quite a bit after. The result was no coal put on the fire so, this morning, after a very clear night, the boat was very cold with the world outside, white with frost.

Brenda had invited a young couple from our meal last night to look around the boat, but they never turned up. While waiting I did more work on the shelf of the world and Brenda did some tidying around. We had some guys fishing under the boat and one of them caught a pike that measured in at 60cms, a whopper.

In the afternoon we decided to walk the 1½ miles into Bedworth, it being such a lovely day. It was lovely walking along and listening to all the birds singing and we saw our first Mallard sitting on her nest. Bedworth was an uninspiring town with a stereo- typical 1960’s pedestrianised shopping precinct. There was however, a pristine terrace of Almshouses.



We sat and had an ice cream, in mid-February. Brenda went into a local butcher, she likes to support local businesses wherever possible. One of her things is young people doing shopping were they fill their trolleys with shite rather than, for example, mince and tatties, were they could get a decent meal for a fraction of the price, but they just don’t know how to cook. In the butchers was a middle aged woman who wanted some oxtail to make a soup whose recipe she had seen, to entertain six people. She insisted, against the butchers advice, in buying six large oxtails. The butcher told her she was buying too much and advised her to put at least three of them in the freezer for use in the summer. The reason, you can’t buy oxtail in the summer because the cows use them to swat flies.

On the way back we followed up the Newdigate Arm. This was an arm off the canal that connected with the Newdigate Colliery, long since gone. On return to the boat, we went to the Greyhound for a few pints. We will not be back here for a few months and it was really nice to sit outside in the sunshine, albeit a wee bit cold when the sun started to go down.  



Weather: a frosty start to a lovely warm, spring day.




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