At pains to do jobs.

 Come on sun, we know you're up there somewhere.  When you do break through you're really warm.  Not today though. Stormy weather.

Being on the boat this summer I was supposed to get some roof painting done, but although there are dry periods in the day to slap on the paint, it wouldn't have time to harden off before the next shower.  Added to that, here in the marina we have the weeping willow problem.

It's all very nice mooring next to this lovely tree, but it plays havoc with the roof paintwork.  Wet leaves draping onto the roof are not a good recipe for paint survival and of course if I did try to paint that bit, the wind would blow the droopy branches back and forth and mess up my work.  I pooped into the marina office to ask the love;y Steve if he could get someone to give the tree a haircut, just a trim, not a short back and sides.  As expected he is sympathetic and they come and look at it next week.

Meanwhile I have not been idle (well not all the time anyway).  I used the morning to give myself backache.  I have this muscle in my lower back which doesn't like me bending and straining, which is the very thing I have to do when messing about in Herbie's engine 'ole.  First an engine oil change, the brass lift pump that you pump up and down to extract the old oil is not that hard, but the awkward position I have to adopt in order to do it is just what my back doesn't like.  What's more it takes a while.  I suppose each lift delivers  on average about a tablespoon or two  of oil into the can I am holding with the other hand,.  I looked up how many tablespoons in a litre (you know me) and it's 56.3.   So to pump out 4.5 litres of oil at a generous average of 2 tablespoons per pump takes, um 4.5 x 56.3 /2 = just over 140 plunges, each requiring a reasonably strong pull. Lets just say I had to stop and rest a couple of times to stop my little muscle from giving me gyp.  I'm getting old.

Having refilled with nice clean oil and fitted a new filter, I turned next to a job deeper down.  Herbie's engine does weep a bit of diesel from somewhere (I can't see where) when it's running, so over time a pool of it collects in the engine oil drip tray.  In the old days we've bailed it out with baked bean tins or whatever, but some years back I bought a natty 12v pump which does it nicely.  I've featured it here before, but here it is

You can still get one from Amazon or ebay for about £13 (including the pvc tubing you need) and it works really well.  It is self priming, so you stick one tube in the sump or whatever, and the other in an old bottle, clip on the battery clips to one of your boat /car batteries, press the on off switch and off it goes.  The only problem I have is that the stuff I am sucking out is only half an inch deep so I have to bend down with my head somewhere near my knees to hold the bendy suck tube into the corners of the tray for ten minutes while the pump does its job.  I got a couple of litres out this way. I may need another quick go later to mop up the remaining fluid after it slowly oozes back from the other end of the engine where I can't reach.

Next, I tried the pump on the gearbox oil, but it didn't do so well, perhaps because the oil was not so runny.  I got about half of it out, and replaced that with fresh although the old oil still looked clean and felt nice and oily.

By now my back was really grumbling so I retired to a deck chair and had a first read of what turned out to be the first  Colin Dexter Inspector Morse story "Last Bus to Woodstock" which I picked up in the marina swap library.  I'm sorry to say I wasn't very impressed.  Maybe Dexter improved with subsequent efforts.  I also note that the way he writes about women would be far from acceptable these days. I see it was written 48 years ago so times have changed for the better in that regard.

So that was Friday.  No outside jobs today.  We might take the boat out tomorrow and we might not.