Here's Herbie hiding in the undergrowth about a mile from Banbury in readiness for our surprise attack tomorrow morning, determined to find a town mooring spot before the competition gets there. In the foreground you see a clump of butterbur which is endemic along the canal from Banbury going south.
It has fleshy spikes of pink flowers early in the year when no-one's looking but come the summer it sneakily pretends to be rhubarb to my eye and grows really really abundantly.
In the old days people would wrap their butter in the leaves, hence the name. These days you could use it to cure depression although it is toxic to the liver and may cause cancer, which I fear might lead to depression rather than curing it.
Yesterday was Wet Wet Wet,(or was it West Life, I'm not up on boy bands). Anyhow we hunkered down above Kings Sutton lock along with quite a number of other boats while the clouds emptied their contents all over us.. Thank goodness we're not in a hurry to get anywhere. We haven't moved very far today but that's partly because I had a job to do this afternoon.
The pesky Airhead toilet extractor fan stopped working again so this time I decided to take it off its wall mount, strip it down and clean out the long corrugated hose from the toilet itself. Remembering what a palaver it was when we fitted it originally I wasn't looking forward to it one little bit. Removing the fan housing is a non trivial task, feeling for out of sight screws in the little cupboard under the washbasin whilst sitting or kneeling in painfully awkward positions. Luckily it came off better than I expected. It was a bit gunged up after over nine years of continuous use,so I set to with cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol and gave it a good clean. Similarly I cleared out the hose with an improvised pull through and scraped all the old sealant we used to stop any air leaks. The really hard bit was reattaching the fan housing to the wall and sealing up to prevent new air leaks. Next time I'll see if I can find a rubber necked contortionist midget to help. Anyway it's all working now, fingers crossed. I expect my back and neck ache will go away in a month or two.
2 comments:
Where are the photos of your contortionist activities? Its not fair to only paint word pictures, Neil!
Mxx
Marilyn, It's hard enough holding a screwdriver blind in a tiny cupboard full of pipes without holding a camera as well. I was using my phone, propped up against a pipe as a torch!
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