Brazilian

Drizzling this morning first thing, but dry now ( 10.00 am). We are literally in the middle of nowhere. I can report nowhere is beautiful, lovely scenery, lots of bird life, a few cows and Basil Fawlty, who gave up on his umbrella BBQ once the downpour increased in violence. He has not appeared this morning yet but I'm sure he is busy organising breakfast aboard. As we passed he was busy frying breakfast whilst barking orders at Manwell. The drizzle turned to steady rain which in turn changed to very warm sunshine before returning to rain again. Changeable I think is the technical term. This canal is a gem, but we have yet to see the kingfishers and water vole which supposedly abound here. The canal and river Cherwell run alongside each other for miles but join occasionally and split again without anyone knowing, but who cares? The satellite earth station appears sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right, as does the chimney of a derelict cement works,depending which corner you are on and how far round you are. The village of Thrupp is equally confusing,a right angle bend and electric bridge combining to catch out the uninformed, as we were. A friendly farmer assisted and we passed-through without major incident or making complete fools of ourselves (I think). The L plates continue to be great topics of conversation and jollity. Today was very international with crews from the USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, all very friendly and chatty. We (I use the term advisedly) have contrived to lose one of our two wind lasses, which is a great shame as "ours" were far superior to the trashy two supplied by MCC which fell to pieces at their first opportunity. We will need one replacement fairly quickly for the remainder of our canal trip, but fortunately the Thames locks are all electric.Guess who got blamed for the loss? No prizes offered but phone lines close tonight at 11.00pm. Our current routine at locks is Lynne stays on the boat whilst I deal with the lock paddles and gates, although since my "vacant" day she is obviously concerned I might make a major foo-par and keeps a very keen eye on my lock procedures, often zipping off Tardis Two (having secured her to the bank) to help close the gates and get the paddle opening/closing sequences right. I can understand her concern but I find the lack of confidence in my mental capacity scary and further debilitating. In addition to locks we also had a number of lifting bridges to contend with. They are supposed to be counter-balanced and easily dealt with by 1 person. Most are left up as they are seldom used but 1 proved particularly difficult to operate. I pulled the chain, hung from the chain, hung from the counter-balance weights, pushed/pulled etc without success. Lynne could not help as two people holding the bridge up leaves no-one to take the boat through. I honestly cannot remember how we solved the problem but through we got.

We are moored near a village called Kidlington, a fairly nondescript place. The blog title relates to a conversation with Lynne this morning as she changed the dressing on my leg wound, ripping the old one off with about 5000 leg hairs attached. You men are wimps she said, good job  you don't get waxed.

One poignant moment occurred this morning when we passed a boat named Chaos, the same as my son Tom's favourite cat who recently lost his life to a car on the main road near his house. Chaos was a large, friendly, pale tabby with attitude and loved by everyone he met.