A day off

Well it's my day off, what to do with it.

Well first there is the cupboard under the stairs. You know the one. The one where all the junk gets forgotten about. Well it is time for a clear out of ours.

Then shopping. Great another thing I hate doing. Better to get it out of the way I suppose. At least I will get the chance to visit our great local butcher.

Doesn't sound like much of a day off does it?

Another day

Another day at the grindstone but at least it is my last for this week. I have a day off tomorrow, my first in a long time.

But first another eight hours slogging away behind the keyboard. Never mind boat tomorrow.

Brrr

It is mighty cold this morning. Scraping the car was anything but easy thanks to it being covered in frozen rain.

The roads out of our estate were not gritted and would not have looked out of place in a skating rink. A great start to the day with lorries stuck on the hill blocking the way out of the area. Thank you Sheffield city council.

With another cold night forecast hopefully they will be more on the ball with the gritters tonight!

Some extra heat

We have decided this winter to add an extra heater to the cabin of naughty cal in an attempt to keep her warm and prevent any pipes from freezing.

For the last four winters we have just had one small heater in the shower room but decided on the back of a few weather forecasts to add another larger oil filled radiator.

The new heater isn't too big it is only 450 watts but after some use over the weekend it proved to be more than up to the job in hand. So right now cal should be toasty warm.

Still high

River levels on the Trent are still high, the photo below was taken on Friday and shows how high it has been.

Thankfully levels are now dropping somewhat so let's hope this spell of drier weather lasts long enough for levels to drop to normal and ground water levels to stabilise.

Another chilly night

We woke up this morning to find the marina frozen over, a sure sign it was cold again!

Tucked up warm in bed we had not noticed the cold. As an extra precaution this year we have bought another heater for the cabin. Nothing fancy just a small oil filled radiator to keep the chill off the cabin. This is currently plugged in for a test run over night.

Dinner is as usual in the slow cooker. Tonight it is slow cooked rosemary and garlic lamb with sweet potatoes, smoked sage and red onion stuffing, purple sprouting broccoli and asparagus. The smell is making us hungry already but it won't be ready for a long while yet.

A fine winters day

After a less than promising and quite frankly dull start to the day it's has brightened up to be a lovely crisp clear winters day.

We have made the most of the bright weather and trimmed naughty cal withe her Christmas clobber. Now we need to wait until dark for the big switch on!