Is Summer ending or beginning? Boat and attached butty have arrived at \\\ SOFA STEWS EVENT aka Hillmorton for elective surgery in canal time.  I have a chance this week to progress the paint job to another level.   It also makes serious sense to slow down and Sunday is a good day for doing nothing.

The boatyard manager is an old friend. I've known him as long as I've had the boat and by a wonderful coincidence he has known me for the same length of time.  This is BSS year for Pentargon and I need to secure the huge new battery bank on the uxter plate which means anchor points to be welded to the floor BEFORE certification til 2028 is possible. 

Summer is fading into Autumn and so much has happened I thought I would revisit my birthday blog of 18th May. Then I thought I'd make it available to my friends fans followers and hangers on and see what all five of them made of a second reading. This blog is writing itself on 18th August exactly three months after the Bealtaine when me'n'me boat were at Weedon Bec.

I came up the Buckby flight on 20th, went through the tunnel 22nd, down the Braunston flight 24th, turned left at Bridge 92 and picked up Hugh Malet's 1958 trail by Stockton totaling over twenty locks to Leamington Spa and almost got the boat to Warwick but instead took the bus.  I did a turnaround at bridge 56 and watched Malet's ghost continue onwards in fading light towards the Hatton flight of twenty.

I climbed my own twenty from Spa to Calcutt and returned to Braunston for the historics at the end of June before setting out for Hillmorton, Rugby, Nuneaton, Atherstone where I shipped 100kilos of boat batteries at £5 a kilo, turned and came back by Sutton Stop, Ansty (where I had left Wavy), Combe Fields, Stretton under Fosse, Newbold.  18th August I tied up at at Brownsover to listen to a green woodpecker giving it large to a raptor almost 1000' up and overhead.  Merlin confirmed that the plaintive mew was indeed a buzzard.

Here in Paradise I had what might have been a disaster but probably was a blessing in disguise. I recently decided to upgrade all my computers and mobile devices and had programmed a Samsung A04e with all my contacts and photographs and sound and video recordings along with modern apps which would not work on older phones.

Bending over the stern of the boat to attach the power cable from Pentargon to Wavy the phone slipped out of a top pocket of my gilet and plopped gently into the water between the boats never to be seen again. The disaster was that  my 07565323609 sim card was in the device and O2 were unable to restore the number which I have had since I came to England almost twenty five years ago because I could not satisfy their security system.

Their 'normal' way of verifying a sim is to  analyze it in the actual phone. You can see where this is leading.  Alternatively they could retrieve the number if I could answer three simple questions ...

1. What is the last O2 number you called from the device?
2. What was the amount of the last top up you made to the account?
3. What is the current balance in the account   

However, what Neptune did not know when he swallowed my identity or maybe he did was that I had a spare Samsung A04e as a back-up device and it was on board.  It 'just' needed to be programmed with all the apps I use, all the photos I could retrieve, all the notes, the recordings, phone books ... and I needed a new phone number for myself which had to be shared with my bank and my medical practice and ... and ... luckily I am a hoarder when it comes to stuff and the only stuff gone for ever is the work I had entered in the Blue Labara during August.

BUT: I am nearly there and and I have got an extra A04e

a self destructor is a blog that may vanish at any time likely to have been written with a flame thrower and when the gas goes out the self destructor goes out like the Olympic flame in Paris
Regards to Lud somewhere in the big smoke

Newbold Blackberries ... ///:accent.slurs.admiral 

what is there not to like about newbold blackberries?
Let me list all the reasons why they are best whole food
They are

• Sun Ripened
• Locally Produced
• Hand Picked
• From the Vine
• Guaranteed British
• One of Your Five a Day
  

The tub (recycled) which I used for the blackberries once held 330mls of single cream and cost me £1.40 (that is £4.20 Litre) but there was something synthetic about the taste.  However, that's ok in the UK because they have not defined legally or otherwise what cream should taste like.  I use Scottish Graham's Gold Top exclusively and the cream off the top tastes like the cream I am used to in Ireland. 

Single Cream perflexes me [stet].  Somebody skims the cream off full milk and sells it for £4.20 a litre.  By UK legal definition, single cream has to be less than 20% fat which to my jaded palate means it has to be 80% water.  The price of skimmed MILK averages £1.45 in supermarkets ... There is a huge scam which begins the moment milk leaves the farm.  If farmers scored I'd cheer but they don't.  Farmers get 80p at the gate for their milk. They are not allowed to skim off the cream in the dairy to sell it separately. 

"Double" Cream must be 40% fat minimum but some better class ones hit 50%. When I take the glob of cream off the top of my Jersey milk (5% fat as served) it not only tastes like cream but it feels like cream nom nom. 

From now on, I plan to post Special Bulletins about something that takes my fancy off-grid. Today is about an app I've used constantly since upgrading to Cxxi early in MMXXIV.

When I wake in a quiet place and switch my brain on, I invoke Merlin and plant the phone on the roof while I make the coffee.  While Merlin listens, I leave it to its own devices and come back with my cuppa to see what's been netted.  6am is a favourite as the sun is up but the humans have yet to surface.

I can dub over while Merlin is recording, especially if I hear a bird Merlin has missed.  Humans have selective hearing and ignore an express train going through while a Raven kraaks overhead.   Merlin hears the train but not the Raven.

Thursday at Stretton-Under-Fosse the catch was light: Goldfinch, Robin, Wood Pigeon, Spotted Flycatcher, Jackdaw but sometimes I score high and occasionally catch rarer birds, such as a Stock Dove at Stockton,  a Green Woodpecker at Brownsover,  a Raven near Leamington Spa. repeated over Combe Fields. 

In contrast to Thursday's catch and at the same location two weeks earlier I pulled a total of 19 including Wren, Blue Tit, Robin, Blackcap, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Rook, Goldfinch, Great Tit, Mallard, Carrion Crow, Dunnock, Jackdaw, Song Thrush, Coal Tit, Magpie, Collared Dove, Goldcrest, Linnet, Blackbird.

I don't think I have ever managed to avoid a woodpigeon at a count. They're everywhere. Why is it almost impossible to find them in a fur'n'feather butcher's then?  The web is full of recipes  (this extols how cheap they are) but actually getting the bird or better still the breasts is more difficult in line (queueing at a counter) or on line (cueing with clickstrokes).

"Wild Meat" has woodpigeons 'all the year round' but when you look there are 'none available just now' and 'if you leave your e-mail we will call you'. 
"OrganicButchery" offers four breasts pre-packaged from their freezer but coyly explain they have a minimum order of £50 and the meat may contain shot. 
"Kimbers" say the season is 'over' so their breasts are from the freezer.

Season? The country is aflight with wood pigeons BreedingForEngland and England has a SEASON?  This country needs pulling up if wild food is out there for the taking and you have to have a SEASON for taking it. 

Pigeons  breed all the year round f'gossake and are net damagers of farmland, gardens and crops.  If they were marketed and provided we could all have best game right off the fields all year and get the bloody numbers down to manageable. This morning at newbolt I was up early looking at a big tree just across the way and counted 18 as in eighteen perched there plotting the days divilmint.  That is 36 breasts in all and with three per person that tree would have provided the main dish for a table of twelve if the Wolvercote Supper Club was running and all they needed would be 2kg of Newbold blackberries to make the sauce. 

The mad burst away from Atherstone ended in tears on the approach to Stretton under Fosse towing Wavy. I ran out of diesel. Perhaps I should have pushed the tank probe to the bottom before setting out.  Perhaps I should have decided to do the whole day on tickover.  Perhaps both options should have been invoked. 

Fuel has been a constant issue since Hillmorton when I had to drain and filter the contents of both tanks.  Perhaps I should have prioritised filling both tanks back in Rugby but I didn't did I?  I am now pegged at Combe Hill about a mile from Stretton under Fosse and much too tired to do any more today. 

Next Day

 Thursday morning I went for it did a complete checkout of the fuel pick up from tank through lift pump through filter to injectors and got the engine to run cleanly after an easystart kick start.  I motored on to Brinklow where the nice people gave me 40L for £50 cash so the port tank (the feeder) is about half full.  I moved on in breezy conditions and tied up at Newbolt just before the weather front landed. Minutes after I tied up the heavens opened

Serendipidy. 

Peter Gifford and I have been friends since we met last year in North Kilworth and Market Harborough.  We used to travel on the same buses and shared many interests.  We keep in touch by e-mail and occasionally meet up last time being at Brownsover about a month ago.

Friday morning I am on board when I hear a call from the water and find Emily alongside. There is space beside me so Emily is tethered.  Tea is brewed; the world is put to rights and then we take Emily down the flight to moor opposite The Kings Head and repair to the hostelry for a very long lunch and banter. 

Peter is constantly cruising now northward bound destination unspecified.   We shake hands and Peter settles in for a siesta while I  shank back to mine via a stand of handpicked blackberries and a small tesco shop at a Large Tesco Shop.  I call by the factors just in case.  No batteries. Wait to see what Monday brings.  Back on board crank the router after its usual monthly collapse and resuscitate it.  Its not the router btw its the inserted EE sim. The yobs changed the ground rules ... bollawkz ...

Shank?  Shanks' Mare qv ... Mare as in female horse not as in Latin Mare the sea