The learning curve has gone into overdrive in the past week.  Pentargon and her butty "Wavy Rider" went down the Watford Stairs in a howling gale on Friday.  It is a whole new experience to manoeuvre a combination in wind.  I had discovered on the way down from Kilworth that the butty does not tow properly with the sharp end forward so after Crick I turned it around and nailed it to the rear fender button.  Now the combination is unarticulated.

It's been a week of blowy weather with [very] occasional 'calmer' periods and it was a test to get the combo down  to a lower level where winds are always less.  At sea you can always read the wind.  Inland you are at the mercy of  topography.  Watford tested my skill to the limit.  The combo is now 55' long so the prop is now 20' from the 'stern'.

  And it is leaf-mugging time.  But I am now in a the Braunston Summit pound with a dream mooring and the M1 less the than 60m from my tiller.  If you get ... reservoir solid simulations ... you get it.   I survived the first frosts of 2023.  Right now the floor reading in the back cabin is  4.6ºC and the ceiling 5.7ºC but my 'bedroom' is at 13.2º and rising as the Hampshire which was on tick-over during the night kicks in. 

This is the off grid life I have spent twelve years planning and aspiring to ...

I am in the Big Issue Rugby area ...

At the market stall, Very Large Eggs were priced at £1.80 half-dozen. I had brought two egg-boxes with me.  So I put five eggs into each box to make ten in total  and asked the lady "How much?"  I had already figured it and was fingering three shiny pound coins in my cargo pocket.  The lady looked puzzled and asked how much the governor  had charged me last time.   I realised at once she did not know how to work out the price so I quickly added an extra egg to each box and she said "£3.60 then!". Right. I grubbed another 60p from my shrapnel pocket  to add to the already fingered £3 and gave her £3.60 ...  It occurs to me to wonder, since she was in her 50s, and presumably had worked markets for some time, how she could not instantly figure that ONE egg was 30p so ten should be £3.
Yesterday  in my favourite supermarket I got six top-end eggs for £4.  Delighted to see the farmers getting properly after threatening to stop laying  but figure one egg is now ... where's me calculator?  66.66666666667p  Now if I bought ten how much change would I have out of a tenner?
Shaun Wall
(NB PENTARGON)
off grid on a canal near you.

I have no problem shopping in Regent's Street and I love a good cookshop. So when I needed a nice knife for the boat I discovered Abraxa's Cookshop in Regent Street.  My needs were simple.  Nothing made in PRC, good steel and if it were English made that would be a bonus.  Helen and Bron were on it at once showing me a Rockingham Forge Equilibrium.  Actually the knife display is beautifully laid out in the Regent Street shop and Helen and Bron are ever so helpful.  I am happy now to have on board a beautiful knife made in Sheffield from German Steel.  Oops! I forgot to say Abraxas is in Regent Street RUGBY ...

The knife is admirable for my boat. The steel combination has enough magnetism to stick to my magnetic gadget holder. The balance is perfect and it cuts raw meat, chops vegetables, zips through plastic packaging and wipes clean instantly with a damp cloth. What more can I say? Well I can say I am not being paid to say this. My long time friends on the canals know I cannot be bought and  am not for sale.   


THIS IS NOT ABOUT KNIVES
I macerate in life's tepidity by immersion and I have absolutely no interest in apps.  ​While others goggle over a picture of rising steam or marvel at the photogenic qualities of a pixelated cup, I prefer to smell the coffee in real time while my percolator gurgles and a lock fills or empties.  When I want something I'll not be not sidetracked by a deceitful web trying to push tat I patently neither need nor want.  ​I am fully inured of its churning  algorithms: 
I declare myself an original of my species:  OffGrid ManCave Man

I live offgrid on a constantly cruising canal boat. Some time ago a friend,  having been informed that my boat was to be fitted with WiFi®,  gifted me a gizmo he described as  'An Android i-Pad'

The device had been 'purchased in error' and arrived at my door sealed in its packaging.  Richard, for 'twas he, being of advanced charitable disposition thought me a suitable target for Yuletide largesse. 

Under the guise of good tidings he delivered it to my land house by car as he departed Perfidious Albion for a Yule time in deepest rural Gaul.

(glis glis) is a code Richard and I share and refers to a wonderful adventure I once had at his instigation and for which I remain eternally grateful. 

It was my introduction to truly off-grid living and I would have gladly embraced it but someone else, to whom I was beholden, could not cope, (as in at all) and the experiment was aborted. 

But I digress. 

The Android Huwei-Pad?  I still use Windows 7 and a Samsung J3 on Android 5.1 but I need to move up to C21 to preserve my stated aim to learn something new every day of my life and stay ahead of the "great unwashed" as we all race towards mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

...Apart from being intrigued by the oil and water analogy of Android and Apple,  I was somewhat 'engaged' at the time so having ripped it from its packaging and admired its glossy modernity,  it got stuffed among my books and then forgotten while I got on with planning and delivering the WiFi®  about which you may read in a previous or subsequent blog ...

Today the Huwei-Pad resurfaced, some eleven months after receipt, and I got to work trying to figure out how to work it.   Very different OS to my W7 and J3s.  It does all sorts of things automatically that I do by hand.  It stores stuff in funny places. If this what i-padders have had to put up with I get it.  At the flat I keep a Dell running Ubuntu which I am learning how to use and on the boat I have my Huwei-pad.  That should keep my instinct for continuing to learn new things in old age honed through to 2024

WIP 24thNov2023 at Watford Gap Services off the M1