BLOG OF MAY 2024

BEALTAINE

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.

PARADISE LOST

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   

PARADISE REGAINED

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