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All my Augusts
I don't remember my earliest Augusts but photo albums for 1944 show me at three months old dressed in handmade swaddling clothes, while three years later my new baby bro born Jul11 is wearing the same outfit in our brand new dispensary home. In 1953 my baby sister May1 was three months old ... I look back on last August in my blog and discover I was eating blackberries and cream as indeed I am today ...

What's not to like about towpath blackberries?  

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

The tub I used last August for the blackberries held 330mls of single cream and cost me £1.40.  It tasted synthetic this is UK which still can't produce wholesome food for the proletariat  

UK has not yet defined, legally or otherwise, what cream should taste like but they have defined fat content in milk and in cream.  They still produce great big blubbertubbies stuffing theirselves with UPF shite lorried in by Brakes, Bookers, Bestfood. LongLiving 

I favour Graham's Gold Top or Trewithen Barista and the cream off the top tastes like the cream  in Ireland.  Graham's and Barista come from cows fed on grasses and herbs native to their farms and counties.  Cereals are specifically excluded from their diets as it would cause them to fart and belch excessively and affect the quality of their milk. The cows are Holstein-Friesian cross which are interbred on the farm to "preserve genetic purity"

Single Cream Tests my Credibles
Somebody skims the cream off full milk and sells the cream for £7.20 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 over 80% water.  

The price of skimmed MILK averages £1.40 in supermarkets ... There is a huge scam which begins the moment milk leaves the farm.  If farmers were scoring I'd cheer but they aren't.  Farmers get 40p a litre at the gate for their milk and they are not allowed to skim off the cream in the dairy to sell it separately.  That is for the supermarkets. 

"Double" Cream is legislated
to be 40% minimum fat but some better class ones hit 50%. When I take the glob of cream off the top of my Jersey milk  it not only tastes like cream but it feels like cream nom nom.  UK has legislated for milk also. The bind moggles at the idea of low fat butter with less fat than double cream 

2nd August being a Saturday
I'm lappin it up. I've just been to Cruitch and Oww-ey and I've done it without even leaving the boat.  Effin cartographers and ordnance survey were out mapping the island of Ireland in 1837 anglicising all the town names with the avowed intention of confusing the natives long term.  The worm has turned. Laois and Offally are no longer Kings and Queens. 

Actually I did leave the boat; I sauntered uptown for an X18 to Coventry where I transferred to an 85 to Rugby where I called by Revel's Bakery for a small sourdough (and a sausage roll) before catching a passing 63 via Southam which landed me back on the boat at 12oc

During that enormous tour of Warwickshire my trusty samsung was wired in to the wanderings of a newbestfriend currently trudging a small island where if you walked west the way you'd fetch up in Nova Scotia.  As indeed did a few of its illustrious ancestors of old. My newbestfriend went better. She brought a copy of National Gegraphic to Baffin

May 16th 1976 Tim Severin left Brandon Cove in Kerry in a boat made of leather.  On 26th May Tim and crew rounded Cruit on their way to Iceland via Lough Foyle and the Faroes to demonstrate that Saint Brendan could have picked up or dropped off monks at Cruit in 500AD.  St. Brendan's Day is my birthday so there is a link to Cruit apart from my sister (born May 12th) being named Brenda because I being the oldest carried my grandad's names.  I know you haven't a clue what I am talking about but this is not for you. This is for my newbestfriend.  I'm an island man and so bees she.  

This being Sunday 3rd August 
Sunday is my day of rest&reflection and catching up with my reading.  It is also the day I do a bit of housekeeping and tidying up and odd jobs. On land you might find me hoovering out dark corners or ironing light linens. On board I may be removing cobwebs in the storeroom or counting bottles in the bilges or doing some light DIY. 

I've surfed Seamus Heaney and Liam Neeson to the BL and back and tried to catch up with Brien Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa.  The sun has gone over the yardarm.  I've had a spartan lunch and earlier coffee and I've moved the boat 200meters to the eastern side of B40. 

I was awake at 6oc and am at ease as always on a Sunday.  I heard the bells earlier calling the faithful to service but demurred as I was well snug and I did pay respects at Coventry Cathedral recently.  Now in after of the noon the sun is shining a bit so I may have an upcharge of batteries and be able to read and write tonight.  Voltage is all that matters on board off grid and you can check HERE for how important ,,,

Dé Céadaoin 7 Lúnasa
I have been trying to make sense of Wordepress for the past week and now have a link to it at the bottom of some of my website pages.  It is almost if not more weird than weebly but I shall plow on. This morning I posted an empty can entitled and already my e-mail inbox is filling with messages from other Wordpress users real and imagined who "LIKE" it.  WEIRD is an acronym didja know? White Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic. 

Where is the month going
Sunday 17th August I have been very busy. The gas bottle covers are made and fitted. The aft modesty board is ordered and the plan is ready art work and all for one side panel. The boat is as far east as it is going being down fornenst the canal wall of Clapham Tce Jnr School and just far away from the railway bridge to damp out the sound of the trains. It is also on the eastern limit of drunks junkies and other wildlife.  I have become actively involved in the Coventry Historic Group and am adopting the city as my own.  Need something to do in the community as I may be here for some time.  The lack of rainfall and the empty reservoirs is prompting CART to close the whole system from 26th August by putting in stop planks to preserve parts where lots of boats are congregated just to ensure they can be kept afloat.  They also intend to chain the bottom locks at Radford Semele to the east and  Hatton to the west.  I saw this coming weeks ago and had already decided to dally here 

Who Knows Where the Time Goes
Sunday 24th August and during the week I listened (over and over) to Sandy Denny singing Who Knows Where the Time Goes and was reminded again as to what the world lost when she died in 1978 when I was 34 and she was 31.  I was reminded by being reminded of The University of the 3rd Age which argues that one should pay more attention to the third third of ones life and use it to teach and to learn and mentor and absorb so that the evening of ones life will have mostly sunny days and balmy evenings.  But when I was 34 I did not know that my last third was still fifty years away whereas Sandy's died with her having started at 21.  Now that I am 81 going 100 I must be nicely into the third age.  So I resolve to be my age act my age and join U3A end of September

MEANWHILE
This will my last para for August 2025.  It has been a great Summer with a wonderful stop over in Warwick.  I feel like a resident.  Heck I am a resident.  I've been here now for almost ten weeks and with the canal system closed I may be still here in January.  I have a new and very different blog running now on WordPress  Why not drop in and say hello and find out how or why I am what I eat