Sunday solutions

We went to join with Audlem Methodist Church for worship this morning – a friendly bunch of people. In a context significantly different from our own church, I was struck by the organ pipes.

I've always thought of such pipes as being more or less monotone metallic (or wood), but our journeys on Erin Mae have quite often taken us places where pipes have been decorated in most interesting ways. From a distance, these looked rather like pieces of Wedgwood pottery.

We returned to the boat before going down to lunch in the Shroppie Fly, because we had two poo-related matters to deal with. In the first place, the towpath curse had once again struck my trainers – this time a deposit fresh this morning right outside our door. But we had further woes in relation to our own loo. Those of a delicate disposition should read no further. Since last night the pump had been refusing to clear what was in the bowl. With no resolution this morning I called Overwater Marina where we'll call in tomorrow. Workshop lead time is apparently 3 weeks, but the marina office said to ask first thing whether they'd do an emergency job. Next I checked the internet for service engineers and spoke with a very helpful guy who indicated that he might be able to drop in tomorrow if we had no alternative – but it would be expensive. He also made some suggestions about things I could try, involving wiggling brushes around, etc. I had no suitable brush, but I did have a long-handled paint-roller handle, which I thought might just boldly go…

After five minutes of wiggling, the blockage (for such it was) cleared, and we now have our loo back in service. Quite a relief!

This rather unusual Sunday afternoon, in which I retained a sense of normality by following the Formula 1 and the Test Match, was rounded off with epoxy glue, which I applied to the one of the two parts of my re-fitted window that still concerned me (the other is another slightly over-sized screw hole).

I couldn't (or, rather, didn't) do anything about the silicone placed along the inner part of the mitre by someone else, years ago. However, I wanted to make sure that that there were no gaps in the glue I'd used further out towards the apex when tightening this corner earlier, so I fed some over and into the joint where it will hopefully provide a permanent seal. It's not very pretty, but it will all look better when I replace the rubber insert in the channel, and paint over the bits of Sikaflex that have marked the red paint.

Too much excitement! We've discovered that the folk session we plan to go to at the Shroppie Fly is now on a Monday. By tomorrow night we should have recovered sufficiently to be able to thoroughly appreciate it.