Falmouth

Falmouth is full of boats, none of which look in the least like Erin Mae.

Number 1 son this year acquired a cool looking Achilles 24 called "Snow Goose". Very nice.

He was as keen to show us around as we were to look, so we enjoyed a good inspection.

Sometime next year we'll hopefully get to accompany him under sail to Frenchman's Creek or some other spot suitable for a picnic.

We're actually down in Cornwall in honour of a significant birthday – what a sweet child he was those X0 years ago. Given that it's December, and considering the weather conditions at Erin Mae's marina, we're doing very well. We've a very nice location…

… (that's our room, at the top, on the sunny side) with a pretty stunning view from our balcony.

 We even sat out on the balcony in the sun for a short while this morning after inspecting Snow Goose.

Tomorrow, of course, is likely to be very different as we motor home in the afternoon.

But first we have a celebration at what Number 1 son calls "Falmouth's best kept secret" – a speciality seafood restaurant. A crowd of his friends will be there, and we're anticipating that a good time will be had by all. He doesn't yet know that my best beloved has baked a couple of her best chocolate cakes, to be topped by some silly X0th birthday candles.

Well, these occasions don't come along very often.

Freezer

Erin Mae doesn't have a freezer. I dread to think what one of those might do to the batteries and, anyway, there's not really room. The fridge has one of those hanging compartments with a floppy door which freezes nothing, but produces a film of ice over the inside and a constant supply of cold drips underneath. Its main value is that it keeps fresh meat satisfactorily chilled. So we've discovered we can live perfectly well without a freezer. Adjust and cope.

But the house is a different matter, and the time has come to replace the tall one from Comet which is 28 years old. An electrician who came to fix something else told us we would probably re-coup the cost of a new one in a couple of year, just from the greater efficiency. We've also had a second, relatively old fridge sitting next to it in the garage, and the obvious thing was to replace both with a fridge freezer. Question: could we live with the reduced amount of freezer space? The answer from the Erin Mae experience is that we probably could.

Of course, it's never that simple. A little research shows that modern freezers expect an ambient temperature of at least 10˚C. Counter-intuitively, anything less than that and they start to de-frost. They like to be kept inside, in the warm (just as well we didn't have one in our kitchen when I was growing up!). But ours is in the garage and I'm sure that, even though that's integral with the rest of the house, it gets down below 10˚ when there's a freeze on outside. There are some horror stories out there of manufacturers not honouring warranties.

Fortunately we discovered that Grundig have recently entered the British market with an A++ model which, they say, will operate down to 5˚. It got a thumbs-up from Which, and we've taken the plunge. Today Currys delivered it and took away the old machines. It's up and running, and we managed to get into the new freezer everything we took out of the old one. So far, so good.

However, it really feels funny to have a fridge freezer by Grundig sitting in the garage. 1950s tape recorder, yes. Radio, yes. But fridge freezer…?

Punctuation

I've just read Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I'd known about it for a long time, but only recently got a copy, at a charity stall on a summer's day during the Wimborne Folk Festival. I really enjoyed her combination of passion about the way that punctuation serves proper communication and realism about the fact that language develops.

Especially fascinating were her insights into the history of some of our punctuation marks – a reminder that things weren't always so, which is a helpful corrective to the conservative tendency to preserve things in stone. It was intriguing to see her examples of text from not-very-long-ago-at-all, with numbers of commas and semi-colons that look completely over the top today. She makes the case for punctuation being really significant to the extent to which it (a) makes the meaning completely clear, and (b) helps the reader to enter into the music of the language. But even more memorable was the wittiness of way she critiques her own prejudices as well as those of others.

We've a number of classic children's books on the shelves, and this afternoon over a cuppa I've been reading Amy Le Feuvre's Probable Sons, with a sharper eye (in the light of Lynne Truss) for the punctuation she uses. It certainly has more colons and semicolons that Harry Potter but, given that it dates from 1895, it is remarkably disciplined and a model of clarity.

Some favourite moments from Truss: her mention of a report of a clinic offering semicolon irrigation;  her justifying of her scorn for emoticons (smileys and their children); and her reminder that the unmasking of a document in the government's 2003 dossier on Iraq as a complete fabrication depended, at least in part, on the plagiariser not having removed an erroneous comma.

Christmas lights

Today was the day for turning on the lights along the small row of shops in our village. There was a big turnout of all ages, and a loud countdown to the pressing of the switch. It's actually only a dummy switch, and the real reason for the countdown is so that the person waiting by the real switch can hear when to press it! A bit like Father Christmas for the kids, really – everyone knows but nobody says. The switch is pressed and the light comes on – so what if the cause and effect link isn't exactly what it seems!

Enveloping the moment of the lights coming on is the carol singing, everyone joining in at full volume in the open air. And, for that, I take my piano accordion along – it's good fun to lead a crowd enjoying their carols. However, it has to be said that it's not the same as playing on the towpath in June. I dress up warmly, and I have a nice pair of red-and-black striped fingerless gloves, but the temperature at 4.30 p.m. in early December is still guaranteed to remove the feeling from my fingers in about five minutes. Doesn't matter too much for the right hand – it's a keyboard and after all these years my fingers pretty much know what they're doing without too much intervention from my brain. Anyway, I can always glance down.

The left hand is a different matter. I've played the accordion since I was 11, but I only got my own last year, and my fingers have never acquired the same degree of automation on the buttons as on the keys of a piano. When I play, I'm mostly working it out from first principles on the hoof. That's not too bad – until you can no longer feel your fingers. Then your only clue as to whether you hit the button(s) you were trying for is the sound – catch it quick, work out where you are relative to where you should be, and switch. With a bit of luck, and if you do it quickly enough, nearly everyone will think it was a cunning modulation or embellishment slipped in to liven things up. Unfortunately, when you're playing for a sizeable group in the open air it can be a bit like playing the piano underwater with cotton wool in your ears (if you'll forgive my metaphor-mixing). With the sound taking a while to register, your last hope of staying on track disappears. Then the danger is that the analytical part of the brain is so busy working out what to do that any connection to the right hand also evaporates and lively embellishments start to happen down that side of the instrument as well.

But turning out for village carol singing is one of the joys of life, even with frozen fingers. I love it.

Le Mans

Congratulations to my friends Charlotte (director / writer) and Jon (Theme song "Drive") on the film / documentary "Journey to Le Mans" which aired on ITV4 tonight. Exciting stuff, following the small British Jota Sport team as they make their way to compete in the 2014 Le Mans 24 hour endurance race. Pretty far from Erin Mae's world.

Tonight's version was abridged, but a longer one is available on DVD / Blu-ray, or via iTunes. Not that I'm advertising or anything, but they are my friends…

And they get some good reviews on iTunes!

Battery bank

Evesham Battery Centre (at the marina) phoned me today. My four leisure batteries had come back from testing by the supplier, pronounced no longer fit for purpose. The problem, both for yours truly and the marina people, was that the supplier conveyed considerable suspicion that I hadn't been treating 'em right. Was I a liveaboard? I'd clearly been draining the batteries far too much.

I assured the marina that I was far too soft to be a liveaboard, that Erin Mae spends half the year attached to a mains hook-up, and that when we're cruising we typically do 4 or more hours a day. Supplemented by extra engine running should the voltmeter suggest that we've been using too many electrons for comfort. All the evidence in the world is available on the Erin Mae Log, should anyone care to look.

The supplier was suggesting they might meet me half way, so I'd only have to pay for replacing two of the four. Neither the marina (who give the supplier a lot of business) nor myself think this is fair, with the batteries being only half way through their 3-year warranty period. I'd actually been getting quite paranoid about keeping them charged up, with conversations on the CanalWorld forums and research on the Battery University and the SmartGuage websites. It was the fact that they seemed not to take or hold charge as they should that got me worried in the first place.

So the marina people are going back to the supplier to convince them we need a more complete solution. Meanwhile, I'm back to the interweb to see whether I should think about an alternative type of battery. It's quite a good way of amusing yourself on a rainy day.

I'm actually pretty relieved with a "faulty" diagnosis for the batteries – it simplifies thinking about the future. But I'm hoping that "battery bank" doesn't mean a special Lloyds account into which large amounts of dosh have to be placed until there's enough to pay for a new set.

More cashback

After my success in reducing Erin Mae's insurance premium, I thought I'd try the same thing with the car. Last year I think I got a dual policy discount from Direct Line – car and home insurance both from them. This year's home premium seemed reasonable, so I forked out, but the car quotation seemed rather high, and anyway I'd seen that people of my age-group (cough, cough) are the ones getting stung by the companies.

So I got a quote from Saga and rang DL. Choosing the best automatic response choice (If you are thinking of leaving us, press 2) I was speaking in no time at all to a helpful guy, to whom I revealed the enormous chasm between his quote and Saga's. He investigated and found that he could drop the price by £50. Fifty pounds!! He still couldn't quite match Saga's price, but I judged the few pounds extra were worth it – DL have served me well over the years. But it still irks me that I have to ask.

Meanwhile the time had come to bless my best beloved with a new iPad. Her old one was 1st generation, generally working well, but occasionally crashing in DocsToGo or FaceTime, with a resultant, annoying loss of content. And the new ones are faster, and do different things better, and – well, why shouldn't I buy her a nice present! Off we went to Southampton on "Black Friday" (about as aptly named as "Devil's Garden" on the River Weaver). Apple weren't offering any deals at all, but John Lewis were price matching someone else, with £30 off. So JL it was. They were even offering 20% off a very nice cover.

I'd think I was saving money if my bank balance wasn't going down so fast.