Norbury Interlude Part 2

Norbury Wharf - 9th January 2011

A whole day at Norbury with nothing to do - perfect! Except, of course, that there's never ever "nothing" to do on a boat! Over to the boatyard to buy a paper - these days it's the "i"  as being retired I no longer have time to read the Guardian (and you can get six i's for the price of one Grauniad). I also picked up a copy of the freesheet Towpath Talk which along with the understandably heavy advert content does manage to pick up on a few stories that other magazines don't. At 10.07 an anonymous boat came past, southbound.
At 10.30 I decided I couldn't really do nothing all day, so decided to mop out the bilges. This is harder than it used to be since I had a Python Drive flexible coupling fitted, the brackets for which have divided the large area under the prop shaft into several small ones, which need to be dealt with separately. I can't get down to water level I'm too big the hatch is too small, so I have to soak water up with the mop then squeeze it into a bucket by hand. Twenty laborious minutes removed all of two litres of, presumably, rain water which wasn't bad given the length of time since I'd last done it and the amount of rain we've had since.
Another anonymous boat passed northbound at 11.00 as I settled down with a coffee and the paper. After lunch I repeated yesterday's walk along the embankment, returning along the road and passing below it in one of the two "tunnels" that take the Norbury to Gnosall road underneath. 
There was a flurry of excitement in the afternoon when local boat "Mr Bo'Jangles" returned to its mooring and yet another anonymous boat, trailing two plastic ducks from the stern, came along. Another local boat "Columbo" set off from its mooring for a trip up to Grub Street and back. Just before dark the last boat of the day arrived from the south and, after an attempt to tie up on BWs visitor moorings opposite, the steerer changed his mind and headed for Norbury Wharf's moorings further up. This completed the boat movements of the day.
Starcross is in "winter mode" i.e. the water tank has been drained and pipes lagged ready for the winter frosts  (you may laugh - but we've still got half of January and all of February to go yet). This necessitates frequent trips to the water point with a couple of 5 litre containers so, after tea, I combined this with a trip to the shower block (a great advantage of mooring at Norbury), stopping on the way back to chat to a newcomer to the moorings who has just bought his first boat and is a ukelele player and George Formby impersonator! (It takes all sorts. . .)
And that's what happens on a winter Monday at Norbury, although for a different view, click here