Tuesday 22 February 2011

A few more shiny bits

After a long, long week at work, I got the train back home.  Getting off the Metro at Bury, I was really tired, but I had tickets to see Vin Garbut at The Met.  I thought I would go in, and, if I was too tired, I could always disappear during the interval.  Very, very funny.  Although exhausted, I actually laughed myself awake.
What a superb evening. I love the way he tells his jokes, but doesn't explain them, and doesn't bother with some punchlines.  I found myself laughing, with loads of people around me wondering what I was laughing at.  Just fit my sense of hunour perfectly!
"Thomas Moore, the Irish poet.  His family were very big in Yorkshire, you know. You must have heard of them!"  Brilliant!

Got back on the boat, and started laying the floor proper.  Once the boards were cut, I treated the underside with a preservative called PK31 given to me by Scouser J.  this soaks into the wood and gives maximum protection against any moisture that may get in.



While the boards were drying I fit the Stainless rails to the rear hatch runners by drilling and tapping for Stainless M4 countersunk bolts. Nice shiny Steel rails - much better than brass!

I fit floorboards to the front third of the boat until the battery went flat in the DeWalt.  Drilling the holes for the hatch runners took too much!

I tried fitting the water fill pipe, but it was so cold it was very difficult getting the (not very) flexible tube over the fittings.  I will leave the other half until next time when I will remember to bring a kettle.

Had a look in J's boat, where he has built a very smart woodburner, with a stainless steel boiler on top.  Very smart.










Walking through Radcliffe on Sunday, I took this photo of the Former Radcliffe Times building.  It is such a shame that these buildings are allowed to deteriorate until they end up being demolished and replaced with the pre-fabricated monstrousities that are taking over Manchester these days.






Tuesday 1 February 2011

Best meal of the day.

What is it with the full English Breakfast ? 
Why do we bother calling it English, when the English seem so crap at making it ?
Full English Breakfast.  Nobody seems to know how to make one these days. Just another symptom of the decline of social interaction I suppose.  The family unit is in decline, so nobody learns how to cook as a matter of growing up anymore. 
Now you have to be some self-important "celebrity" chef lording it over the common plebs.
I had breakfast in Heston's' Little Chef at Popham the other week and never again. It was terrible. They didn't even manage to cook the baked beans. How to take the successful Olympic breakfast, one of the better and more consistent breakfasts available today, and completely balls it up takes some skill.  Highly trained to be completely useless to man or beast.
Next was the "Full English" at the Holiday Inn at Stevenage.  Burnt, cold bacon, awful cold, cheap and nasty deep fried sausages, cold beans and scrambled egg that looked like something out of a 70's low budget sci-fi movie.  At least the plates were warm, so they managed to get at least one thing right in a pathetic insult of a meal at TWELVE QUID A GO!!!