Cyprus seems so far away already.

We arrived back on the barge just two weeks ago today, after spending a fantastic relaxing time in Cyprus. That all seems a distant memory already, especially the warm sunny days, it's freezing cold down on the river today!

Not good news this morning, when Dad rang to say that mum was taken back into hospital again at 3am, the fourth time this year already. We really thought that after 8 months of tests etc, they had finally found the cause of her Pneumonia, I guess not.

Managed to corner one of the marina managers yesterday & in addition to giving us plenty of fire wood (once I sort it, cut it & bring it to the barge) we also discussed the ongoing diesel fuel saga. Explained to him that there is no way we will still be here next year, if the problem is not sorted out over the next few months. Apparently, we are not the only ones asking for diesel so, hopefully now there are others, something might actually get done.(Is that a flying pig I see!)

See what I mean! Barney was not too impressed with wearing his life jacket and being kept on the lead, even though we tried to explain it was for his own safety!

The main problem again this winter, is our ongoing saga of lack of heating oil. People think we are paranoid when we tell them that we get treated differently to the other liveabords but, what happened over the oil seemed to justify our position.

One of the other boat owners offered to deliver us some heating oil, when he was having his own tanks filled however, he talked about this up at the marina bar to the other members of the 'five o clock club' & within days, we had a message back to say that he was unable to help after all, due to 'health & safety issues.' Two weeks later, the same vessel was used to go alongside 5 other liveaboards to deliver, yes you guessed it, heating oil!

The marina owners have condescended to allow us to be taken to the jetty, so that a delivery of oil can be made via a road tanker, at the cost of £240. The usual cost of taking 'Warrior' to the jetty & back is £80 but, they also now want to charge us £160 'waiting time' as two of the yard lads would have to oversea the delivery. Fair point you might add however, no one else is charged this 'waiting time' so, as a matter of dogged principal, we refuse to pay it which means we stay cold in stead. My arguement being, we pay over £6k per year in mooring fees so, surely some of that should go towards a few hours of the workers time when we need them?

Is winter over?

December on the Crouch was not a good time for us, the freezing weather & snow caused us no end of problems.

The snow at the beginning of the month was so bad, that I was unable to leave the barge for 6 days! Barney (dog) had to rely upon Steph to take him for his daily 'walkies' however, even Steph had problems walking along the pontoons.

To take my mind off not being able to get out, I decided to finally put back all the wood panelling in the kitchen/dinning room. The purchase of a nail gun a few weeks earlier turned out to be a good buy, I think I would still be banging in nails now!

The picture shows the cladding at the point of being removed to gain access to the arched windows. These had to be removed & resealed with sikoflex, luckily I was able to remove the ones in the living room & mezzanine, without having to take down all the wooden cladding.

By the end of the week, I was glad to see a thaw outside so, that we could at least get back to some form of normal routine.