Beric and Boris

Dad can't resist another opportunity to go paint Cambria. She's pretty much done and is, and should now be, spending her life earning money, doing charters and educational stuff, which means away from Faversham, generally. So the fun project, which has kept Dad off the streets for the last three years is pretty much coming to an end. Today there were only him and the 'Boss of Volunteers' Basil down there, Basil doing a bit of varnishing, Dad painting pale yellow onto recently fitted wooden cleats and the main 'horse'. Dad also gets involved in the job of hoisting the masts of Sailing Barge Beric back up. The gear was lowered yesterday to allow the sails to be taken off and sent away for repair, and had to be raised again today to get the masts back out of the way of the imminent deck repairs.

Part way through the morning, 2CV Llew turns up at the barge to leave 9-month-old Boris with us. We are babysitting him again while Llew and a chum sail the chum's 40 foot yacht over to Boulougne and back. It might be just one night but, as is the way of these things, it is at mercy of weather and tide and , says Llew, I may or may not be back Monday night.

Although Llew is, in theory, in a hurry to go take the maybe-ex-but-we're-not-sure girlfriend to a charity garden party, Dad tempts him down below decks with the fully equipped galley and offer of a cup of tea.

Dad is then amused by Llew and Basil, who are both fans of keeping boats 'traditional' chuntering about 'yottie' barges with fancy skylights, modern domestic interior lighting, sophisticated electrics and possibly even (soon) radar! (Gasp!) Llew is only teasing and Basil is laughing as he explains patiently that whilst in Denmark and Norway the governments supports old barges kept as museum pieces, here the barge has to pay its way. That means offering the possible paying charter guests a certain level of home comfort, i.e. 'yottie luxury', hot showers, warm dry bunks with duvets and pillows, good cooking facilities and so on.

Ah well, the silver lining on the Boris-shaped-invasion cloud is that Boris doesn't do sleeping alone downstairs and creates such a fuss it's easier to let all the dogs off the sleep-in-the-kitchen rule, so as long as I can resist the temptation to pee on (Mum in the) bed we should be OK tonight.

Deefer

Never trust an Irishman called...

Ahharrrr me Hearties. 'Ere be a picture of Dad scrambling up the 'ratlines' (pronounced rattlins) on SB Cambria when they were our racing on the Swale the other day. He's gone aloft with the new camera to try to get some pictures down to the deck from up there. Impressive huh?

Meanwhile Mum is running around muttering "Never trust an Irishman named Charlie". She's thinking of C Haughey (ex Taoiseach / Prime Minister) but it may equally apply to our Estate Agent, Charlie McD. Mum and Dad have just lost out in a mini bidding war for the house-of-choice on which they'd put in a bid yesterday morning. The rival bidder is, they know, the bloke who owns the neighbouring property as a holiday home. There is also, according to Charlie, a mystery 3rd bidder who looked round the property on Friday and will let Charlie know either Monday or Tuesday.

Mum and Dad want to know where all this interest has suddenly come from on a property that's been vacant for a year and in which there's been no interest till we suddenly popped our heads over the parapet. Anyway, the rival outbid us by £2500, so we went back with another £2500 but hit our limit at that point. The guy snuck on another £1000 and, as they say, you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. We folded and told Charlie that should anything happen to Mr Rival we'd be interested in coming back in. So that was that. Dad texted Mrs S to get her back on the internet searches and Mum and Dad are looking harder at the Plan B property (the one with the lovely farm outbuildings I Lily posted about a few days back.

Deefs

Blow the Wind Southerly

.. blow bonny breeze, my Daddy to me!

Daddy's home after a bit of an epic drive from the middle of Ireland back to Faversham, starting at 10:30, arriving 23:00. Thank you, Lily for taking up the arduous blogger's mantle while he was over there with you. You did a good job and I may call upon your services again but for now, I'll jump back in the chair if that's OK.

Dad had a whale of a time and thoroughly enjoyed his house hunting, assisted and supported by the Silverwoods, for whom many many thanks for phone calls, hassle, navigation, hospitality (see pic above of Mr S's fine first attempt at Yorkshires!), food, wine, bed and not to mention potties full of pee and poo which came rapidly and regularly (Thanks R).

Dad drove up from the Portlaoise area via Steak Lady's place near Dublin, stopping for a quick chat and a catch up, then headed, via the shiny new port tunnel, for the Irish Ferries hydrofoil 'Jonathan Swift' (of Gulliver's Travels fame, of course) at 14:30. The Swift is tiny compared to a ferry and was crammed to the very gunwales with vehicles and people. The sea was only a bit of swell, so the boat rocked and rolled a bit, but nothing to cause anyone any alarm. By 17:00 Dad was disembarked in Holyhead and headed home stopping only at Keele services on the M1 for a Ginsters pie, enjoying free passage over Dartford bridge (it was after 22:00) arriving back here at 23:00.

Mum welcomed him home with soup, bread and wine and everyone made a huge fuss of each other, with Mum and Dad catching up on how our buyers visit went that evening and on where we are in our own house hunting. The latter is 'on tenterhooks' waiting to see if the bank accepts Mum and Dad's offer on the first choice house. It's a single storey close to Timahoe, Co. Laois but nobody's giving out any details yet so as not to jinx the process. Time enough for that when we have some signatures on bits of paper and nobody can change their minds! Meanwhile Mum is till quietly eye-ing up a 'Plan-B' place in case it all goes Pete Tong and Mrs S is still hunting for more on t'internet.

Good to have Daddy home!

Deefs

Byres and Cattle Yards

Deef's Dad and Mrs Silverwood are off on a major mission today, a 2 hour run from here to the top end of Co. Roscommon to look at an old farmhouse, long abandoned. The outside, they tell me, is gorgeous; to die for. Look at these byres for example and the one-time cattle yard. Dad was going weak at the knees, practically, it being so much like the kind of buildings in which he used to work when he was a lad in Sussex. Look at the old shed in picture 3 -you can see the three bays where the cattle would have had their noses in the food troughs and the gulley at the bottom where their waste product would drain out onto the land. To the right of picture 2 is the cattle race where the cows could be contained in a narrow passage way while you stopped them at the crush and did whatever worm-drenching or vet procedures you needed to do.

The old house attached was a small farm run by an old man and his son, with the three sisters upping sticks and moving to the more glamorous city. Eventually Dad passed away and then the son fell ill and had to spend some time in hospital. His three sisters held on, hoping that their brother would recover and return to the farm, but he didn't so it all fell into disuse. The 3 sisters then umm'd and ahh'd over what to do about the property. The months turned into years and suddenly 20 years had gone by with no-one living there, and the resultant mould and damp taking its toll. Luckily the walls, windows and roof were reasonably sound, so no rain was getting in but the house is still, in 2011, a sorry picture of mould stains, flaking paint and some suspiciously 'soft' areas of floor on the landing. Even some heaving, erupting plaster.

So that's why it's so cheap. What Deef's Mum and Dad, assisted by Mr and Mrs Silverwood need to decide, is "is it do-able". This place is now one of 2 left on the short list. The third, which was there up till this morning, is now "Sale Agreed" and has disappeared off the website.

Ahh, the stress

Lily

Plug 'Ole

My Baby has gorn down the plug 'ole

My baby has gorn down the plug

The poor little Fing

Was so skinny and Fin

She should've been barfed in a pineapple tin

or a Jug-ug-ug-ug

Ah the joys of being wrangled by Mrs S when you've rather over indulged in the dog dry-food mixed with pasta sauce dept. Mind you, she didn't really have to put the lump of soap suds on the top of my head, did she? I'm ready for my close-up now?

Deef's Dad upsets his SatNav lady today by some ill advised comments about her accent and she exacts a cruel revenge by sending he and Mrs S down some seriously dodgy roads en route to the property they are viewing today. They survive with only minimal damage to sump and due to bottling it as one road turned from grass-up-the-middle to "it's a lawn". Deef's Dad thinks he has eaten enough humble pie now and may be forgiven in time for tomorrow's trip to Co. Roscommon.

Lily

Clear Canal Water

I don't know how well you'll be able to see these two pictures but they show very well in the original state how gin-clear is the water in the Grand Canal passing through the Irish mid-lands. In the first pic we are looking straight down through 3-4 feet of water next to the tow-path, and in the 2nd, although you can see the reflection of the lock gate, I hope within that you can also see the actual bottoms of the lock gates and the cill 3-4 feet under water. You can see every plant growing at the bottom and even tiny 2-4 inch fishes swimming between them.

Having just come back from our own narrow boat hols in the Pennines where all the canal water is so opaque with green and with mud that you can't see down through more than a couple of inches of it in most places and you'd struggle to see through a pint glass full of it, this just plain amazed us. Whether it's down to the lack of pollution (there's certainly less rubbish and filth chucked in) or boat traffic, we didn't know but it's a credit to Waterways Ireland.

We found this, along with a surprise staircase lock as we went looking for a canal-side property in today's house close to Rathangan, Co.Kildare. We had to stop and look and take photos. Talking about this also sent Mrs S off surfing for narrow boats to buy and live on (but not too seriously). That then sent Deef's Mum off on the same track. Deef's Dad thinks the women have all lost the plot and can see the 'English' family ending up moored to some canal bank in Kildare as winter sets in.

Lily

I did a Poo!

Unusually, and via the power of the internet, this post is being brought to you from Ireland, where Deefer's Dad is currently house hunting assisted by myself (Lily), and my co-workers Maxwell and Coco. That's us in the first pic - left to right Max, me and Coco. The 2nd pic might be of me trying to see how you get the dog sweets out of the jar. By the time I discovered the top was open, Mrs Silverwood (my Mum) was onto me! I (Lily) am doing this with full permission of Deefs who is taking a short break, looking after her Mum back in the UK.

Sorry about the complicated relationships but hopefully you and I can hang onto the plot. I will pass the reins back to Deefs on Friday.

So, Mrs S and Deef's Dad are off checking out some places found by Deef's Mum and Mrs S on the internet, but now they are doing it properly in the Irish rain in the company of proper Estate Agents. So far so good but I'll hold back from any detail till we know one way or the other.

Meanwhile let this image into your head. Little R Silverwood (3) is just at the potty training stage and she is getting on well and is very proud of her progress. So proud that she comes skipping into the room waving an unfamiliar yellow plastic bowl under Deef's Dad's nose, wobbling it alarmingly. Deef's Dad grabs it to steady it just in time to realise it is half full of yellow liquid, with a floater to be proud of slopping about in it. That's nothing, says Mrs S. When she was first doing them and it was all a bit sporadic R would stride into the room clutching the poo in the palm of her hand and say Look! I've done a Poo.

As is the way of these things, busy Mrs S is not always in a position to attend straight way to each insistent child and on one occasion, the Mummy.... Mummy..... MUMMY! was followed up by R thrusting the thing so far under Mummy's nose that the little brown-coated fingers went in past Mummy's lips and actually behind her teeth before Mummy realised what message was trying to come across!

Lily (for the Deefs)