It was quite chilly this morning. Still in Lagarde.

Well there was no point in two of us being up before six, so while one of us was appreciating the bracing freshness of sunrise in nine degree warmth, the other one wasn’t.

As the temperature failed to soar, one more coat of oil found its way onto the bench tops before seven thirty and time to return the car to Luneville.  The prospect of cycling home through almost thirty kilometres of misty valleys was not terribly daunting albeit it may have taken a little while to thaw the extremities when it was over, so when Bob from a couple of boats away offered a lift in his car it would have been rude to have turned hime down.

By the time we returned, the temperature had reached “civilised” and it felt as though half the day had been done and it wasn't even quarter to breakfast time.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the pile of steaming crepes which were waiting for my return, and perhaps what seemed to be an nibble-athon in honour of my attaining the same age as her good self, arranged of course on other people’s boats due to the absence of anything remotely conducive to sitting on in our own, let alone washing up in. 

Thus was any thought of work kept pleasantly at bay for the rest of the afternoon.

My Workshop

Since today was the last day that we would have the car, we wasted no time charging off into the morning to pickup the four wire baskets we needed for the galley.  

And since today was the last day that we would have the car, it stands to reason that when we arrived at the big blue shop, there would be only three wire baskets left in stock, “perhaps you could come back after tomorrow for another one?”

So we had two cups of free coffee, after all we are “family”, and left with three quarters of the items on our list ticked off, stopped off for a car full of groceries, and managed to get three more coats of oil on the bench tops which were complete and awaiting installation, for the time being balancing on top of any surface even approximately level enough to have them.

In the meantime, someone had purloined my table-workshop for the better part of the day and were using it as an office!   How dare they!

I shall have to get up earlier tomorrow.

Ahh.. well we've started on the new bench tops.

Today was a public holiday in Germany and parts of France, so when we decided after taking careful measurements that there were one or two things we could use from the large Swedish furniture store in Metz to complete our galley update, prudence suggested that perhaps we should check the opening hours.

Dear prudence, once again was absolutely right.   It seems that every branch of that particular chain would be open today, except the only two that were within driving distance, although we would have needed to take a cut lunch to get to the second in any case.

Undeterred, one of us decided that he should just launch into the bench top project while the going was good. This of course meant adding somewhat to the almost sorted chaos, as the contents of the cupboards were emptied into the few remaining spaces, leaving the other powerless to do much at all but find somewhere under the junk and become small and quiet.

Meanwhile Bill, having begun the dismantling of our steering in good faith or perhaps blind optimism, had left an odd collection of greasy ball bearings and springs which keep attaching themselves to things at random and somewhat mysteriously  moving around the boat. Hopefully most will have been rediscovered by the time the gear arrives.

There is a picnic table in the shade of a near by tree which I use as my workshop each year, and I lay out my meagre collection of tools to mark my possession of it.  By mid afternoon the two metre long future bench tops had been removed from the car and we could sit beside each other once again when our next outing presented itself, but even better,  they were now in smaller pieces that vaguely resembled the shape of our galley.

Playing with Lego

Have we really been here three days?  If we had imposed a deadline on ourselves for moving on, we may even be at the early stages of becoming stressed by now, as the list of tasks that need to be completed seems to grow by the hour.

Most of them are jobs which could be put off if we lay down for a bit and waited for them to go away, but where would the fun be in just cruising off into the sunset?  There is the upgrade to our bed of course, a beautiful Lego-esque system of plastic springs, which after hours of fun assembling will miraculously turn our cheap mattress into a very expensive one, and perfectly good albeit slightly arthritic fingers into aching lumps.  At least now when I have need to curl up sucking my thumb it will be without my hip digging in to the ply wood base, and believe it or not I do occasionally still have that need.

Take for instance this very afternoon.  Having confirmed that the parts for our antique steering system were in stock at the suppliers, every last nut and bolt, we ordered them when we arrived last Monday and this morning dismantled the aged parts in anticipation of their imminent arrival.  This afternoon we received a message which advised that perhaps delivery would not be on Friday as discussed as the parts were no longer manufactured and they did not have any and perhaps it would be wise in future to enquire whether there is stock before we order.

It looks as though there may well be time to replace the galley bench tops before we leave after all.

Ugh!

There seemed to be no escape.   If the cleaning wasn’t bad enough, trying to find a way to write about it that isn’t even more tortuous to read is producing even more pain.

Jacques, having realised that under what appeared to be a land reclamation project in his port, suggested I use his “little” pressure washer once I had finsihed with the excavator.  That helped, and after a very long morning and some of the afternoon the blue and white we have come to love began to re-emerge.

Inside, the task was of no less magnitude, and while a large dent has been made, it will take several days more of juggling things between tools and projects until we are ready to move on.   

Move on that is, once we have finished the reinstallation of the now gorgeous looking Mr Perkins.

In the pink.

When the day dawned it seemed a bit silly to leave the warmth of the quilts just to get up and scrub the boat and tidy up, besides we had been invited to breakfast at nine, and there was little point in raising a sweat before then.

Breakfast naturally turned into a late-ish morning tea, and since we had a car and Grahame and Aileen didn’t, we decided they should accompany us on a brief provisioning soujourn.   “Brief” is probably not a word that comes readily to mind in relation to shopping trips, particularly when multiple not-males persons are in the throng, and I must admit that perhaps arriving in town at one minute to lunchtime was strategically ill advised, given that it would be two hours until the hardware shop reopened and until then some vital supplies would be unattainable.

We did our best to fill in time, by sitting down between supermarkets, for a quick bite to eat, sympathising all the while with the local service people and the great distraction that lunch time must be for them.

By the time we arrived back in Lagarde, looked at the mess for a bit and pondered whether to start work, we thought better of it and retired to Grahame and Aileen’s boat where at least we had a place to sit, to watch the sun go down.

Six days on the road and we made it home tonight. to Lagarde

Why is it that when we get to bed late we always seem to wake early to compensate?   At least it gave us time to pack all our stuff, lose one or two important items and then find them again several times, and give the place a bit of a once-over before setting off to bid our fond farewells.

It was actually a very civilised ten-thirty before we finally found ourselves full of coffee and barrelling down the motorway in direction Lagarde, cruise control set at one-three-zero, and barely another car on the road.  While motorway tolls are said to be relatively expensive we console ourselves with the thought that on a per kilometre basis if the same toll were to be applied to the Gateway Bridge, it would cost about thirty cents to cross.   

I have marvelled at the efficiency of the system before, and hadn’t finished marvelling this time after five and a bit hours on the road counting a couple of rest stops, when we arrived to begin our trail of fond helloes.

First there were snacks with Jacques and Maggie, then dinner with Grahame and Aileen, after all it was still “eat with your neighbour weekend” so it would have been rude to avoid them.

The boat looked as though it had spent a hard winter under some sort of animal pen, and the inside still packed for winter but with our travel gear half unpacked resembled a small recycling transfer station, so we cleared the corner of it which had our bed in it, and decided that tomorrow we would be up with the sun and into sorting out the mess.

None of it mattered though, we are home.