Christmas in lockdown

Like many folks on the planet, we enjoyed a locked down festive season, ate and drank too much and sneaked out during the nicer weather for some exercise. The highlight was an Xmas morning walk around the local country park, in the sun, seeing Steve and Bron the spaniel there too. Yup - we did try to warn you that this was not going to be a tale of wild parties and drug induced fun.

Over the Xmas period we had to say farewell to a faithful servant. One that we inherited too. When we bought the boat a Bodum kettle was left on board and it has finally given up with bits of black coming off the element and into your tea. We said a fond and sad farewell after nearly 12 years of service to what has been a galley feature from day 1:

As you can see, we gave up trying to keep the stupid black finish clean and free from water stains ages ago. However, this equipment failure continued the "nothing is ever simple" game because it used a continental two pin plug. Hence we had one pair of sockets in the galley with the original continental style fittings in them:

Replacing that with two UK style sockets is no fun as the originals have two nice terminals on each pin, allowing you to put a bridging wire over to the second socket to feed it power:

Of course the UK version does not, so you have to try to cram two 50 amp cables into one little hole which is not keen on such a violation. Some bad words ensued but it was beaten into submission:

The crooked fit of the electrical bit into the wooden surround is original by the way, before anyone starts commenting on it.... The captain might have a go at straightening it one day but the aesthetics of a plug socket in the hidden corner of the galley come low down on the to-do list.

Xmas itself brought some nice presents from Anne and Izzy. The captain was especially happy with this one:

and the crew loves the new tea towel which is so so apt:

Izzy must have modeled for it. 

Nikki, the master baker (somehow mistress baker sounds very wrong on many levels) had provided some typically continental home-made biscuits too:

They took quite a beating, being so good..

After all that fun, some domestic bliss was needed so the genset got a workout:

running the washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, immersion heater and oven. For those that are interested, it can produce up to 52 amps so it had its own version of a full workout that day.

Post Xmas things went back into lockdown routine with the highlight being collecting shopping from the nearby Asda again. Things on the boat to-do list got parked until the new year thinking that we are in for several more weeks of lockdown and so we can amuse ourselves with them in the run up to Easter when, hopefully, more jabs will have been administered and people are not being so stupid in their behaviour. Pigs might fly.