Christmas

Although we are on the boat at the moment for a few days, we are marina-bound. We came here on the 27th after spending Christmas Day and Boxing Day with Andrew in Devizes. We drove up in the morning, taking with us most of the components for a Christmas Dinner. After a shortish walk  down to Caen Hill Locks in the afternoon we assembled everything, cooked the veg and settled down to the meal in the evening.

The next day Christine was still recovering from the cold which we both had just before Christmas and she opted to stay in and sleep (doze) it off whilst Andrew and Mike went for a walk up one of the few hills around Devizes - the last before Bristol! On the top are two former war time radio masts now well adapted to the mobile phone business with three of the four major companies having equipment on site. Close by was a much smaller mast with little identification other than the name of its technology (RTK) which neither of us knew about before. A quick Google by phone gave us a short answer but we found out more about it when we returned home.

It was rather windy but the rain largely held off whilst we were out. However, a very dark cloud threatened to change all that so we made our way back from the top of the hill to the car park in order to beat it. However. a last minute change of direction took the weather away from us and a little blue sky even emerged for a few minutes as we arrived back in Devizes! It was soon replaced by steady rain!

The next day, Thursday, we set off to Packet Boat to stay there until the end of the next week. We had the usual set of tasks to de-winterise the services but before long we were rather snug with a good fire burning in the stove and the central heating going!

On Friday afternoon, Joanna was visiting her Gran in Sussex so we popped over to Windsor to give Adrian a chance to do some emails and other work whilst we looked after Alice and Jess. We also made plans for the next day - a visit to the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green which the two girls had heard about. We also finalised arrangements with Andrew to come up to the boat for a couple of nights.

Mike had by now decided that the priority for IT equipment upgrade was him to have his own tablet - Christine keeps moaning that he is always using hers when she wants it! So we called Andrew, by now en route, and arranged to meet at PC World just a short distance from the marina. Alas, when we arrived there it seems that the news reports of tablets being the must-have item over Christmas were actually correct and anything Mike might consider was out of stock and the few that came in were reserved on-line within ten minutes of them being released! Later online research indicated that this was true everywhere and for all the major suppliers! Ah well - the iPad will just have to be shared for now!