We arrived back from my parents in Devon safely and thankfully this time the boat had not been done over.
Two years ago some one broke in and stole everything. Even the knives and forks, the rugs, the tin food, the teddy bear (ahhhh... that was the worst!). A grands worth of stuff in total. So this year I placed low energy lighting in the window and we left the heating on too, and put decorations around, just to make it obvious that there was someone around.
It is pretty bad weather. There is snow and ice. This meant that yesterday the stand pipe had frozen again, as had the hose pipe, so we couldn't pipe water into the boat. Last year Alex brought it all in barrels. What a faff!
Anyway today at least I can have a shower and start the mountain of washing that has built up this week and beyond.
Today I've also had to tackle the bathroom with a mommoth clean once again, as we have an infestation of small flies. Yesterday I killed around 300 or more. The just seem to hatch out and fly towards the windows. They seem a bit like fruit flies and appeared last summer. I thought they had come from the toilet, the effulent goes right down into a tank below and we put in treatment fluids. It is then emptied once every ten days to two weeks. But I don't think so now. They begin to fly from 11am til around dark. And they are the bane of my life!
Yesterday when I went out for a walk on my usual route around the field with Brin the dog, we saw the red kite. It has a roost quite near the boat and I think I've found the nest .... a bucket sized object quite high up. I need a second opinion on this. They have an amazing cry like a shepherd whistling his dogs in an over enthusiastic manner. The sound travels for miles and you will often hear them long before they are visible even as a small dot in the sky.