78A Damson Lane Bridge to Black Boy Bridge 69

Last night as we sat watching TV my phone binged for me to approve a purchase being made with my credit card. I wasn’t purchasing anything, I was watching TV. Earlier this evening I’d put an email into spam and thought nothing of it, suggesting I’d made a purchase from a company. Time to call the bank, something fishy was going on! After chatting to the lady for just a couple of minutes I asked her to put a stop on my card. Whilst we talked to check what was me and what was fraudulent, other transactions were being attempted, Uber, JD Sports! A new card will be sent out to me, I asked for it to go to a branch but the only one in Stratford is only open on Mondays! Hopefully the problem has now been solved, but I was warned to be vigilant as it is likely to happen again.

It rained overnight, pretty heavily. The gap we’d chosen in the trees wasn’t a very long gap either so the rain got another chance to keep us awake, quite a disturbed night.

It was still raining when we woke up, still raining as we had our cuppa in bed, still raining as we had breakfast. No point in waiting for it to stop, because it simply wasn’t going to.

We pushed off in full waterproofs, padded waterproof trousers as it was a touch chilly this morning. I had a go at ringing the discharge nurse at the hospital, straight to answerphone, maybe she was off this week. I decided to give Social Services a go to see if they knew anything about Frank’s funding. I know the routine now when I call them, give them all the info, then they say they’ll pass it onto the team.

The rain kept coming and we kept pootling onwards, no choice as we’ve Stratford to reach before I need to head off to panto. Today we’d need to be down Knowle Locks with the aim of mooring where we’d have reached should we have come down the Lapworth flight.

My phone rang, a withheld number. It was a discharge nurse, the lady I’d talked to in the past was off this week. The funding for Franks onward care had come through and he had a fully funded place in a nursing home. She said the name of the home. Brilliant! It was the home we’d hoped to get him into, they’d been holding a room for him. The plan had come off. Time for a happy dance and maybe a tear or two. He’d be moving tomorrow. Fantastic. I just needed to make sure he knew about it. Easier said than done!

I passed the news on to key members of the Frankness group first, then onto everyone else delaying the start of our descent of Knowle Locks.

Mick had gone ahead to set the top lock. A branch was by the top gates, so he’d headed to get a boat hook to shift it. A lady came from an offside boat with her boat pole to help get it out of the way to somewhere the volunteers would be able to get it out. It was a pretty big bit of tree.

We now worked our way steadily down the five big locks. Winding the paddles up on one side only to let the water down, it’s too far to walk to cross the beams, even more so on such a soggy day. In the past I’ve used the offside paddles, but today I opted for the towpath side, hoping they’d not be as stiff. Well they were still stiff and took quite a bit of puff to get them moving even with my long reach windlass.

I’d set the next lock down and open the top gates, then walk ALL the way round back to the lock above that had been emptying. The whirlpool that these locks create can have you spinning round in circles, add into the mix the usual strong wind! Thankfully today there was no wind and we’d taken our time, so passage between chambers was straight and forward, rather than round in circles!

Now our aim was to reach Kingswood Junction. It was still raining, we were hungry. I didn’t want to stop for lunch and then start again putting wet clothes back on. We opted to do about another half hour to the next mooring after the pubs. There was space, we pulled in, put our waterproofs to drip dry in the bathroom and showed Tilly the outside world.

How dare they tie such a wet outside up! It was the same front and back! Rubbish. Oh hang on what’s that in the sideways trees? See you later! She made pretty good use of the two and a half hours she was awarded.

Some panto emails needed looking at and all the time I kept trying to speak to Frank to check he understood what would be happening tomorrow. In the end I called the ward, only to find out he’d been moved to another ward. Mick sat on the phone until we finally got through to the new ward. A message was relayed to Frank to give me a call. Finally! I’d managed to talk to him, he must have turned his phone down without realising.

I cobbled together a Chinese chicken dish. Left over roast chicken dusted in corn flour and five spice, shallow fried. I added some small chunks of root ginger, some red pepper and green beans. Then made a sauce with soya sauce, maple syrup and a spoon of the red currant jelly we’d been given at Urban Moorings. It was very nice served with rice. Next time I’ll add some water at the end to create more of a sauce.

5 locks, 5.1 miles, 1 extremely soggy day, 1 fraudulent transaction, 1 credit card stopped,1 restless night, 9 messages, 1 happy dance, 1 deep breath, 0.75 hours early stop, 2 coats dripping, 1 unimpressed cat turned into an impressed cat, well I think if you look back to 2021 you’ll see that I wasn’t given enough shore leave to make my mind up about this mooring completely, 1 Mrs Tilly stamp of approval.

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