General Witterings -
'Rosy' has a Visitor

Golly gosh!!  What a busy week it's been.

Sunday was the fourth (and last) mop-handle painting day - Day one, primer.  Day two, undercoat.  Day three, white topcoat.  Sunday, day four, blue top coat at one end, and red at the other.  It was also a 'cleaning Rosy day and empty the bucket night' as a visitor is expected.

Monday.  Needless to say, the visitor arrived just as I nipped out for a quick shop.  The visitor was David, the owner of Falcon (the boat I'm moored next to) who had arrived to take back to the UK all the bits 'n' bobs from Falcon's engine that are required to effect a repair on the knackered prop-shaft - e.g.  engine mountings, drive plates and other fancy goods.  We had a standard Rosy lunch (bread, cheese and tomato salad), had a walk in the afternoon, and wabbit for dinner.  Not much work done on Falcon!  David also brought over some essential goodies, as Briare is a small town, and lacks some of life's essentials - like curry powder, chilli powder, English books, Bombay mix, Brasso etc. etc.

Tuesday was a 'David working on Falcon with me giving handy hints' day.  He didn't swear at me, which was nice.  We drove over to Gien, a larger town than Briare, looking for quails for our dinner.  None.  So I cooked coq au vin instead (chicken stewed in red wine for the uninitiated).

On Wednesday, David left.  I made two monkey's fists (one for Falcon and one for Rosy).  A monkey's fist is a bit of woven rope work that gives a bit of weight to the end of a line, to make it easier to throw.  THE book on knots and lashings is by Ashley, an American with a sense of humour.  He says that the monkey's fist is often made around a core - a piece of lead, a beach pebble or one of the cook's dumplings.

I read most of Thursday, but Friday was market day - kohlrabi day on Rosy!!

Saturday was a serious day.  The inside of the back doors of a narrow boat are heavily decorated.  They are usually left open in good weather.  The decorations on Rosy's doors are 16 years old.  I got the main paintings (the castle scenes on the top panels) redone two years ago, but now all the graining work is beginning to peel off.  So on Saturday I sanded it all down, and filled in all the cracks.

Sunday (today) was still fine, so the filler got rubbed down, and primer applied.

SERIOUS BIT

I've not mentioned the world situation recently.  I've heard some amazingly inept comments on the radio (we don't do telly on Rosy) (yet).  Some highly paid twat suggested that the Taliban armies would collapse under pressure, and compared them with the Iraq forces collapsing in Desert Storm.  I thought it was reasonably well known that the Iraqis were reasonably well armed (by us and the Americans when they were slogging it out with those dreadful mullahs in Iran (who are now beloved brothers, I hear!)).  However, they were not well led or well motivated.

The Afghans, on home soil, are wonderful fighters.  They've outclassed the Brits several times in years gone by.  During the Great Game they got to hear that we were giving our soldiers campaign medals.  They applied for them, pointing out that if they hadn't supplied the opposition, there would have been no battles.  They also gave the Russians a very hard time, even though the Russians had no qualms about being ruthless.

The Taliban soldiers are so fighting for a cause which they (apparently) believe in.  Hence they are not going to be a knock-over.  Their weakness is that they are disliked by large segments of the Afghan population.

My personal nightmare is that very large numbers of Afghans are going to die, not from the bombing, but from starvation and cold during the winter.

Incidentally, among the twat reporters (who have so little to report that they resort to telling us how hard life is for THEM!!), there are some very good ones.  Kate Clarke (Clark?) has been in Afghan for several years (she was thrown during the Buddha crisis), knows the country well, has a wide range of contacts and is worth listening to.

Incidentally, before he left, David gave me some outdated tins of scoff from Falcon's larder, which I've been munching away at with no ill effects.

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