Onwards and Upwards.....Birmingham here we come

I’ve always thought that mallards are potty things and this lot proved it today. 

We’d been filling with water just below Lowsonford Lock, so when a hire boat came out of the lock we quickly put the hose away and went straight in.  The lock was already occupied by 11 juvenile mallards that had come down the lock with the hire boat and couldn’t be coaxed out before we went in, so we decided to continue going up and hope that they wouldn’t get between the boat and the lock side and get squashed. There was a lot of “duck chatter” as they rushed from the front of the boat, along between the boat and the lock and congregated behind us.  They seemed to enjoy the ride and I had to really chase them out of the lock before I could close the gate behind us. They’re still at that stage where they’re too young to fly so were running along the surface of the water. 

We had a good run up Lapworth Locks and these two dogs greeted us at one of the lock cottages. The large one is a Bordeaux, very slobbery but very beautiful too.

When we moved onto the boat 2 years ago I made the decision to get rid of most of my paperbacks and buy a Kindle.  At the time this was purely to save space but since then I’ve really come to appreciate it for other reasons.  I’m quite a voracious reader and just love being able to go online and buy a book and have it instantly downloaded. It’s so much more convenient than having to wait until the next charity shop or book shop for something to read.  I was talking to a lady the other day who also had a Kindle but who was complaining about the cost of the books. Now I hardly ever pay for a book these days and have a collection of almost 100 just waiting for the time to read them, so I told her about this Amazon website. It’s a list of the 100 favourite books bought BUT ALSO 100 favourite freebies too.  One of the newly listed freebies is THIS

  

a laugh-out-loud book about life on the waterways