Coffee logs and an oil change

I had a few jobs I wanted to do today, and the first was to go and get some more fuel for the stove.  I drove into Milton Keynes, and as well as buying some coal I got three bags of coffee logs.  I’d never heard of them before, but they claim to burn twenty per cent hotter and longer than kiln dried logs; each one is made from the grounds of 25 cups of coffee, and turning them into logs is claimed to produce 80 per cent less greenhouse gas emission than sending the grounds to landfill (and it saves on landfill too). Another plus is that because they are uniform in size, they’re very convenient to store.

I also called in to Tesco in Wolverton and topped up the cupboard staples.  Then it was on to the main job of the day, an oil change. The last one was, unusually, not done by me; Boating Leisure did it at the same time as blacking last year, so I was a bit worried about how tightly the oil filter would be on.  I was right to be worried.  I couldn’t get it off by hand, and had to get out the filter wrench.  This has a thing a bit like a bike chain to wrap round the filter, but it’s a job to get it to grip, and there’s not much room for the handle either.  It also tends to dig into the filter.  Anyway, it took me about half an hour but it came off in the end, a dented mess.

While I was there, I cleared out the storage area of the engine hole, removing a lot of empty containers and sorting out the oily matting at the bottom.  Everything is much neater down there now.

While all this was going on, I had a text from a friend I’d been chatting to yesterday, and who lives about an hour away.  The upshot was that he drove up, and we retired to The Navigation for a drink, a shared pizza, and a catch up.  A very pleasant afternoon, all the more so for being impromptu.

Once Paul had left for home, I topped up the batteries and the water tank.  It’s been a very sunny day, although every now and then a very sharp shower blew through.  And it’s been windy and cold.  Tomorrow I have a boat test, so it would be good if the sunshine stayed but the wind and cold switched to something else.