Painting and trains

 I had a late night last night, because I'd been invited to make a guest appearance back on Radio 2, asking OJ Borg three questions about canals in his Midnight Mastermind feature.  I used to regularly read the news in his show, and he didn't know in advance that it was going to be me asking the questions.  The format is that someone sets a topic and he has the length of one song to do some quick research.  Fortunately my mobil signal is excellent here, so it all worked well.  But it was at half past midnight, a time I haven't seen since leaving work!

This morning, we weren't as slow to get up and about as I thought we might be, particularly as we weren't going anywhere (not by boat anyway).  After breakfast we took some rubbish and recycling down to the CRT bins, and then walked into Penkridge.  There's a large country and agricultural store there, which turned out to be a real Aladdin's cave of stuff.  We came away with a little tin of Hammerite paint and a paint brush, and also noted the very good price for engine oil.  Then we went across the road to Jasper's the bakers, for some treats.  Back at the boat I started work on the metal frame over the engine, which holds the engine boards, giving it all a good wire brushing to get all the loose bits off.  The removable cross brace pieces were probably the worst bits.

I got one coat of paint on before lunch.  Then we walked down to the railway station as Adrian was catching a train.  The route took us past the very impressive church.

By the time I'd walked back to the boat, Adrian was in Stafford and changing to a train to Stoke.  He then walked up to where the car has been staying, as he's going to a leaving dinner in Warrington for a former colleague.  He'll be back later.  I got another coat of paint on the metal work; this paint dries in 2 to 4 hours anyway, and in today's heat it was much closer to the lower end of that.  It all looks a lot better.