Leaving with Daniel to spend time working on The Rolyat Princess in Horning, taking the new Zodiac RIB on the roof-rack where we bought fittings to store it on the boat davits, fixed the toilet macerator leak and installed a new Webasto heating controller. Dropped Daniel off at Norwich station, bought some prawns for lunch and called home on my new phone.
The gales death toll has risen to 45 in Britain and 85 for the whole of Europe and the BBC were having to make cuts of £75million to survive the limitation of licence fee increases with the BBC Radio Orchestra having to close.
Daniel and I had an early call and we were soon dressed, breakfasted and ready to leave for Norfolk. Daniel was less reluctant to join me this morning, now that I had promised to set him off on the Norwich to Cambridge train later the same day. The journey was all right apart from some trouble with the Zodiac inflatable on the roof-rack. The wind and rain had been parting the cardboard box on the pallet and I had to tie it with a towing cable. Unfortunately, I managed to further injure my bad thumb in the process which was not very nice. The rest of the journey to Heronshaw was O.K. and, upon arrival, I was pleased to see that my Webasto spares had arrived. We then had quite a game unloading the inflatable from the roof rack. Four of us had put it up and two were trying to take it down, with Daniel in one of his weaker moods. Eventually, we had to remove it from the box and take them down individually. Daniel inflated the boat as I tried re-fitting the macerator and found that the pump body was still leaking.
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To Wroxham for some fixings to secure the inflatable to the davits and then back to the boat for lunch. I made the lunch and Daniel washed up afterwards whilst I put the new water valve onto the aft toilet (and that fixed the leak). Away by car to dispose of much of the Zodiac packing material in the Horning tip and then drove on to Norwich station where I got Daniel his train ticket and we had a cup of tea whilst waiting for the train. I picked up some prawns from a sea-food stall on the way back and then had them for tea. I telephoned Di later and found only Debbie and Della in. Daniel's train had been delayed for half an hour with somebody terrorising the passengers and then later broke down to complicate his journey home. Little Della was answering the telephone and was pleased to be talking to her Daddy.
We are getting very poor mobile telephone reception at Horning (as poor as other types of reception) and I think that it is something to do with the huge US listening station on the top of the hill. This evening, until very late, I fitted the new Webasto heating controls. The controller is very nice and impressed Daniel. It has digital display and programmable temperature, time and alarm modes with adjustable sensitivity for the thermostat and represents a big improvement on the previous simple on/off switch with no temperature control at all. I listened to Radio Broadland as I worked and ended up going very late to bed on a cold night. The news is of the death toll in the gales rising to 45 in Britain and 85 for the whole of Europe. The BBC is having to make cuts of £75million to survive the limitation of licence fee increases. The BBC Radio Orchestra has to close and plans for a new London radio centre have had to be shelved. More bad weather warnings are broadcast by the radio station.