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It might not be obvious. But in the above pic, the railway is at the left, and the A5 is on the right. Three modes of travel run in parallel for a stretch, at this point: rail, canal and road.

It transpired that the turning point Tim and Hannah were aiming for wasn’t a turning point – at least not for a 70 footer like ours – after all. Fortunately there was a Marina hard by, where we were able to execute a three-point turn.

Tim and Hannah – mostly Tim – have been doing most of the food, whilst we’ve been on board. We did a tuna pasta lunch today.

Tim has also been doing the lion’s share of pilotage. Everyone else, save dad (and poss’ Sofi?), has had a go. Whether very briefly (Teresa), or for a few hours (me).

Tim cooked a fab breakfast for us all. Then about 9.30 am, we set off. I did an hour, the. Tim did an hour.

Hannah took over briefly, later on, as well. We had one iffy moment, where passing another boat, and going under a bridge, we were momentarily grounded. I’m told Claire is piloting the boat now.

I made the first of three doors for the art studio this morning, before we left for Gayton Marina, Northants.

It’s amazing how much different light conditions change the appearance of the green colour.

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Our local Tesco superstore has a little used book stand. I’ll usually have a look at why they’ve got. And typically it’s all of no interest to me. But on the most recent visit, they had a few artier titles (should I have got the Howard Hodgkin book, I wonder?).

Anyway, I got this book, on oriental rugs. I love traditional rugs, from the Old World. I also got a paperback edition of Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. Thinking I might give the latter to a young friend or relative (Sam, or my Godson Ailwyn, perhaps?).

Truth be told, I’m not blown away by the choices of rugs in this book. They’re fascinating, by and large. But also not to my tastes. But the same is true of the vast majority of rugs on any given trader’s website.

The above is gorgeous. And would be almost perfect, if it were the right dimensions, for our art studio.

Most of the rugs are Persian, some Indian. Not many are Chinese. The seat-back above is a rare example of the latter.

At present I’m just bathing in the opulent magnificence of the collection, from a purely visual and aesthetic perspective. I might take this book with me, today, on our brief barge break? I may even read some of the text?

I printed a Persian rug, for use in the model.

My printer’s not great, alas. It took ages to get the damn thing working at all. And when I did – equipped with a whole new batch of ink cartridges – the colours still came out very weak.

I tried to adjust some of the horizontal cladding that had gotten a bit out of alignment.

I also painted the ledges along the length of the back row of windows.

In the real build these windows prob’ won’t be as deeply recessed as they are on the model. They’re in that position ‘cause it was sooo much easier to do one strip than seven individual window panes.

And I also did all the window framing I’ll be doing on the bottom section of the model. I might do some more window framing on the roof section windows tomorrow? If time allows.

This project is taking longer than I’d anticipated. But I’m not rushing. And I’m enjoying doing it.

Some time later…

The last thing I did, today, was mask off the windows, and then paint the frames. I’ll prob’ do a second coat before removing the masking. But that’ll have to wait till tomorrow.

I’m thoroughly fed up with endless breakfasts of cereals. Every now and then, I’ll try something else. But the habit of cereal is so deeply entrenched.

Rick Stein, on his Far Eastern Oddysey, has a chicken and rice breakfast, in Thailand, which looks great. I think it might be this.

Obviously one of the chief reasons we eat so much cereal is time. The time taken to prepare the above Thai breakfast is far greater than that required for emptying some cereal into a bowl and pouring some milk over.

We visited Pat on his boat today. For the first time in aeons.

The Marina is quite pleasant.

The skies today were magnificent.

Patrick suggested a walk in Thetford. He had ulterior motives (that came to nothing in the end!). We wound up spending a lot of time driving to a suitable spot. But it was nice in the end.

Rather alarmingly, there were numerous ‘Danger of Death’ sign up about the place where we went for a walk. It wasn’t immediately apparent why. But we eventually found out it was re the risks of rolling logs.

Note the piles of deadly logs.

Anyway, we survived our walk. And returned to Pat’s boat, for pud’ and some Jeeves & Wooster. Very enjoyable!

I thought I’d look and see if Edward Lear’s Parrot book was available in print. Turns out it is. Well, it had to be Taschen, I suppose?

Most copies I found online were selling for £100-300+. Lots of them asking silly amounts. Maybe some of these on account of being the original XL edition, and also having separate colour plate prints?

Will the copy I’ve ordered have these, or not? I’m assuming it won’t. Certainly the copy I just ordered doesn’t mention the separate prints, and was ‘only’ £60. I’ll have to do an extra delivery shift or two to fund this extravagance. But it’s worth it, methinks.

Oh… I just cancelled that Amazon order. Found it on Waterstones for £30. I hope that doesn’t turn out to be a ‘false positive’? They said it’s in stock. But also mention a three week ‘order it from the publisher’ wait. Hmmm!? We shall see…

After my little prole lunch, I did the ‘asphalt’ roof of the art studio. I used a sheet of 150 grit sandpaper, from West End DIY.

I cut and folded the sandpaper to the approx size. Sprayed some adhesive on, attached it, and then cut off the excess.

I’m very pleased with the result. But there’s still a lot else to be done. The doors are waiting on some mini-hinges, ordered via Amazon.

Just now it occurred to me that we could call the studio The Owl & The Pussycat. It’s a beautiful pea-green, for sure.