Thursday 31 January 2013

Newbury… Again!

Wow…. did we ever get bounced around by the wind last night.  Jan claimed to have received very little sleep whereas there isn’t much I won’t sleep through.  Temperatures have been very mild so we decided to turn off the Refleks stove and rely on the Hurricane.  It seems a logical move.  The Refleks can run 24/7 when it’s sufficiently cold to warrant a continuous source of heat.  In milder weather the thermostatically controlled Hurricane can switch on/off as required.  Hopefully this strategy results in less fuel being burned.

Some essential supplies have started to run low so it was yet another trip into Newbury.  Whilst it’s a nice town we didn’t come to the UK to live near Newbury.  However there’s not much we can do about the situation but accept we will have to wait until conditions change and we can move on.  After receiving the following email from CaRT it doesn’t appear this is likely to happen in the near future.

Wednesday 30 January 2013 until further notice
Heavy rain is forecast toward the end of the week (1 February)that is likely to cause difficulties to navigation and may make the river sections (the River Kennet and the River Avon)of the waterway impassable.  The Waterway Manager does not recommend navigation in these conditions.

Whilst in Newbury we were fortunate enough to be able to visit Bill (Towpath Bill) in his new apartment.  Bill is a very interesting character and always manages to surprise us with some nugget of canal information.  He has suggested a return towpath walk from Newbury to Hungerford this Sunday.  I shall have to watch the weather before deciding to take up his offer!

Back at Waiouru and the TV reception was awful….. nothing but “soapies”!  Then I realised I was watching the washing machine. Smile  Jan had decided to do the socks and “smalls” knowing we plan to fill the water tank in the morning.  I’m still struggling working out the intricacies of the Empirbus User configurable TEXT communications.  It would appear I have the physical wiring correct, but the software configuration is challenging the old ‘grey matter’.  Fortunately I’m receiving excellent support from Atlantis Marine.  My feeling is that I’m almost there………  Or perhaps I’m so lost I think I’m found. Smile

The saga with the mobile phone network provider continues.  Last time I went to the store in Reading they arranged for my user account on their website to be deleted as I thought the problem was it had been corrupted when I had a network outage during the creation process.  I was told to wait 3 days and re-create the account.  Last night I tried and the system again reported an error.  My guess is it’s still a problem with the SIM card number.  One part of the mobile phone providers system allows the SIM to work (the SIM will send and receive), however there is another part that believes the SIM number is inactive.  My assumption is it’s this half of the system that is preventing me from registering the mobile phone number on the website.  Today I went into the store at Newbury and explained the problem.  They told me there was nothing they could do about a problem with the website account and I’d have to contact ‘Customer Care’.  You may recall last time I tried communicating with Customer Care three different “carers” told me the SIM was inactive and the phone number had been recycled.  Sad smile  It looks like I’m back full circle!

No photos today as the internet is sloooooowwwww!

1 comment :

One Thing After Another said...

The wind is really bad here now and keeps coming in bands. 50+MPH gusts which cease to stop with heavy lashings of rain....then it all disappears and the sun comes out - for 10 minutes before happening all over again!