Rip offs, wet paint and pussy cat face-offs

How much money do you reckon you could make in a shop/garage on a 12 hour shift if you rounded every customer's cash change down to the nearest 10p?

Before we left Hemel on Saturday I wandered across the field to get some bits from the Spar at the Jet garage. When I'd been in earlier in the week I realised that I didn't get my penny change. When I went in on Saturday I didn't get my eight pennies change - I was given £15.30; not the £15.38 owed. When I held my hand out and said, "change?" he threw me a look, opened the till, handed me 8p and slammed the till shut. This was clearly deliberate behaviour and not a mistake. Charming.

Only 6 locks to do on the Saturday; although 5 were against us, all the paddles and gates were in the right places and appeared to be better maintained.

After we cleared the second lock by the cricket club I jumped on the boat and grabbed the finished washing out of the machine and put another load on before leaping off again to set the next lock. Only then did I realise that my hands and boots had wet, bright blue paint all over them - now transferred to the boat deck, dog, carpet and both loads of washing ............grrrrrrrrrrrr. Thank goodness it was a water-based paint, but I still couldn't get it off of everything. G had spotted that the end of the lock arm (facing the cricket club) was bright blue - but not, of course, that the paint was wet. There was no warning sign. Any ideas as to why someone would paint the end of the arm bright blue instead of leaving it white?

I took this photo to show this boat reversing into the lock with another boat! Doh ... you've no idea which way it's moving - I worry about me sometimes!

We moored below Red Lion lock to meet G's cousin Steve in the afore-mentioned hostelry. What can I say? They did let the dogs in. The staff were friendly. Oh, and there was loads of space.

When I called Daisy in she, most unusually, didn't come. So I wandered out to see what she was up to.

To the left of MR in the field was puddy cat Mal of the canal who lived on the boat moored in front of us - heart wrenchingly reminding us of our cat Big Ted who moved onto MR and had to be put down at Foxton Locks at the grand age of 19.

10 yards away to the right of MR was Daisy. Neither were going to move for fear of attack from the other. They were both so 'casually' ignoring each other. In the end I scooped Daisy up and we went home - there are only so many hours you can spend pandering to puddy cat mentality. 

Onwards then, down the towpath to Kings Langley - rather nice

an awful lot of water pouring over the sluices off of the GU

G's 60th birthday today - we shall both be available for a pensioners lunch at the next pub we go to; or have they been put back 6 years along with our state pensions and bus passes?