Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Rock n roll

Our Peter who is travelling with us, is quite used to his mum and dad doing odd things. He didn't bat an eyelid when we jumped off the boat in Cowroast and headed for the bus stop only to return forty five minutes later with two five litre cans of Tring brewery beer (Cowroast is a good placed for Tring shopping as there is a bus every half an hour that gets you to Tring in about five minutes. There is A Tesco and a good little farm shop by the brewery too.)

However even Peter was a bit gobsmacked when we stopped to chat to some old geezer at a lock and I came away with a Fender Stratocaster saying I would send the bloke the money later. What Peter didn't know was that that old geezer was none other than Maffi, who had mentioned on his blog a while ago that he had a strat for sale.

So that is my lost youth recaptured. Some get Harley Davidsons, some get Triumph Heralds, but now I have my first solid electric guitar since 1967. I admit I have considerable previous in the guitar buying department, but for the last forty odd years I have been strictly an acoustic man. Now I have to decide whether to morph into Hank Marvin or Mark Knopfler. And of course I shall have to go out now and buy an amp and no doubt other odds and ends.

We nearly gave the day a miss altogether. The weather looked so awful when we woke up at Marsworth. The boat was being buffeted by the wind and lashed by heavy showers. I got up and strolled round the bend to see the conditions further up, and it was quite different on the shelter of the reservoir banks, so we decided to give it a go. I have done the Marsworth flight in difficult winds, but this time the wind direction was benign, and with the locks all set in our favour it was a very pleasant climb indeed.

Then of course the Tring cutting, which is deep and tree lined and nearly two miles long. That was lovely and sheltered

 

And so on to Cowroast from where we moored up behind NbValerie, which sadly contained no Jaq as presumably she had gone to visit Les in hospital. Very sorry to have missed you Jaq, but we have to get to London for the weekend, so needed to press on.

Still seeing a remarkable abundance of fruit in the hedgerows. The birds will be getting fat.

 

My book is now up to 45,937 words. Only 34,063 to go. Early reviews of my leaked first 30,000 words are encouraging, as long as I don't take into count that my respondents so far have no literary credentials whatever.

 

2 comments:

Rick said...

A Strat eh?

Will your audience boo when you play in public?

Matthew said...

just make sure your new amp goes up to 11 :-)