Birthday Trip to . . . Leicester!

Bit of a grey day. Had rain on and off for days. Grey all round. Steve’s now 59. (Another year before we get some income.) What can we do? Well, got to take a template to Ian at OneStopPlasticShop who’s going to cut our 7 panes of acrylic, for those secondary glazing windows on the boat. Got to walk the dog . . . got to get off this boat and go somewhere, anywhere! My niece is in Cancun, hmm, nice but Leicester it’ll have to be then! Chance to sort the acrylic out (and as it happened, Ian had go the panes already cut – so we could take em away that day – such a nice chap and so willing to help  – anyone considering secondary glazing should ring him first).

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I know, I know, I firmly believe or at least I tell everyone, that for every Tree decorated before December, an Elf drowns a baby reindeer!  But it does jolly the place up.

First a walk at Watermead park and a swim for Toby. Chance to see the river Soar in flood – we came through this lock and section last year. Bit dodgy now – with the indicator clearly showing red.

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Birstall Lock and below – the weir.

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The water was hardly trickling over this when we came thru – now a torrent.

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Then back for a shop & a Big Breakfast in Sainsbury’s (£5!)

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Then into the city to shop & look around:

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The City Council got some stick over this tree as it looked half-finished and the lights looked a bit just, well, chucked over. We thought it looked OK. They had a delightful band playing – not quite the Salvation Army but quite interesting.

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The theme of their animated display is the 12 days of Christmas . . .

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Not as good as last year’s Wallace & Gromit but fun nonetheless

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We bimbled on to the Market and Steve’s little sweet shop . .

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Lots of goodies – all for a pound – 1 kg of root ginger, 2 huge mangoes, 2 kg bananas . . . we could have got so much more and all for ” ah pahnd!”

Off to the Wheatsheaf for beer & a snack tonight – Cheers!!