The guy who came about the cooker was a chancer, wanting something for next to nothing, expecting us to fall for his implication that he’d be doing us a favour taking it off our hands. From the pictures he showed me of his boat, I could see our cooker was smaller than his, so there was no issue about it being too big for the gap.
I’m a reasonable gal, but I’m not a gullible one, and saw where it was all leading way before they left the marina on Thursday.
In short, he rang the following day with an offer, saying it was the best he could do as he’d have to have a lot of work done inside his boat to make it fit (he doesn’t do DIY).
Sorry chum, I’m not covering your expenditure, so I declined, even though he suggested I took his number in case I changed my mind. I already had it, and I wouldn’t, so told him to have a nice day and terminated the call.
So, we have changed our plans for the kitchen which will now stay as it is, and we shall try and sell the combi burner and sink instead. Pity.
However, we do need to do something about improving our seating area.
We changed it from this
to this
in 2015, but it’s still not quite right for the three of us to sit/stretch out comfortably.
Hubby and I couldn’t bear the thought of another day facing fellow residential boat owners when we are so close to meltdown ourselves (our self-imposed marriage agreement is that we’re allowed to have our off days but not to be off or down on the same day!)
Many face an increase of over £2000, and worse, their mooring fees are due for renewal on April 1st. At least we have a few months to plan and make enquiries for alternative moorings, plus make any changes to the boat to make it as attractive as possible should we have to sell.
So today we went shopping for new blinds…………. and ended up going into Bristol to have a trek around IKEA for chairs or a small sofa to replace the bench. That place is huge and you can walk miles on some kind of one way system where you have to go through every ‘showroom’ area unless you can find suitable short cuts to a lift that will take you back to the car park should you not buy anything.
I’m a confident driver and have almost 40 years driving experience behind me but I have never felt so intimidated or targeted as I did today.
Big cars driven by a variety of multi cultural males, all of whom seemed to have it in for a little blue Hyundai driven by a white sixty year old woman who was growing paler and more anxious by the second. Hubby had to take over, and with all the manual clutch control, he was soon in megga pain so we were glad to get on the motorway to stop and change drivers again to come home.
We hadn’t bought anything either apart from lunch.
Unable to purchase a sandwich from what we thought was a supermarket food hall, I bought some sliced chicken and a baguette and made one up for us in the car. Maggie got the titbits.
I really didn’t feel like cooking tonight, so we’ll have our jacket potatoes and gunge tomorrow.
The soul has gone out of the community here. I could feel it when I walked the dog up to the Avenue this afternoon. It is eerily silent, normally there are people out and about, but now they seem to have shut themselves away in their boats, and some have taken themselves away for a few days altogether.
Other berth holders have commented on the atmosphere and we have filled them in as we are friendly with literally everyone. They cannot believe it and have put forward some suggestions for alternative sites too.
The site Manager isn’t here over the weekend anyway, but we are not anticipating any good news from him on Monday, even if his meeting actually took place.
Trust takes years to build, but can be shattered in seconds. He’s blown his.
pensitivity101 
What a whopping dose of bad stuff. Sorry about the kitchen. Perhaps someone else will come forward with interest in your cooker. Our IKEA is super huge too. I am always afraid of getting so lost that I won’t find my way out.
This is our second visit and we did get lost on our first. However, we came back with a small coffee table and a pressure cooker!
I have to wonder, if the mooring fees are increasing so much that a lot of people have to move, then the marina won’t make a profit anyway, as there’ll be no-one there! Seems if they only negotiated a reasonable increase, everyone could stay?
Wishing you all the best at this difficult time. I have no doubt you will get through this, though the whole situation just plain sucks.
It does indeed, but it could be part of a plan to attract widebeams on a residential basis, but to do that, they have to have the vacancies. Current widebeams are also penalised to the new rate, but not to the extent percentagewise of the narrow boats as they already paid a higher premium per metre.
It all seems just to make more money. So mean of them.
He will only be making lots of money out of the residents, but if suspicions are correct, is likely to revise his methodology later and charge either by square footage or by width as well as length. Widebeams take up two present narrowboat moorings, but are only charged by length as are the rest of us, so in a way he could actually be halving his income.
It does seem unfair. After all house rates (here at least) reflect the area not one length.
We shall see next week whether anything came of the meeting between the marina manager and the owner (we’re not holding our breath though)