Reliable sources inform me that it is now Tuesday. I have had about six hours sleep since Sunday morning. Any random content the the following post is entirely due to jet lag and sleep deprivation, and not at all due to space aliens eating my brain.

Probably.

Until the musical Kinky Boots, Northampton’s main contribution to human culture was a catchy little song about aliens coming to Northampton to repair their flying saucer, commissioned by the Northampton Development Corporation. I’m sorry, but you just have to go and listen to it right now.

Pretty catchy, huh? It will almost certainly convert Northampton from a mediocre industrial center into a major galactic spaceport as soon as the radio signals reach the galactic hub in another 25,000 years. Nobody can accuse the Northampton Development Corporation of failing to make long range plans.

But I digress. Here we are in Northampton, picking up the canal boat Peggoty that will be our home for the next four months.

We awoke this morning, far too early this morning, at the Hampton by Hilton Hotel at Gatwick Airport. Luckily they served breakfast from 4am to 10am, and our ride was scheduled for 10am, so we had two breakfasts, three hours apart. Take that Bilbo Baggins. (Tolkien trivia: “Second breakfast” is not mentioned in the original Lord of The Rings book, but it mentioned in The Hobbit.) Mmmmmm… English bacon. After second breakfast, we lugged our 80 kilos (180lbs.) of luggage to the hotel parking lot. The hotel is not really set up for access by road, though plane, train and bicycle work fine. There was not even a bench to sit on. However Alex, the owner of the canal boat management company, arrived a few moments after ten am, so we did not have long to wait.

Did I mention the canal boat is in Northampton? (There’s a song about Northampton.) That’s about two hours drive from Gatwick, so it was about noon when we got our first glimpse of Pegotty.

Today’s activities consisted of a boat turnover, provisioning run to Sainsbury’s. I scored venison sausages and black pudding. Yum. There were a couple of minor things that the mechanic Clive was working on, and we took our time in Sainsbury’s so by the time we set out for the marina to fuel up, they were shutting down for the day. We are currently moored across the canal from the local marina ready for more adventures tomorrow.