No Nail Polish for Christmas

Back in the days, ages ago, when I still was at Grammar School, I used to have ten different colours of nail polish, and would have a different colour on every finger nail.
Then came a time that nail polish was absolutely not in the picture.
But since I’m on the boat, I found out that I needed nail polish at one occasion every year: Christmas Dinner.

Christmas dinner means dressing up, hair dyed, high heels. But there is always one thing that will spoil the impression I want to make: black nails.

The reason for that is having a coal fire. Whatever you do, how many gloves you wear, there will always be a nice black line under my nails. Frequent washing will NOT remove it. So nail polish is  the only solution to get rid of it. Or better, cover it.

This year is totally different. There once was a lovely coal fire.

Coal fire

Then there was nothing.

Nothing

And then there was a diesel fire!

A shiny brass diesel fire

So what has changed now as well?
My daily chores.

What did I have to do every morning, before I even had my second coffee?
Get out of bed – open vent of fire – clean glass of fire – rake fire – put about 6 coal in – leave fire door ajar – keep eye on fire – close fire door.
Then a bit later it would go on: open front doors of boat – open cratch cover – get ash bucket – close front doors – rake fire – empty ash pan in bucket – COVER HALF THE BOAT IN ASH – open front doors – take ash bucket back out – close cratch cover – close front doors – top up fire with about 14 coals – leave fire door ajar – get hoover out – hoover around the fire – put hoover back – keep eye on fire – close fire door – more chores at noon...

With the diesel fire?
Get out of bed – turn up fire – done for the day…

No coal or kindling to buy, to put on the roof, then to put in the well deck storage, fill coal scuttles. And handling 22 or 25 kg coal bags is just too heavy, at my age.

Now I get my 10 litre jerry cans filled, and once a week I fill up the diesel tank in the former coal storage (with an easy, non-spilling jiggling siphon system).

And NO COAL DUST and NO ASH in the boat. I cleaned the entire boat, and it stays clean (well, ash and coal dust-wise).
And, as I said, no nail polish.

What a difference!

This will be the last item on the blog for this year (unless something interesting happens).

So me and WRT wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy 2023.