Sunday 1 July - pinch and punch, bad news batteries, Em and Rhi arrive

Pinch and punch, first of the month!  Cold rainy morning. Got up late then checked out the end of the Sunday Market for needle, thread and veges. Did more work on gangplank rungs. Hung around on boat reading and doing other stuff. Iain came to boat to check the state of the batteries, which he had noticed when Malcolm was doing the inspection yesterday. Found that six of the ten house batteries were deformed and basically buggered (that might explain why they weren’t holding any charge recently). He suggested we replace the whole ten, since they had all reached or exceeded the end of their expected lives (they were the original batteries from when the boat was built in 2006). He said he would contact someone in the morning to get a price and availability. Not the sort of surprise I was expecting for the first day of summer. Picked up Em and Rhi at Moissac station at 1810h, and then went to Mongolian violin concert, then to Au Bureau for dinner.