It's done!

And the bilge is a lot drier too!!

Friends rally round.

Yesterday's tribulations were awful. It left me seriously considering getting off the river and back into nice solid bricks.

Good things then began to happen:

John III and Susan from nb Monteyzoomer arrived back at the mooring. John is an engineer and has been away working in The Congo. He regaled me with some great stories of this last trip over some soothing beer aboard Montey.

Then Jackie popped her head through the hatch to ask me the base diameter of our chimney. I'd just measured it so was able to say "6 inch, why?". Well, some other neighbours had gone over to Whilton Marina to look at bigger boats and were in the well stocked chandlery there. Did we want anything?!!! So they got us a chimney, coolie hat, a new rope (to replace the one snapped while dealing with a Muppet boat at the Cambridge pump-out which I forgot to mention in yesterday's rant) and two cans of Morris's waterproof stern gland grease. FANTASTIC!! This means we don't have to go to the local chandlery who have not, by all accounts, improved one jot since last I mentioned them.......

Our friends dropped all the new stuff off last night, so we paid them, then cooked a big pasta as a thank you. Very convivial!

James Duck also dropped by to swap some fudge for some kindling and left with it and some Codis for Amy Duck who isn't feeling very well.

As I write this, the wind has dropped, the sun is out and I am slowly sloughing off the utter negativity of yesterday.

Better get the chimney up and the bilge pumped out then.........

A very very very bad day..................

Today we lost our nearly new chimney and coolie hat over the side.

Not a direct result of the high winds we have been experiencing, but to do with a collision with an over-hanging willow tree near The Plough (incidentally, a rubbish rude establishment, so file it under "avoid") public house on the way to Cambridge.

So why did we hit the willow and lose our chimney? Well, I could have manouvered out into the mid-stream and missed it completely. This, however, would have placed the crews of two overtaking rowing eights in such jeopardy that no insurance company would look at them.

Hobson's Choice: lose your chimney or risk drowning, maiming or otherwise injuring the crews of two eights?

The Mighty Pippin held her course, to the rending of metal and scratching of paint and the slow-motion inevitability of £80 worth of chimney going splosh into the 'oggin.

[Choice words of an unbloggable sort deleted here]

The misery of this trip did not end there.

On arriving at the pump-out, we duly hooked up and were nearly done when Jackie noticed the washing machine had run out of water. One of Cambridge's Camboater boats had plugged itself into the fresh water point by means of a 1/4 of a mile long hose. I don't know how much they pay for the right to do this but it is clearly a lot.

I unplugged their hose to take on ten minutes worth of water,at the suggestion of another Camboater boat, "Pyxis". A minute or two later, a young man arrived and delivered a lecture to me on my lack of consideration, decency and respect.

He lives yet, but only by the grace of a God he doubtless refuses to acknowledge.

Pippin left the pump out mooring with Pyxis' skipper and our new-found moral guardian discussing the finer points of water-point etiquette.

I hate Cambridge.

I hate Camboaters.

They all rhyme with 'bankers', and from now on we will dump our sewage straight in the river just like all the dutch barges that moor up in town and NEVER EVER EVER go to the pump out!!!!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Hold the front page!! CAT GETS MOUSE!!

Oh, and Tom's new friend.......

Sinks, boxes and a short discourse on architecture

Well, the standing box by the tiller has well and truly had it: it has got very curly on the top where the veneer has lifted. I plan to fix it today with some marine ply and some spare moulding.

I bought another box from Emmaus the other day. I popped up there while Jackie was out with friends walking their dog in Thetford Forest......

Here it is:



In scale, it's a lot smaller than would have been ideal for standing on, but I liked its grain, the smooth 1930's line and its little bakelite handle. It was scruffy where the varnish had been rubbed, but responded really well to the old 240 grit sandpaper/wire wool treatment. It was then wiped over with meths, massaged with linseed oil, then brought up to a nice sheen with Briwax.

I then gave it to Jackie as a present. It went down nearly as well as last week's surprise flowers.......

A worthwhile afternoon's tinkering then!

The Belfast sink is going to be sold, though. Our friendly carpenter, Ian, dropped by to have a look at the job, and while it's all do-able, with new taps and his labour, we'd probably be looking at £200-£300. This, then is no longer the bargain I thought it was. I will ring Mike P-J and see if his chums are still interested. If not, ebay it is, then....

I had thought when starting to write this, that I might sound off about the windows that besmirch many of Cambridge's lovely buildings, then I remembered Amy Duck actually is an architecture graduate, and may have many post-modernist ideas and opinions that would make my amateur ramblings seem reactionary and even twee.

But what the hell? Here goes!!!!

Why oh why oh why do shops in Cambridge have to disport their wares through acres and acres of bland, flat, dull, boring plate glass?

I mean, here we are, blessed with some of the loveliest streets which have grown up, unplanned, in that empirical muddle that so delights the eye, and which no architect, town planner, (not even with a Royal Warrant - sorry Prince Charles!-) can hope to replicate without pastiche, and what do we do? Rip out the original shop fronts and install plain plate glass, which is then brutally lit to produce cold, antiseptic sterility in what was a characterful and charming ground level view.

Of course, this is no new thing. It has been going on for years. So long, in fact, that we have forgotten what a shopping street should look like. Is this because they now all look the same?

Boring, Boring, Boring!!!!

Boxing none too clever......

Tsk.

The box I rescued from the tip and restored with loads of Mahogany Satin Varnish has started to delaminate rather badly.

I had thought it was solid teak: turns out the top and bottom definitely aren't. About 4mm of veneer is all you get and it is peeling off the substrate quite badly, having been left to fend for itself on the cruiser deck in the wind and rain for a month or so.

So what to do? Well, the less than exhorbitant purchase price (£3.00) means it could go back to the dump without any great gnashing of teeth. Or I could renovate it again by replacing the knackered lid and base with marine-ply.

As it's a handy standing step for seeing forrard in busy conditions on the Cam, this may well be the preferred course of action.

That Sinking Feeling.....

Panic not, and neither man the life-boats.

All is well aboard Pippin: all the water is where it should be (i.e. in our tank or on the outside of the hull).

Check this out though:



Bought from the tip at Milton for a princely £15.00.

It was a "sudden rush of blood to the head" purchase, as I was really after the set of dolly wheels it is on (for moving the spare Alvis engine around on).....

I drove from the tip to Emmaus to have a nose round. (Jackie was in London so I was in the highly dangerous position of being alone near junk having just been paid).

While there, I almost decided to forget the £15 and donate the sink!

Good job I had the courage of my convictions, though. Jackie's ringing the guy who fitted our kitchen worktops tomorrow to see how much it will cost to install the thing.

If it's exhorbitant (we do have a perfectly good stainless steel sink already), then all is not lost. I chugged into Cambridge yesterday to pump-out and met up with Mike fom Innocenti. He may know someone who wants a Belfast sink!

We shall see.......

The trip back was fun. Lots of novice rowing coxswains and crews about. The Mighty Pippin took her shoes and socks off and tip-toed past them with out incident. Indeed, a couple of very nice ladies from Magdalene were very pleased with my lack of concern as a very new eight they were coaching from the bank span rather inexpertly very close to Pippin.

Everyone has a right to use and enjoy the river. Everyone has to start somewhere. It's only paint, after all......