Long time, no blog......

To be perfectly honest, not a very great deal has been happening of excitement, hence the absence of posts....

We've added a couple of blog links: one to Rhian and Andy's Smiling Footprints blog, which will regale you with tales of their adventuring on the High Seas in their yacht 'Zephyrus'. This makes our stories of chugging up and down the Cam pale to insipidity......... (They are currently off the Chilean coast heading in the general direction of New Zealand. I think.....)

You may also have noticed Ann-Marie Powell's Gardening blog. A bit less high-adrenalin this one, but we Pippin's have very varied interests. Also, Ann-Marie is a mate of ours who Jackie met when she was working on the TV programme 'Garden Doctors'.

Other than that, all has been plodding along pleasantly enough. A couple of trips to Ely have been stress free: Ely is now the pump-out destination of choice as there are less rowers to complicate things, mooring space is plentiful (although this will change when better weather brings out the plastic boats like a nasty rash), the E.A. pump-out is much more powerful and has a window in the hose line. This exerts its own grim fascination. It is also useful as it makes it much easier to determine when when the tank is actually empty.

A couple of river related articles have appeared in the local press too. Today's Cambridge Evening News carried one about the proposed felling/trimming of about 800 willow trees between Chesterton and Bait's Bite lock. This sounds a lot, but the trees along the river bank, while pretty, have been an increasing problem to rowers and boaters for some long time: where branches overhang the river, they restrict the width of usable water to a considerable degree, causing dangerous bottlenecks. We lost our nearly-new chimney thanks to one when being overtaken by a City eight several months ago.

So good news then? Well, no, not really.

There will doubtless be an enormous public outcry at the demolition of such ancient and precious arboreal gifts from those to whom any challenge to the status quo is taken as a serious and personal insult. They will join hands with the local Bufton-Tuftons who miss no oppurtunity to stick it to us "Dirty Pikey River Gypsies", viz the other bit of river related media coverage: the First Anti-boater Rants of Spring appearing on The Cambridge Evening News' message board.....

("The Rants of Spring" eh? Hmmmm.... perhaps a variation on a theme by Stravinsky.....? Then again, perhaps not; just the repetitious da capo of The Retired Right)

If I could be bothered with the wailings of crypto-fascists, I'd have taken a look, but frankly, I can't.

They will win, of course.

The trees will be 'saved'.

Rowers and boaters alike will have to put up with the existing (and gradually worsening) congestion problem. Getting in and out of Cambridge by boat will become ever the less pleasant.

They will probably win in the much longer term , too....those who wish to see the Cam free of all non-manually propelled craft, that is.

The country is readying itself for a regime change. And that, my friends, means the end of civilisation as we know it...... oops, got carried away there.......a bit.....ahem......and that, my friends, means the rowing lobby's best mates at the reins of power.

Draw your own conclusions from that.

Call me Cassandra if you want, but we're all doomed.

Plus ca change.....