Booze Ban Jan, No Fun Feb, and now, ????March.....

So it goes.

'The Diet' continues. The upside is that at least I can now, with the aid of ropes, mirrors and a bit of cantilevering, actually squeeze into a pair of 34" waist trousers (the only weight loss measuring scale we have on board.)

Elation then? Well, no.

I think I will have to persevere until I can actually wear the things. Without a permanent wince, that is.

Also, the tummy-roll bulges over the over-tightened waist line.

This is almost as unprepossessing a sight as that of the first Lorry-Tyred Michelin Men of Spring. Clad only in shorts, this infernal nuisance migrates from its winter habitat (the Golf Club's 19th hole) to its summer one, the waters of the Cam and Great Ouse, blocking every available mooring in Ely with plastic cruisers in the process.

I really should talk to The Cam Conservancy about organising a cull.....

Heaven, however, forfend that I should EVER , even ever so slightly, look like one of these ungainly creatures.

So, bring it on then:

"Miserable March"........

"Smiling Footprints'" blog

If you haven't had a look at Andy and Rhian's blog about their voyage across the Pacific in 'Zephyrus', do so now.

It is just so beautifully written.........

A Day Off

Yep, today was billed as a "day off".....

Needless to say that now it's over, I'm absolutely knackered!

The day began very well with a lie-in until about 10.00. However, it was around this time that Jackie started telling me the list of jobs that needed to be done. This is normally my cue to get up and get on with it, so I did.

I wandered up to the lock to see what potential salvage was bobbing about in front of the weir sluices. A lot of wood, a punt pole and a small fender had floated down from Cambridge, so I borrowed back a grappling hook I made from Andreas and Lou, fetched the barrow and my other salvaged punt pole and set off.

After about half an hour of patient 'fishing' with the hook, I had got a couple of good branches, the fender, the punt pole and a very nice plank. (This may have come loose off the superstructure of poor old 'Jester', the near derelict wooden fishing boat that is moored upstream at Clayhithe.)

Jackie then turned up, having been for a run. Together we succeeded in getting some more goodly logs. One was so big it was a bit of a problem. Fortunately, a passing cyclist stopped to find out what the heck we were doing, and Jackie offered him a go on the grappling hook. With she and me on the punt poles and cyclist on the grappling hook, we managed to manouvre the large trunk out of the weir's undertow and to the bank. Getting it out of the water wasn't nearly so hard. We were soon barrowing our trophies back to the wood-pile where they are now under cover and (very slowly) drying out. I reckon they will be dry enough to cut up and split sometime in August....

It's been such a long, hard winter that we have used almost all the wood in The Stealth Woodpile. Jackie had got some more from the wood place near Barkway, and my next job was to split these lovely seasoned oak off-cuts down to woodburner size.

That accomplished, a quick round of cheese on toast was called for.

I then stripped the pump on the Fuel cube and made a new gasket for it before reassembling it and pumping out about 15 litres of the remaining diesel. Jackie then cleaned it up a bit and took some photos. We're going to put it on ebay at the weekend.

By this time, it was too late to take the recycling to the tip......

I did manage a quick foray to Emmaus, however. Sarah, who blogs so well about life, the universe and owning a Big Woolwich (see 'Chertsey' on our blog list), was bemoaning the demise of the jumble sale in a recent post. It's true, you see them less and less, and really good stuff tends these days to end up on ebay. Emmaus, however, remains an Aladdin's Cave of good stuff. Well worth a visit! I was in a hurry, so passed on a nice trolley-jack with chassis stands, a mahogany commode (what a great casing that would have made for our borrowed Thetford Cassette loo.....!)and a couple of likely looking toolboxes. I breezed through the China and Glass Section, past Kitchen Stuff, and ended up glancing round the books. A mint copy of "Post Captain", second in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, came home with me for 75p. The really good thing is that it's the same edition as our copy of the first in the saga, "Master and Commander", (£1 from Emmaus). I have read them all, but lost the whole collection when we down-sized for the move aboard 'Pippin'. Hopefully, Jackie will read them and become as hooked as I did. They will be then given the honoured status of 'keepers', rather than 'read and give back-ers', which is what we do with 90% of the books we get from Emmaus......

Our friends Lou and Andreas from nb Rowanberry are back on the mooring after a fantastic trip to India. It was great to see them again as it's been a bit quiet of late.

To round off this post, here's some more entirely gratuitous 'cute cat' shots:-

Hail and Farewell........

So it's 'cheerio' to James and Amy, The Lucky Ducks, who have sailed off to pastures new and their mooring on Midsummer Common in Cambridge.

Good Luck Both!

Excitement!

After the last rather downbeat post, probably caused by a combination of the weather and the continued diet ("Booze Ban Jan." has given way to "No Fun Feb."...),it is good to report some fun and exciting things.

Well, actually, that's a matter of opinion, but they were fun and exciting to US, okay?

Today, (Valentine's Day) we move the huge and little used fuel cube from the foredeck:-



Romantic old softy at heart really, aren't I?

We have been using four 20 litre jerry cans to fill either the engine tank or directly into the generator's tank, transferring the fuel using a rather nifty syphon pump from Mackays in Cambridge. The fuel cube itself hadn't been used in anger since last spring. This begged the rather obvious question of what was it still doing taking up nearly 50% of the available fore-deck space?

Thanks to our landlord and his trusty digger, it all came off without a hitch. Nice one!

The view forrard is now a huge vista only interrupted down one side by the hulking great generator. I have plans to replace this with a more compact diesel job that will live in the engine room. These plans are on hold, however, until we get the loo fixed.....

Yes, whenever two or three boaters are gathered together, the talk shall turn to either electrics or toilets. Or both.

It is the law.

Pippin's loo is okay, but the solenoid in the flush system is on the fritz. Basically, this means the loo is flushing with too much water for far too long. This, in turn, means we are filling up the 320 litre waste tank with water and precious little else. And that means more trips to the Little Boats Pump-Out Room than even Private Godfrey from Dad's Army would have thought conscionable.....

This, in it's own turn, is a bloomin' nuisance.

Much time, diesel, and nervous energy has been expended hacking our way through the forest of overhanging branches, flotillas of suicidal rowing crews and overly proprietorial Camboaters in order to get to the Cambridge pump.

More diesel, but none of the rest (Thank God) is required to Pay a Visit to the unequivocably superior E.A. administered pump in Ely.

The trouble with that trip is that it's wrist-slittingly bleak in winter and infested with the fibre-glass version of Japanese Knotweed whenever the sun comes out.

The answer, then, would appear to be a Vacu-Flush 5000 loo. This will set us back a grand and a half or so, but will increase our pump-out intervals to around once a month. Twelve trips a year I can cope with, but the novelty has worn off sufficiently for me to think that twenty-four is a bit excessive.

Money and time much better spent on trips to our riverside local!

Damn, I've just remembered: It's still "No Fun Feb"!!

I think I may be allowed a beer (singular) when I can do up an old (but otherwise pristine, through being largely unworn.....) pair of 34" waist trousers.

Watch this space.

Thirstily.

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.....

Last Day of Annual Leave:Booze Ban Jan. and Diet, Day 12...

Tomorrow I'll be back at the Hole-Making Shop, carefully making holes under the watchful gaze of Past-Master Guild members. Actually, I'm on indirect supervision now, so rarely bother my superiors unless the material presents in an awkward way.

Today, however, was FUN!

After the now usual (and soon to be sadly curtailed) sleep-in, I spent a merry morning at the lock fishing some very large lumps of wood out of the oggin.

Two substantial logs, what looks like an inattentive boat owner's gang plank and another less substantial plank had been washed against the sluices at the weir by the recent strong stream. (The river is in spate as a result of snow-melt, rain and The Cam Conservancy lowering the river above Jesus Lock to carry out some maintenance). A fair bit of pushing and shoving of the various bits was required, (using a punt pole similarly salvaged from the Cam last summer) to manouvre them to the shore where they could be grabbed. Having safely squirreled my salvage away in Pippin's Stealth Woodpile, I returned to the boat with that satisfied 'job done, good effort/result' feeling, even if I WAS perspiring rather freely, in the way that rather overweight middle-age blokes do when pressed to unaccustomed and hard exercise.

Time? 12.00 noon.

As I sat, steaming gently while I recovered with a restorative glass, (of fizzy water, before you ask) She Who Instigated the Diet informed me that our favourite author, Jasper Fforde, was doing a book signing at Heffers in Cambridge, and could I be shaved , showered, changed and ready in twenty minutes?

No problem! (Once I'd got my breath back, at least...)

I have really enjoyed all of Jasper FForde's work, and the idea of actually meeting him in person was very appealing.

He did not disappoint. He must have been absolutely knackered, having returned from a promotional tour of the USA the day before, yet was a pleasure to meet. As he signed our books and had a bit of a chat, (as he did with all the people who had turned up to meet him and buy a copy of "Shades of Grey"), we both felt that 'here was a bloke you could sit and have a beer with': nothing of the haughty artiste, but a lively, engaged and engaging mind, clearly cradle to a superlative imagination and gift for story-telling.

Anyway, don't take my word for it, go out and read his books! Start with 'The Eyre Affair'.

This pleasing interlude concluded, Jackie and I crossed the road to a newly opened branch of the "Cote" chain of bistros for a treat.

Steak Frites!

Yes, yes, I know this doesn't quite fit in with the general idea of The Diet..... But it was Jackie's idea..... It would have been rude to say 'no'....And I paid.....

Actually, I didn't have my customary glass or two of Robust Red with it, so Booze Ban Jan. remains inviolate. Also, if you get to feeling martyred and resentful while eating a bit less, it normally means you're going to fall by the wayside permanently. I feel that one should, occasionally, and sparingly, apply the 'A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good' rule. Such was the case here, and the food and service were excellent. They are also open for breakfast, and fellow Fforde OFficianados please note, they do Eggs Benedict...........

As we left the restaurant, we saw Jasper Fforde again, and we spoke once more, briefly and pleasantly. I couldn't help but think that he cut a rather solitary figure, clutching a red wheelie suitcase as he waited for his a cab to Cambridge station and the next fixture, (a talk and signing in Norwich in the evening), and ponder that life is indeed tough on the road, whether you are acting, stage-managing, or an author promoting your latest work.

I do wish we could have bought him lunch........

Anyway, we put our brush with literary fame to one side in order to deal with the rather more pedestrian problem of What to Do With The Ashes.

No, I haven't developed a sudden interest in Anglo-Australian Test Cricket, and neither is there anything more sinister going on in the Covering up of Serious Crime department....

No, the ashes in question are those produced in copious quantity by our wood-burner.

We have been emptying the residue from the ash-pan into the otherwise unused coal scuttle before disposing of it. Problem is the amount of dust this creates, as some ashy dust always escapes and floats about, smokily, to the point at which it can even set off the fire alarm.

This is a proper drag. Also, it can get into the computer and require expensive cleaning.......So, while in Cambridge, we went in seach of a solution.

After much trolling about from shop to shop, we lit upon the answer in British Home Stores. We now have a snazzy blue enamel bread bin with a close fitting lid which will soon have the word 'Bread' on the side replaced with 'Ashes' (or perhaps 'Cenerentola'!!.....but then again, perhaps not.....)

We've tried it and it works!!