Awesome Cards

We have received lots of lovely Christmas cards from various people (including a gorgeous Moo card from Chertsey), so thank you to everyone who has sent one.

However, I have to say that my favourite ones so far came from James' step cousins Luke and Isaac.

Luke's card had a pirate theme. This is the front:

Inside, he wrote us a little poem about a seasick pirate:

 

There once was a noble sailor

Who at sea went a lot paler

For he suffered from sea-sickness 

Which made him pretty useless

At being a noble sailor.

Both James and I would be useless noble sailors - we get terribly seasick!

Isaac's card was a wintry narrowboating scene, complete with a miniature underwater scene involving an igloo and a snowman with frozen looking fish swimming around! 

Frozen Panel

This morning I was just about to leave for work (for my last day until the 4th Jan!) when I noticed the solar panel was completely obscured by snow. The sun was out so I thought it would be worth exposing it for the little bit of power it would generate and tried to scrape the snow off. It was frozen on fast. Undeterred, I went inside and grabbed the largest vessel (my enamel teapot!) I could find and filled it with warm water straight from the Morco heater. Then I poured it carefully over the 5m panel, to get rid of the layer of snow and let light onto the panel. It was mostly sucessful: It did freeze back on, but the frozen later of water now on it is thinner and translucent rather than thick and opaque, so it might charge the batteries a little. I expect we'll continue to need to run the generator nonetheless.

Lyra came out and watched me, entirely unconvinced by all the snow and ice. In the photo below her paw is blurred because she is trying to shake the ice off it!

 

Last night we went to the Camboaters social in the Fort. It was a lot of fun, to see old faces and meet some new boaters. 

Fancy Dress Rowing

The Christmas Head was held on Saturday, traditionally the 'fun' race for the town clubs, where everyone dresses up in silly costumes for the racing. It was beautifully sunny and warm: such a nice change from the previous week. Sadly James was ill in bed with a tummy bug, but I rowed twice, in the more serious women' boat which came second in our category, and in a mixed boat in fancy dress. We had two mixed boats, one chasing the other so the obvious choise was cops and robbers. I was in the robbers boat. It was great fun, although in the end the cops beat the robbers by 20 seonds over the course.

All these photos are from William C, whose version of events can be found here along with lots of photos of the various silly outfits of other crews: William's Blog

Cops

Robbers

On Sunday, James was feeling better, and we had great fun in the afternoon rowing in Paul and Sarah's stag/hen row. James and Emma organised it, and we helped adorn the boats with banners and balloons. Paul rowed in the Viking outfit of his stag do, and Sarah had a veil as well as a hen 'beak'. We began with glasses of bubbly before setting out. In order to make the races fairer between the men and women, they involved not just ordinary side-by side racing, but a spinning competition- who could turn the boat 180 degrees one way the the other quickest, a single stoke competition, a balance competition and a race where the men were rate capped at 20. It was a draw with the men and women's boats winning 3 races each. It was pretty cold out on the water so we retired for mulled wine in the Fort.

The Hen Boat

Spiced Parsnip Soup

I had a craving for hot soup and bread the other day, so decided to make a big pan of spiced parsnip soup, perfect for winter!

Picture from recipesfromanormalmum.
I'm not organised enough to photograph my cooking!

When I spoke to my mum last night she asked if I'd give her the recipe so I thought i'd blog it and share it with everyone. It really is very simple.

Ingredients

tablespoon of olive oil

1 whole onion (red or white)

3 large parsnips

4 medium potatoes

teaspoon of cumin

flat (not heaped)! teaspoon of mild chilli powder

vegetable stock cube

a knob of butter

splash of milk

Method

Peel and chop parsnips and potatoes. If you have a blender you could leave the skins on, but I don't! Chop onion and fry in the olive oil until soft and translucent. Add chopped veg and spices, add stock and top up with water to cover the veg. Once boiling, turn down the heat and simmer until the vegetables are soft. Add milk and butter, then blend. I just mashed it up with my potato masher since I couldn't be bothered to turn the inverter on to use my little 240v/125w hand blender, so it was nice and chunky.

Iced In

Well, temporarily. We awoke to a bizarre lack of movement and stillness, as there were no rowing boats out. Eventually, I think a brave scull or something must have passed because there was a great scrunching and squeaking as the ice around the Duck broke and ground against the boat. We looked out of the window to see a sheet of thin ice across the river. We've never seen that before. It was quite impressive. The swans were icebreaking through it, so it wasn't thick, but it was all the way across the river.

The trees and grass looked beautiful - all covered in hoar frost.

 

'Tis the Season to be Boating

Moored at the Plough in the sun


...although we've unfortunately not got time to do as much as we'd like, we've still managed to fit quite a few different things in. I do love boating at this time of year, especially when it's crisp and clear, with a wisp of smoke coming from the chimney, a pan of soup warming on the stove, and the low winter sun glinting on the water and the roof.

Over the course of the weekend, we managed to fit rather a lot in. On Saturday, Amy and I were at the boathouse for 8:30, Amy to row, and me to coach, although I ended up coxing the outing when one rower didn't show up. Afterwards, I had another outing with the men's squad, and for a crew thrown together at the last minute on Friday night, it went surprisingly well.

The river is shrugging off the last few bits of ice. Over the past week, it iced over completely in several places. Although this is of course very common on the canals, I've never seen it right accross flowing water, bank to bank. The ice was still extant throughout the week, to the extent that the Fairbairns races- organised by Jesus College rowing club since 1927, over 4,660 metres- were cancelled because of the extent of the ice, for only the third time in their entire history.

By Saturday morning, the ice had mostly gone but was still present towards Baits Bite lock, and so we rowed over a reduced section of river. I spotted Andreas on nb Innocenti coming into Cambridge to pump-out. Andreas used to moor in The Parish along with Pippin, ourselves and others, and is currently renting Mike's boat while Mike is away "dahn sarf"- in Antarctica (eventually). After returning to the boathouse and thawing up with tea and scrambled eggs on toast, Amy and I visited Andreas and discussed the Parish news before heading over to the Mill Road Winter Fair.

Mill Road is a particularly diverse area of Cambridge, with many independent traders and this annual fair. The road was closed to traffic and we wandered around sampling cakes, hog roast, and the festive music of a brass band.

A quick phone call to John led us to the Parish in the late afternoon, where we had tea and cake again (a popular feature of the weekend!) and enjoyed catching up with John, Jackie and Tom Kitten aboard Pippin. We headed home replete.

Sunday morning saw more rowing, until midday. Although the weather was cold, it was above freezing and the sun came out, so we headed to the Plough pub out in Fen Ditton. Packed with people having Sunday lunch, we managed to find a small table, and having had soup and fresh bread on the boat during the journey out, we had pudding only before heading back into town.

The sun was still out as we headed all the way in to the waterpoint, where we filled and emptied the various tanks, and were visited by Squeaky, the black swan.



Bullied by the other swans, Squeaky is unique on the Cam.

In order to spice up the return journey from the waterpoint, I often try and reverse the whole way. It's a challenge- about 500m, with two corners and moored boats for most of the way. Because there was no traffic at 3:30, I decided again to go for it.

The Duck isn't the easiest boat to steer in reverse, being fairly short and stumpy; but if you get the engine revolutions just right, and the tiller dead straight, the prop-walk effect dies down and she comes backwards beautifully. It's even possible to steer, by moving the tiller the opposite way to usual- but care does need to be taken, because of the reverse flow over the rudder it's extremely heavy to use. The trick I've found is to keep looking at the bows to correct the direction of the boat, with only the odd glance astern to line the boat up with where you're going.

This time, I managed almost the entire journey in reverse gear, with only one short, exciting moment when the boat turned sharply towards the bank; I think it's a shallow spot on the inside of the corner, and so the lack of depth sucked the stern towards the bank. A powerful burst of forward gear got the boat straight again. Maybe one day I'll be able to make the entire journey with no bursts of forward gear at all!

We're currently relaxing around the stove with (for only the second time since April...) the generator running, powering the laptops and topping up the batteries for a Sunday night watching iPlayer.

Late Night Flapjack

The other night I had a sudden desire to make flapjack, following a misguided decision not to buy pudding when we went shopping! I checked in the cupboards and found exactly the right amounts left in the containers of the four ingredients in Delia's recipe: golden syrup, sugar, porridge oats and butter. I did have to remelt the golden syrup which had crystallised since I last used it!

The result was a delicious gooey flapjack when still warm (we couldn't wait, although we did stick it outside in sub-zero temperatures for a few minutes as a concession to the concept of 'allowing to cool'). When it had properly cooled the next morning I was delighted to find that it didn't become tough and concrete-like but retained a pleasing chewyness.

Spiky Poky Things

Female Food-Providing Human came home early recently. I was pleased to see her because my water bowl hadn't properly defrosted outside and I thought I might get an early dinner. But no, she only gave me a little handful of food, and put it in the bottom half of the Nasty Dark Wobbly Box. I should learn that these small food offerings often lead to a journey in the Nasty Dark Wobbly Box, but I was too excited about eating my favourite crunchy food. Suddenly I was trapped in the box. I was most aggrieved.

The box moved all the way across the Big Grass (I could just about see out) and it moved too much to be able to sit still. So I wobbled about, and squeaked and tried to tell Female Food Providing Human how horribly annoyed I was by this turn of events, as I could hear her voice close by. But the wobbling continued until we came into a place full of other boxes containing similarly aggrieved cats (I could hear them trying to tell their humans). Then the Growly Yappy Things arrived. They weren't in boxes but at least I was safe in mine.

Suddenly we were on the move again and the box opened. Another human took me out and began prodding and poking me. Nasty Proddy Human poked my ears, looked in my mouth and I didn't like it AT ALL. I jumped off and ran around under the table, but Female Food Providing Human picked me up again. Then, the worst thing: a nasty long spike was stuck in the back of my neck! I squealed and then they put me back in the box. For once I was glad to be in the box - away from the Nasty Proddy Human and the spike.

Soon the box was moving back across the Big Grass, and then I could see Warm Home Place Boat and the door was opened again. Finally!

I hope I don't have to go back in there again soon!

(Lyra is very healthy and now all vaccinated for the year. She has no fleas, probably because she doesn't see any other cats, despite spending all day every day outside. We went to Clarendon Street Vets just the other side of the Common - Female Food Providing Human aka Amy)

Have an Ice Day

On Sunday morning at 9:30, and with temperatures apparently at around -5, we set off for a rowing outing, with me in the boat and James coaching. Earlier, the boatman  had come and warned us that when he went out in the quad earlier, they had not been able to get any further than Logan's Way (about half a mile from the boathouse). But we thought we may as well go out and see how far we got. We saw quite a few plates of ice float past but nothing actually stopped us rowing until we got half way up the Reach and found that we couldn't get our blades in to the water anymore, there was so much ice on the surface of the water. Ice can also damage the gel coat of glass fibre rowing boats like ours so it wasn't worth continuing. Instead, we raced up and down the ice-free part of the river, and although most people's hands and feet felt pretty cold, it was still a fun outing. No photos - we were tempted to take the Duck out and go do some icebreaking, as it was a beautiful day, but we had social commitments that didn't allow time for it.

This morning we did have some snow in Cambridge but it hasn't lasted. I left Lyra peeping out of the cratch cover, looking confused, but was running late for work so didn't take a picture. I will be sure to take photos if we have any more!

Committee Commitment

Last night James and I went to the AGM of Camboaters, the resident's association for all the boaters on the River Cam, It formed several years ago following attempts by the council to ban boaters from mooring in Cambridge. The boaters obviously won, and the system currently in place was created. However, over the years, the group has become dispirite and not as sociable as it once was, with a small group of regulars keeping things going.

This AGM, there was even talk of a 'dormant' committee who didn't meet if there was not enough interest in forming an active one. But thankfully, that has not happened. Luther came forward to be the Chair - the hardest job, I am Secretary, and Charlotte is Treasurer. James is also on the committee, but without an official position. There are seven of us in total, although I've yet to be sent the full list, as several people who weren't there may also be on it.

I'm pretty excited by it. As well as being a chance to get to know people (we put several faces to boats/names last night, which was nice) I hope we will be able to reinstate events which have proved so popular in the past but haven't been held this year, like the Great Cam Clean-Up, and the Boat Open Day. Camboaters isn't perfect, but there's only one way to change things, and that's to get involved.