Bit like a film really

What a marvellous day, the first day was (bit of a blog cock-up yesterday, when uploading from the pub - wonder why?).

For me, the first time proper boating, outside the one previous Little Venice-Limehouse trip.

Even just the first mile out of Bill Fen, along the Nene Old Course, was an astonishing treat of nature.For boaters, it's perhaps ordinary, but for the newbie the scene up the straight-and-narrow is so movie. Had the sensation of watching a pianola roll unfold before me. A coot; a (not sure which) duck; a beautiful goose and goslings, a dragonfly of the most iridescent hue, four swans line abreast taking off in front of us, only slighter faster than us, and (my all-time favourite) martins ducking and diving (actually do neither of those things, but you know what I mean).

All this - and it just unfolds (or unrolls) before you.

Fantastic

Not quite a partridge in a pear tree

But amazing creatures to just have wandering up and down in front of the boat, even if their plumage is not currently in all its glory, still a lovely sight.

Get a grip

Our scenic new mooring spot is actually an older one, part of the original marina. And it has a wooden pontoon. Which is the most slippery thing I have ever tried to walk on, and that includes an ice rink. Imagine the most slippery surface you can, and then pour some oil on it. It still isn't as slippery as our pontoon. Fortunately, Jim had some expanding mesh, which he has already used to good effect on some wooden steps in the garden, and has applied this to the pontoon. It's even grippier than chicken wire, having rather sharp edges. So it's just as well we're not likely to fall over on it now, as it's a bit like a giant cheese grater.

21: Swans a-swimming

Not seven of them, and really two swans a-scrounging. Or a-scowling, a-snapping, a-snorting, a-snaffling, a-salivating, a-sneaking, a-seeking, a-scaring and a-scavenging.

16: And his shelter...

... was a perfectly serviceable, newly refurbished floating paint dock on Ramsey High Lode.

13: Among the leaves so green

The carp pond (or should I say one of the carp ponds; this is the one in the Certificated Location) at Bill Fen, when the leaves were still green.

9: Snow had fallen

At last! A suitably Christmassy picture! Taken, naturally, last Easter.

8: The holly and the ivy

I'm not entirely sure there's any holly here, but there is ivy, and one lonely poppy. Appropriately, November last year, on the way to the Rainbow at Ramsey.

6: Happy dawn

Bill Fen, one morning in late September 2007.

You know how sometimes you forget to open your advent calendar and get to open two the next day? Well, it's just the same with this one. I was off with Tarporley again yesterday. That's the third taster day I've been on now. This one went without a hitch, and the weather was beautiful.

New view

This is what we will see now when we look out of the front of Warrior.

...Fruitfulness

Mists and mellow etc

Taking a wander around the marina on my way to the shops on Saturday morning, I didn't take the camera with me. But I had my phone, which now I'm getting the hang of it, isn't at all bad in that respect. So lots of scenic autumnal pictures in store, if nothing more exciting happens. I'm rationing them to one a day as things are likely to be a bit slow at the moment.

Bird's eye view

We can't keep away. Jim only came back a week ago yesterday, but last weekend we were off to Ramsey again. On Friday we noticed a helicopter circling overhead but thought little of it - until Lyn told us that it had been hired by Mark to take aerial photos of the marina. There are a couple on their website but the best one is on the homepage here - just scroll down (and maybe across a bit). At the bottom out on the river (that's the High Lode) you can see the paint dock, looking rather better than when I photographed it as a rather tatty looking wooden frame. To find Warrior, go in the entrance to the marina, and turn right into the oblong basin. As you go in, that's Warrior second on your left, next to the short Springer. Beyond that basin is the caravan site, but the lovely CL is that round bit that sort of intrudes into the marina, with the carp pond surrounded by trees. It is a nice spot.

The first thing I did on arrival was to look at Jim's graining in the back cabin, and I am very pleased (and relieved) to be able to report that I like it a great deal, and we have decided that all the graining in the back cabin will now be redone in the darker shade, with the exception of the panels with the roses in. I didn't take any photos though, fool that I am. I think we might well also grain the bathroom, framing the roses in painted softwood moulding first. The elastoplast pink is rather wearing after a while, and also in places very tatty. There's no way we would paint over the roses, so whatever we decide to do we have to find some way to go around them. I think it would look rather nice grained, as it's another small space.

Cock o' the walk

Went for a stroll round the Bill Fen site with Carl and Sean this morning, and saw parts of it that I'd not seen before.

And we saw one of the peacocks, in full display. Now, I've seen peacocks strutting their stuff before, but this was something else again. I didn't have the camera with me, but that's just as well, as a little photo taken through a wire mesh fence (he was visiting the hens) could not do this justice.

His tail must have been six feet across at ground level. Those distinctive 'eyes', one of which adorns the end of each tail feather, formed a perfectly spaced pattern of staggered circles across the surface of his tail. At the base of this, rising from his back, was the impression of scales, lapping over each other up to a height of about eight inches, of an indescribably beautiful green. In front of this, his neck and breast, in that unique, iridescent peacock blue. All his wing and body feathers were fluffed up too, rich brown, mottled and fluffy black. And he strutted around like this for ages, while the chickens pointedly ignored him, and the peahen rather irritably scuttled in front of him (could just imagine what she was thinking).

But then he did a most extraordinary thing - I apologise if the ways of peacocks are known to you of old, but I had never seen the like. He sort of shuddered and rattled the whole edifice, with an unworldly sound, maybe like the wind in the reeds but much louder; almost like gravel being poured onto a tin roof. It was mesmerising. Unlike the supremely indifferent chickens, I couldn't tear myself away.

Boatguests

At long last today we played host to Carl and Sean, our next door neighbours from home. We'd nearly got all the brass finished by the time they arrived. They were delighted with the Bill Fen CL, and we were impressed with their new caravan.

Of course, we went out for a boat trip. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we thought we'd better make the most of it and set off straight away, making and eating sandwiches on the way. We went out onto the Nene Old Course and past Floods Ferry, where Carl and Sean came with the caravan once. All were agreed that it's not what it was, and Carl in particular took a dim view of the addition of static caravans. Then we turned round and came back past the marina and on into Ramsey to introduce them to the delights of the Rainbow before returning to Bill Fen. On the way back Carl got me into Bad Ways, and we were both sitting on the foredeck trailing our feet in the water. It was lovely. So nice to feel the sun on my back at last.

It's just getting dark now, after a beautiful delicate pink sunset, as I write this; Jim is asleep, and I'm sitting in the back cabin with the doors open, listening to the plaintive, demanding calls of the peacocks. Earlier we saw a kingfisher, not just the usual fleeting glance, but over and over as he flew and settled, looking just like one in a picture book, and flew and settled again, always just a little ahead of us. And there was a hawk, hovering low and completely stationary as we went past, again, the closest I've ever seen one.

Carl and Sean are hooked, of course.

New knees

Hang on a minute, those aren't Jim's...

I may have mentioned in passing that Jim had a bad knee (he's been telling everyone down the supermarket about it, so I'm sure he won't mind me telling the world); it was a very longstanding thing, caused in part by rather foolhardily making a habit of jumping out of aeroplanes many years ago, but it started to get a lot worse last summer, to the point that it was proving a significant hindrance to working and, more importantly, boating.

So, to cut a long story short, and certainly to skip the details, he has had it 'done', last Thursday, and (touch wood) it appears to have been very successful. In vain do I implore him to sit down with his leg up; he is already leaping about like the proverbial gazelle. This means that barring any other unforeseen events, we WILL be painting the week after next.

But there's more. Over the May Bank Holiday weekend, Bill Fen host a weekend of fun and frolics for the Peterborough IWA, with games, music, barbecues and beer, so we (including Sebastian) will definitely be up for that. And on the Sunday, Russell Newbery have their 'Open Day' (I put that in quotes, as an examination of the small print reveals that this 'day' runs from 12 noon to three p.m.) and we are going to go to that. 3D Steve will be there, and hopefully Allister, David, and above all Compo. Jim tells me he has lots of questions to ask them. I have one: why didn't you tell us our skin tank was too small?

Sadly, after the fun and frolics finish, and before the work starts, Sebastian and I shall have to return home - he to college and me to work. But we will go back the following weekend to do our bit. So we're all very impressed with Jim's new knees... (You can see where this is leading, can't you) ... Do you think I should have had him rebottomed?

We've had our chips

Funny things, chips. They've got to be right or they're wrong (just like that other English institution, the cup of tea). Chip shop chips are often something of a leap in the dark - although this is nonetheless preferable to the guaranteed, homogenised, quality-controlled-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives chain fries. Will they be soggy or dry (they shouldn't really be crisp, well, only the little bits); will they be frozen or made from real potatoes? One would hope the latter in Ramsey, at the heart of potato-producing country. That, of course, is before you even got on to the fish.

I used to live in the flat over a fish and chip shop (the Newhaven Fish Bar, it's imaginatively called). They were - and still are - pretty good. At the time the fact that all my clothes and furniture smelt of chips was a small price to pay for post-marital independence. Go in there and there is quite a long price list, detailing the cost of, say, cod, haddock, plaice, skate, huss and so on. Most of the fish is fresh, as it should be, given that this is a fishing port and the fish are landed a few hundred yards down the road.

When we were in Brighouse, once, unexpectedly (this is when the prop bolt first sheared on Andante and we didn't carry a spare), we ended up in a chip shop. The price list said:
Fish - £1.95
Special - £3.95

That was it. After waiting for the chap in front (who was bemoaning the fact that he'd been down south, in Sheffield) to be served with chips and mushy peas in a bap, Jim asked, what are those nice big portions of fish there? Oh, said the lad behind the counter, that's the Special. So we had two of them. I think it was cod. The chips were awful. We were very depressed. But all was well in the morning because we got some nice new bolts from the lovely people at Sagar Marine. And Brighouse Basin was very nice. As another aside, I mentioned this to someone at work in London a while back and they said, oh, is Brighouse a real place then?

Anyway, I sometimes have what is here called huss, and which must be the most multiply-named fish in the country. It's often also called rock salmon. (And is it possibly the same thing as hake?) And apparently, in the Fens, rock eel, because that's what I had from the Madeira Fish Bar on Great Whyte the Friday before last. I was hoping for real eel, as it happened, on the grounds that it might be local, but no luck. I am happy to report, however, that the Madeira's chips were very good, and the Moomins think so too.

Jim came back from his hunting expedition with the thought that the proprietors of the Madeira Fish Bar might be Portugese, on account of they weren't speaking English and appeared to be Benfica supporters. Oh yes, I said, and the name might be a bit of a clue...

Talking of football, which I wasn't, Lewes have today assured their promotion to the Conference, and finally, after years of frustration because their ground, the splendidly named Dripping Pan, didn't meet the required standard, can now take their place in the national league. So three cheers, and raise your pint of Harveys to the Rooks, and now let's hear no more about it.