One More Box Ticked

The screening of the new "Red Sails" barge film at the cinema in Faversham is a huge success attracting a full house (450) with an overflow of 200 more 'bums' for a second screening at 3pm. Faversham people definitely appreciate all things barge. Dad gets into a group of Volunteers who all arrive by coincidence in the lower seats at the left hand side. The group is later joined by a 'celeb' from the Society of Sailing Barge Research called Tricia Gurnett. The film is brilliant (again!) and Mike Maloney (Producer) receives a rousing round of applause. Dad and his group plus Tricia adjourn to the Cambria for a cup of tea below decks.

He then gets a phone call from 2CV Llew who is struggling to source mudguards for the trailer he is building for Dad, and asks Dad to drop in to Trident Trailers right round near our old house. They have one of the desired type and size but can get another brought over from their other shop in Maidstone.

Back at Diamond's, Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce, is recommending "Kir Normande" as a cold cure. It's a 50/50 mix of Creme de Cassis and Calvados which Haggis would argue is a waste of Calva but Dad thinks is not too bad as a medicine, so Diamond and Dad partake of a few in the afternoon while putting the world to rights. 2CV Llew is doing the driving tonight to the 2CV club do, so he can get away with it.

The national 2CV club (2CVGB) is organised as a collection of local groups all meeting in pubs roughly monthly and covering the 2CV demand in their county or part county. Dad's local group. the Kentish Hoppers, meet in a pub called the Haywain in the village of Bramling just east of Canterbury. As the supply of road worthy 2CVs fades (the Government websites have the number down to about 2500 in UK now) these groups are also fading and merging; the Hoppers now are the result of a coalescence of several Kent groups and can still only put up about ten souls on a good day.

Last night they were meeting to eat the Haywain's pub-grub and to bid farewell to Dad, who's been the 'main contact' for the group for ten years or so. They don't do 'chairman' and 'committee' posts; it's not that kind of a meeting. It's usually just a gang of like-minded souls coming together for a beer and chat which is only sometimes about olde cars and 2CVs. Dad was worried that tonight the food would be the Haywain's Christmas menu, so was looking enviously at Mum and Diamond starting to prepare a genuine pasta carbonara. He needn't have worried. The group had swerved the Christmas menu in favour of ordering off the normal menus, so Dad had their delicious game suet-pudding with peas and mash followed by a choc sponge pudding with black cherry sauce and ice cream. Also a pint of Gadd's and a pint of Bombardier. Excellent. Another box ticked in the 'farewell to social groups' agenda. The last one for Dad. There remains only the Mum's work set and landlady Diamond herself.

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Four More Sleeps

While the rest of the Western World might be waiting for Christmas and telling their children "19 more sleeps" to rein in their excitement, in our family we are on "four more sleeps" in anticipation of the Great Adventure on Sunday afternoon through to Monday morning. Mum and Dad are in a kind of temporary routine. Dad's alarm goes off at 07:30 and he shares breakfast time with Mum, cooking toast this morning. Diamond stays a-bed a little while longer. Mum goes off to work for the pre-penultimate time this morning well wrapped in the new pink "Commander Dave" coat, woollen scarf, purple big bobble hat and gloves, lap top over her shoulder. She opts to walk. "It'll do me good", she says.

Dad is off to the caravan this morning to clear out any perishables left there when they stop using it and make sure it is fit to be handed back to 2CV Llew. Main events though are a public screening of the new Mike Maloney (Countrywide Productions) barge film "Red Sails" which features a lot of SB Cambria and actually has Dad's name in the credits. This is happening in the cinema ("The Royal") in Faversham Town Centre and is free so we expect a big turn out and there is an option to show the film again later in the afternoon if it is over crowded.

Then tonight is the next in Dad's succession of farewell do's, this one the 2CV club lot having their Christmas Dinner at the pub the group uses for it's club nights, the Haywain in Bramling, just east of Canterbury. Llew is driving tonight so Dad can have a beer or two.

Last night Dad bad farewell to the Horticultural Society for whom he has been Treasurer for 11 years. It's a lively club holding 4 Shows, a dance, 2 or 3 coach trips (one a 4-night holiday), a quiz and 12 Speakers Nights per year. It has a turn over of about £20,000 per year so there is plenty for the Treasurer to do and Dad has enjoyed it but last night is the AGM where Dad must present the audited accounts one last time. They all seem to love him there (poor fools!) and he gets a nice send off with votes of thanks coming from all ways and a presentation of an engraved pewter tankard. There is a small party in his honour after the meeting which includes a cold buffet which features cheese straws, a known favourite of Dad's and subject of plenty of joking by the many little old ladies and aul' fellas who make up the Society. Dad is succeeded (as they say) by new Treasurer Alf so good luck to him. Dad hopes he enjoys the job as much as Dad did himself, all be it Dad is now pleased and relieved to be handing over the tiller.

Four More Sleeps

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E minus 6 days

E-Day minus 6 and the big adventure is coming at us like a parachutist's ground-rush. We dogs have already moved, of course and can only see Mum and Dad left behind via the frequent video-Skype / Facebook chats which flow between Diamond's place and the Silverwoods here. Dad is working his way through the final scenes of the play tying up loose ends. He has to pay the Big Green Lorry guys and give them the "any time after" date. It looks like for that we have now run so close to Christmas that BGL is now likely to be after the Season but that suits us as it gives us more time to prepare a landing site for all the stuff.

Dad has been to see the house in Faversham which Diamond's John is renovating in a similar way to what we'll be doing in Roscommon. John is a very particular and painstaking kind of bloke, so his stripping back of brickwork for re-plastering nibbles away every last shard of old plaster leaving a very clean brick face to screed. He winkles out every last bit of old lead gas-pipe and redundant water pipe or electricity cable, pulling up floor boards to gain access and re-laying them properly.

He does all this little by little, clearing away the debris each day, never letting an awesome pile of rubble or old broken wood build up. Radiators are stacked neatly in the cellar and all open pipe ends are sealed off with cloth and tape. It is stripped back so clean, tidy and safe that you could almost lay out a sleeping bag and sleep there. He also takes plenty of photo's so that should his spirits ever flag he can look back at the old shots and buoy himself up by how much he has achieved. John also talks a lot of common sense about what he does himself and when he calls in the trades, and how the budget works as a result.

Dad is inspired by all this and can see his way through how it's going to work at Roscommon. He was going a little wobbly about the destruction phase, worried that we'd end up with one of the houses on D.I.Y. S.O.S. but with no TV crew and purple polo-shirted builders to rescue us. He feels a little bit more confident now, but it's still a mammoth beast. Bizarrely, he is also mildly concerned about what happens after, say 18 months down the line. We will hopefully have a lovely renovated farmhouse in the back of beyond to retreat to and hang out in after..... after what? Allotmenting? Work? A full and exhausting day involved in local projects and society? Volunteering?

Meanwhile, 2CV Llew is cutting it a bit fine (no surprise there!) building the promised 2CV trailer. Dad was down there yesterday to get the car wired for trailer-pulling and has seen the trailer such as it is so far - a wheel-less steel frame of angle iron and box-section about 6 feet long, 4 feet wide and 2 feet tall. No wooden panels, wheels, paint, light-bar, tow-hitch, cover or any other finishing touches. Llew is confident that it will be ready for Sunday morning. Mum is shaking her head and the look on her face says "why does this not surprise me. It's Llew after all!" We all love Llew to bits but he is a bit of a one for flexing deadlines.

His standard MO is to take a car off you to work on it while you go for a fortnight's holiday and then, when you get back indoors and phone him to see how it's all gone, he'll say "Ah yes, I must get started on that, mustn't I?" So he had the 2CV for all the three and a half weeks Dad was in Ireland, and did the wiring yesterday, almost a week after he got back. Still, the trailer, although it would be very useful in Ireland and has been paid for, does only contain the most non-vital stuff for our move (deliberately - we knew it was the least likely bit to get there!) so if it all goes Pete Tong and we have to leave it behind for another day, it's no great disaster. One thing it might prove to be useful for is if the famous BGL cannot be threaded out of the lane and up the drive of the Roscommon house, it can be parked a few yards down the lane in a lay-by and the 2CV and trailer used to shuttle stuff up to the house.

Exciting times

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Ticking the boxes

In a weekend that has felt like we are gradually ticking off the farewells to social groups the work colleagues on Friday were followed by the Barge Volunteers on Saturday and a run down to Pud Lady's house for an early Christmas Dinner with the family today.

The barge one takes the form of a pot-luck supper where everybody cooks food to bring and share and everyone brings booze or soft drinks to share. Dad has actually been at the barge all day anyway as the Cambria Trust play host to the Rotary Clubs of Kent and East Sussex. The Trust is pushing for the Rotary Club to sponsor respite sailing trips for young carers. 'We' have done a couple of these in 2011 as a try out, and these went so well that the Rotary Club in this region has adopted them as a good thing to do. The 'centre' is now trying to push out to the local groups that they should sponsor between the one and a full complement of 8 'students' for a week depending on the size and affluence of the local group.

The open day was so that the reps from the local groups could come and see the barge and the 'centre' (actually the two groups who had already dipped their feet in the water) set up a stand in the main hold where they could book the visitors in, give them brochures and info, show them the 'movie' on DVD and start them on their guided tours which Rotarians were on hand to do rather than 'us'. These tours talked the guests through how the sail training goes, what the kids like and how it all works. We were just there to look after the guides and stands and to pick up any strays or to give them the barge from our more normal angle - the workings, history and the rebuild project. We had our own stand selling postcards and pictures of the barge. The day went really well and 146 Rotarians from over 100 local groups were shown round. Cold and damp, though, Dad thankful for his new black knitted thinsulate hat.

The evening do went very well too, says Dad. By 1830, of course, it was dark and the tide had come in, so the volunteers had rigged up lighting over the now quite steep gangplank to help everyone aboard. Bee had created a lovely 'Bon Voyage' poster across 3 sheet of A4, the individual letters of the words being outlined around Irish iconography like the tricolour, Guinness logos, a map of Ireland, a Galway Hooker, shamrock and so on. There was a nice presentation to Dad with a framed embroidered picture of old barges to hang in the new house and exchange of cards signed by everyone.

The main course was a chilli with rice and a superb lamb tagine but this was well surrounded by salads, garlic bread, rolls, doritos and then mince pies, muffins (thank you Diamond!), choc fudge brownies, apple pies creme fraiche etc. Everybody came a way very well fed and as tiddly as they needed to be. We also created a "time capsule" by having all the volunteers write comments on paper which were posted into a (cleaned, dried) champagne bottle which will be hidden down in the aft framing somewhere to be found, possibly, by the shipwrights restoring Cambria again in another hundred years!

Today's Christmas dinner was a more standard affair. Mum and Dad's job was vegetables, so they headed down there with spuds, parsnips and sprouts in the car plus some sweet spicy red cabbage prepared by Diamond (Thanks again!). Pud Lady and Tom had the turkey and bacon-wrapped sausages plus the pud already in and the Swindon team were looking after the non-meat alternative (a fish pie) and the dessert option (chocolate roulade). Friend of the family Jane was gathered up and boyfriend of eldest niece Kat, name of John also came along so 11 people were seated. This was a first. Pud Lady has never played host to that many before so an extra trestle table had been blagged from somewhere. An excellent time was had by all accounts though everyone missed the presence of little white hopeful hoovers underfoot in the not-particularly-big kitchen during carving etc.

Happy Days

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Ragworth ASBO Two-Breakfasts

Dad is scammed by a not particularly bright Rags into giving him a 2nd breakfast, failing to admit that Diamond has been down already at 06:30 and fed him the first one. Step forward Ragworth Asbo Two-Breakfasts N.

Mum and Dad are off to a Christmas party night with a gang of one-time work mates. There are about 20 of them and amusingly only about 5 still work at the place, following the redundancy decimation during the Summer, but all those who wanted to have found work elsewhere. They are, anyway, a happy bunch of mates who love to get together to catch up on the gossip and compare notes, all be it most of them are now on Facebook so they are in daily or regular contact anyway.

The 'do' is at the King Charles Hotel in Brompton, Gillingham but down at the function rooms end rather than the posh hotel end so it's a bit of a 'mass catering' meal (adequate but not brilliant). There's a 'cabaret' which is maybe a bit too loud and includes a game of the baffling TV show "Deal or No Deal" (which no-one we speak to can understand and seems to be based on random chance) followed (at 22:30) by a Black Eyed Peas tribute band. They do a good rendition of the one song we've heard of (It's Gonna be a Good Night) and then divert off into a load of what are presumably equally accurate renditions of B.E.P. rap songs. It's a good night. It does what it says on the tin and Mum and Dad plus their good friends Steve and Jean (my "First Mum and Dad") call it a night at about quarter to 11 and head home.

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E-day minus 9 and counting

As the date for the full and final emigration gets closer life is all about closing out loose ends and getting ready. Mum still has to work, of course, till the 9th, next Friday, so that's just 5 more working days as I write this. Dad rescues the 2CV from 3 and a half weeks of neglect down at the boatyard, by the caravan. The old girl does not like to be left un-started for more than about a week as the fuel drains back down from the carb, past the fuel pump and the pump will not drag it back up again and self-prime. You have to pull the fuel line off the carb and suck on it to draw the fuel up past the pump. Dad has a length of transparent pipe to help with this, so that not too many mouthfuls of petrol are quaffed (!). This is not a problem as long as the car is started every couple of days, so should be OK in Ireland where the 2CV will get plenty of use for as long as we can keep it on the road.

There is also post to be collected from the old address including Mum's tax disc, all of which has to be sorted and change of address letter(s) sent off if need be. Mid afternoon there's a phone call from 2CV Llew who has a problem with a lap top. He's not the world's most computer-literate person and is struggling to install anti virus. Dad to the rescue, driving the 2CV through the lashing rain thinking "Better get used to this!"

Dad heads for the barge and lets himself on board for a look round and a re-acquaint. There is no working heating on board yet so it's cold and damp. Still running a bit of a cold, Dad has opted to stay in Diamond's house where a warm, comfy, dry bed, Rags, good food and Mum, in no particular order out-weigh the attractions of living on Cambria.

Hassle-Free flying

Despite the news being full of the strikes by Immigration-clearing workers at Heathrow and the threat of disruption spreading to other UK airports, Dad heads off back to the UK for his final burst of 11 days of Faversham tying up the last loose ends before bringing Mum back to re-unite the family at last for the real start of Project Erroll. The flight is not till 12:50 so there is time to do breakfast as normal and to school run what children there still are going to school, not wiped out by the cold bug. Em-J and little R are both off school today and Dad has now developed a ticklish cough so is sure he's coming down with it - he's only surprised to have survived so long without succumbing.

So, Mr Silverwood drives Dad to the airport via buying a part for Steak Lady's shower, check in is problem free and the flight boards and loads on time. Dad is under instructions to text John at the UK end as he boards, as John will then leave home and take about the same time to drive as it does to fly Dublin to LGW, which saves anyone wasting time hanging around airports. As John rolls up at arrivals, Dad is coming through from baggage reclaim.

The boys drive home to Diamond's via the old house where there might have been some post to collect (including Mum's tax disc... oops) but nobody's home. Diamond welcomes everyone in - she has made up a spare room bed for Dad. In theory Dad was going to be sleeping on the barge, Cambria but now has this cold and it told that the barge has no heating yet and only dodgy mains power, so she is very cold and damp at present and not necessarily that conducive a place to sleep for a cold-ridden blogger. Also, Daimond is cooking haggis (small 'h'), neeps and tatties (and peas and carrots) for St Andrew's Day, Mum will be home from work and wine may well be opened. Thank you Diamond for the hospitality, comfy bed and the attention of the ravishingly handsome Ragworth (grrrrrrrr!)

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