Of Projects Past

Sausage pies - sausage meat from our pigs and suet crust
from our lamb suet. 

A bit of our Kent life came back to greet us today when friends Mark and Cathy dropped by on a whistle stop tour of the Republic seeking out cousins and old family roots in Bray, Ballinagare and Tallow (Co.Waterford - so far south you can only go further south by hopping into Co. Cork). These guys are real friends from my 'Cambria' days, the time spent as an active volunteer on the famous Thames Sailing Barge while she was being restored in Faversham.

More baking for the visit. We like to lay out a good 'spread'.

My recent life seems to have been cobbled together as a series of long projects and readers who have been with me for 'ever' will recall the rebuild on the 1961 Citroën 2CV car which had been a twin-towns gift from the French town of La Chapelle d'Armentieres to the Kent town of Birchington (see posts around May 19th 2009). This was followed by my involvement in the Cambria project (posts such as 21 June 2008 and Oct 31 2007). This was all followed, of course, by the biggest project of all, our move here, restoration of the house (Dec 2011 to May 2012) and then creation of the small holding.

Tea Brack. Moist and delicious

Back in the 2CV days I knew little of Thames barges except that there was an old boat yard in my town (Faversham), through which I walked my dogs and where they seemed to be always doing up these "big old boats" - the yard was always strewn with equipment, ropes, folded red-ochre sails and an old crane, and echoed with banging and hammering, the scream of power-planes and drills and the bangs of 'maul' hammers. Then my aul' Mum came to visit and came round with me on the walk. She stopped dead as we turned the corner onto Standard Quay and whooped with delight "Thames BARGES!" Growing up in Bromley by Bow (London) in the 30s and 40s she had seen these lovely craft moving up and down the London River in trade (they were still trading up to the 60's as they could move 170+ tonnes of cargo about with a crew of just 2 men which kept them economic until well into the age of steam, though they stopped making new ones in the 30s).

There will be 'tay' - Mark and Cathy getting ready to tuck in.

My Mum's enthusiasm piqued my own interest in them and I started reading and researching the type. By coincidence the group looking after the decrepit rotting hulk of Cambria had just secured a £900,000 Lottery grant to completely rebuild her in Faversham led by project manager Will Collard and Master Shipwright Tim Goldsack but seeking volunteers to help with unskilled stuff and showing the public round. I had read about it in the local paper and decided to volunteer my services but did not know how, so I kept walking the dogs and knew that eventually I would see someone.

Bearing gifts including these US Deep-South food packets and
rigging parts - see main story.

Step forward, then, Mark, who visited us today. He was the first man I saw, tiptoe-ing through the boatyard junk in a big yellow hi-viz coat. He'd been involved in Cambria for 15 years already by then, when they had no money and used to try to keep out the weather of the beloved wreck using bits of old plank, chains, tarp and concrete. "Excuse Me!" (I might have said) "Are you to do with this barge and how can I get involved?" The rest is history, covered fairly well in this blog - I was put to work in a gang of superb volunteers (including Cathy), a very happy and productive, enthusiastic group working regularly right through to launch day and beyond. I even kept running the website and the Cambria blog on moving to Ireland, right up to this year.

All good things must end, though, and the distance and lack of real contact meant it became harder and harder to keep the website fresh and to keep track of new stories and the website has realistically been superceded by the involvement of the still hands-on, closer members of the team who mainly use Facebook to publish stories and pics of their adventures. Good luck to them, then and I have parked up the old blog that was so much part of the actual restoration process (visit http://www.cambriabargecharter.co.uk/ and hover cursor over the 'News' word in the black bar, then click on either 'blog' or 'blog archive'. The restoration took 3 years or so between 2007 and 2010)

So, Mark and Cathy came and enjoyed a bit of a cold buffet. We like to put on a good spread - Liz says she likes the table to say words like 'plenty' and 'ample', though not actually 'groaning'! They also had the farm tour. They are readers of the blog and they both said they were delighted to see the place for real that they had only ever seen in pics. Mark's camera hit over-drive at one stage shooting pics of Towser at a top window, then geese on the lawn and Rambo the ram coming up to the field gate to say 'Hello'. They came bearing gifts too - they had offered as they were coming over from Kent, to bring anything we might need so, among the generous bounty were some Zatarain's (US Deep South) food mixes which we used to enjoy buying from the excellent world-food/deli in Faversham, 'Macknades' (but can't buy over here). Also some yacht-rigging gear which I need to haul the bee swarm lure box into my tree next year; living by the Kent coast they have much better access to yachting chandlers type shops than we do in Roscommon! Thanks very much for all this 'stuff' Mark and Cathy. Safe journey back to your hotel tonight and then on back to the UK tomorrow. We have high pressure weather just now and not a breath of wind, so you should at least get calm seas for your crossing.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles......

The house in Hastings where I grew up.

"Just write about what you did in your holidays" - that clichéd old instruction in English Composition classes at school when you were first back from the summer break. Once a year I get the urge to 'go home' (all be it 'home' now feels very much like here, rather than Hastings or Kent), to catch up with Pud Lady (now 87) and my brother, Tom, to drop in on Kent friends and, of course, to get a fix of the 'Thames Sailing Barge' drug. I do all these in one trip, leaving poor Liz in charge of all the livestock. She asks for a check list in case she misses anyone, and gets handed one running to 4 pages of a note book this time (!). She tells me she loves it for a couple of days but by night-5 she is missing her lay-ins and cups of first-thing-in-the-morning tea and she is happy to hand the gang back,

Pud Lady cooks up the next cheating
devious manouvre in scrabble!

In these days of cheap flights it is all reasonably priced and we are delighted to be only 25 minutes drive down country lanes from Knock Airport. We both remember with horror those traffic-clogged trudges to Gatwick (and hour and a half each way on a good day) and some nightmare runs all the way round the M25 to Heathrow (2 hours if you were very lucky). I fly Aer Lingus to Gatwick, hire a small car (VW Polo this time), and trundle down to Kent always in awe of how many cars there are about; I am used to my quiet roads of the 'Wesht' by now. This time I dropped in on former neighbours, the 'Angel Betty' and Jim for a lovely chat and a coffee, then headed for Diamond's with John for supper, a visit from Mazy and a comfortable night's sleep.

Sailing Barge Cambria at night in St Katharine Docks

Thursday saw me down in Hastings catching up with Pud Lady and Tom, helping with and then sharing lunch and then being beaten badly by PL at Scrabble. She will read this, of course, so I can't be too rude, but we do have a good laugh with the Scrabble because she is always dreaming up devious cheating manouvres which she tells me are allowed when you are over 85 years old. There is a rule somewhere, apparently. You can write words upwards, diagonally or even detached from the rest of the grid, plus you can use shamelessly foreign words like "quinze" (15) or initials like 'TT' (tee-total) if it means you can lay your cunning word alongside an existing one in order to put your 'X' or 'Z' on a triple word. Who am I to argue? Just the obedient son........ To be fair in her defence, I should add that she also got lots of genuine and very clever, high scoring words without breaking any rules, 'Friezes' for example across a treble letter, completing 2 other sizable words into the bargain.

Those famous poppies at the Tower of London

From Hastings, back to Diamond's via Mazy's near Faversham for another lovely chat and to collect a cake and a jar of tomato chutney for the barge folk. John and I bought fish and chips (Ahhh the nostalgia) from our old favourite outlet, the Park Fish Bar in Faversham. Diamond is, as regular readers will know, not at all well and did not feel up to the fishy feast but she enjoyed us enjoying it. Local pub, The Elephant also operates a draught beer take-away service, where you can buy 2 pints of any of their guest draughts in a 'Tetra-pack' style container to bring home. We chose the mild Kent stout 'Canterbury Ale' and the paler (Rother Valley Brewery) 'Boadicea', both excellent.

Boozy reception and boaters' prize giving on board Cambria

And so to London to hand back the car at Gatwick and find my way through to St Katharine Docks to "join my ship". This was the Sailing Barge Cambria which was in town as part of Boris Johnson's "Totally Thames" festival and St Kat's "Classic Boat Weekend". Cambria is always a big attraction at such things - she is huge and tall so she can be seen for miles, she is free to enter (donations welcome!) and because she has no engine or terribly 'dangerous bits', parents and kids can come on board and go pretty much anywhere, up and down the three companionways.

Raffle prize - a nice jeroboam of red in
a hand painted bottle.

We make sure there are plenty of volunteers about to act as guides, to man the boarding stairs, to work the shop and, this year, the teas, coffees and cakes. I love to do the guiding and I am told that I have a natural gift of the gab (Blarney?) and often get a rapt group of listeners as I waffle on about 170 tonnes of cargo, 11 inches of free board amidships, lee boards and sprit-sail rigs. We opened the barge on Friday afternoon, plus all of Saturday (where we saw a record 1705 souls come through and hosted a gang of shanty singers who wanted to raise money on our behalf by passing round the bucket used for sluicing down our deck) and on Sunday till 4 pm (1125 people). We were exhausted, aching of foot from standing up all day and sore of throat from speechifying.

Former Mate on Cambria (in trade), Dick Durham (left)
judges and presents the champagne prizes. 

At 4 we closed the shop and became Reception Venue of for a fun and lighthearted prize giving for the boat owners at the festival (71 more people!). There were all manner of daft categories as well as the 'best dressed' (with bunting) award - fizz went to the best fairy lights, a 'travelling light' award to a Belgian guy who had left his clothes behind, to a bizarre combination of best dog and deck furniture, and to the 'spirit of the Festival', a guy who found some lost jewelry in the Marina washrooms and managed to return it to its owner. It was all a bit mad and great fun. Judging, invention of categories and prize giving were done by friend and former in-trade Mate of the barge, Dick Durham, now a writer for Yachting Monthly magazine.

St Kat's Marina is now all 'done up' and renovated as chi-chi posh apartments, cafés and restaurants and the Marina had arranged for boat owners to get a discount card, so we ate in the evenings, in those eateries, sipping our house red and watching the marina's comings and goings and the beautiful lights on the craft, reflected in the water. They were all warm, sunny days and balmy evenings; we were very lucky with the weather.

Mapp and Lucia kill a blown cabbage

My journey home was going to be another 'innocents abroad' job. Although I had traversed London calmly enough on Friday to get to St Kat's, that was at lunchtime with no frantic commuters about, just me and a thin selection of ambling, confused 'tourists'. An early flight on Monday meant that I'd have to travel home during rush hour. I had visions of me clinging to an underground walk-way wall, face like a rabbit caught in the headlights, watching the torrent of determined and unsympathetic 'suits' flow purposefully past me.

My Bee's Lemon survived the slugs

No such drama in the end. I'd set the alarm for 06:45 and walked to Tower Hill tube by 07:15 with nobody much about yet. My District Line train to Victoria filled up but I'd bought my Gatwick Express ticket on Friday, so I marched through the crowds in Victoria to grab my seat on that, made Gatwick with half an hour to spare before I needed to check in, so checked in anyway and went to find some breakfast.

Roast Guinea fowl 'welcome home' supper. Not one of
our birds!

It was a nice easy flight home with the plane only 1/3 full, so nobody next to me in '25A'. Liz met me from Knock and delivered me home. I love the trip and the Cambria stuff but it is always lovely to be home to Liz, one of Liz's welcome home meals (Guinea fowl roast followed by raspberry and blackberry 'cranachan'), to the livestock and to our own bed. Happy, weary traveler.

Keeping in Touch

SB Cambria; Picture by Susan Martin

Naturally. 99% of our time these days is taken up with the 'new life', the farm, the livestock, the new place and our new friends and acquaintances. Every now and then, though, our 'old life' gets a look in and we are staying in touch with some of our old Kentish interests and contacts. One of the biggest ones for me in those days, as you'll know from reading this blog, was the restoration of the Thames Sailing Barge S.B.Cambria. During the 3 and a half year restoration I was heavily involved as a working volunteer but also described all the adventures by writing the blog on their website which started as a quite modest affair managed by a small family firm based in the Kent town of Sandwich.

Well, now the restoration is complete and the barge relaunched and back on the water operating as a proper company on a charity basis. The website was moved from the Sandwich team to a bigger provider company called 'Blue Ant' based in Faversham and at the same time, I was asked to take over the management of the site content as well as continuing to write the blog and, more recently, Liz and I have also been asked to take over the production and writing of the 3-times-a-year Newsletter. The website

( http://www.cambriabargecharter.co.uk/ )

is quite a big and full one with many pages which are quite time-sensitive; there is a calendar, and there are pages entitled 'recent events' or 'future plans' all of which go out of date if you are not in there fairly frequently re-writing them and you need to keep posting new pictures so that the site stays fresh to any 'surfer' coming back for another look. I've put in a good few hours lately re-writing chunks of this, updating pictures and writing blog posts. Liz and I have also spent the time needed in producing the January 2014 Newsletter which will be published soon and I will post a link here to that. Obviously all the real work is happening 500 miles away in Kent, so this has to be done at a distance but in these days of the internet, digital pictures and e-mail this makes little difference except that I am heavily reliant on the locals to take the pictures and feed me the stories. It keeps me out of mischief.

Not starving with Liz away. Lamb chops and Cajun roast veg

Welcome back to Liz who has been away for the week ministering to the poorly Mrs Silverwood and wrangling children on school runs, taxis to Karate and baton twirling. She has been supervising them though homework and cooking fridges full of future foods to keep the family going while Mrs S, now home from hospital and mixing interesting cocktails of three drugs with long names, continues to recover. Liz is exhausted, she says, and takes her hat off to all the 'real' Mums who do this kind of thing as a full time job, not just for the one week. On the Saturday , Steak Lady (and Mr SL) rode in like the cavalry to relieve Liz and unloaded from their car, catering quantities of the type of high class 'ready meals' that the Portmarnock folk sometimes use for dinner parties when they do not want to cook, huge trays of top-of-the-range lasagna, chicken curry, cottage pie, stuffing them into Mrs S's fridge till it cried "Enough!". There was even a chocolate cake for us - Thanks Steak Lady! The relief effort work there was done and, after one more round of taxi-ing to karate and baton twirling, Liz could drive home.

Assembling the flat pack hive.

Of course, I miss her being around but I keep myself pretty busy coping with the 'farm' on my Jack Jones and there is always plenty of food stacked up in our own fridge and freezer and I am a pretty good cook, so I cope fairly well. My speciality at present is roasted veg seasoned with Cajun seasoning - I use our own, huge, sweet parsnips, onions and (shop) tomatoes and butternut squash, as well as sometimes including our own Mira spuds roasted alongside the veg. In the case above, there were also our own sprouts and lamb cutlets. Delicious.

Clara climbs up the ramp from yard to cattle race.

I also fired up the poor, neglected 2CV and took her for a quick blat a few times round the house, through the yard and up through the cattle race just to make her feel a bit loved, to get the oil circulating, some fresh petrol into the carb, the brakes freed up and wiped clean of rust and the suspension moving about. She is actually off the road at the moment and will be put on a Statutory Off-Road Notice (SORN) in May, a month before her current tax expires. The tax was only €99 (it goes by engine size here) but it will be nice not to have to pay the insurance. The latter always annoyed me - it seems that in Ireland you cannot insure a car that is more than 15 years old, for more than 3rd Party, not even fire and theft. If I damaged her or she caught fire or was stolen I would just be taking a 100% loss on the chin. She's not worth a great deal, but with an NCT would probably get you €1000. In the UK you could at least get a fully comp deal on a pre-agreed value (the national 2CV club would do an estimate for the insurers) and a limited mileage (I only ever did 2-3000 miles per year). I will be happy to not have to pay our Irish insurer for that one.

Egg glut

The geese and chickens are now cranking out record amounts of eggs each day; sometimes I have had 2 goose and 8 chicken eggs. Even one of the Marans girls has come back into lay (Bless 'em, they have got to be 6 years old at this stage!) That's a lot more eggs than I either can eat or palm off on neighbours when I am here on my own, so Liz returned to something of a glut, a dozen in the 'posh' box plus 5 goose eggs and a good 9 chicken eggs in the overflow bowl. That called for a blast of baking to use some up, so the table is now groaning with home made lemon curd (lovely and sharp, the way we like it, made with un-waxed, organic lemons), home made mayonnaise, blackberry 'clafoutis' (posh tart), sponge cake and Liz's famed 'chilli, cheese and bacon biscuits'. We also foisted some eggs on Carolyn (K-Dub is back from his motorbiking Bavarian Forest 'Elefant' adventure and it is little H's 2nd birthday soon, so she's baking too) so the glut is looking a lot less glut-like now.

Fancy a stroll down the Lane, Henry? Why not, Min?

Meanwhile, the Guineas seem to have temporarily given up on their wanderings down the tarmac lane (the picture here was taken while I rounded them up and shoo'd them back into the drive one more time) but only because Henry has managed to hurt his right leg and is limping. Poultry tend to be famous for either being fully fit, or dead, with only very quick 'sick' intervals between. Each work-a-day bird is also usually only worth a few Euro. Hence few poultry keepers call the vet to their hobby birds and most vets, anyway, have little experience of fowl. We tend to try to isolate them, keep them quiet, ensure they have food and water and hope for the best. They either fall off the perch or perk up, problem solved either way. We cannot see any obvious cause on Henry, so we think he has pulled a muscle higher up his leg, or bruised himself, maybe in the hip, knee or 'ankle' joint.

Recent damp has put green algae on our Kentish
fallow deer antlers. But look at that blue sky!

Guinea fowl also tend to be very strongly pair-bonded, always scurrying about on foot as a pair. If they ever get separated then they call anxiously to one another and this can be quite loud. Henry's injury has slowed him up a bit, so Min takes off at the usual sprint and poor H is left behind. There is a lot of noisy calling till they can be re-united. But he does get about, hopping along favouring the poorly leg in a new characteristic bounding gait. We fancy that each day he seems to be slightly better; we hope this isn't just wishful thinking. He is not, anyway, getting any worse, so we live in hope that he will recover and go back to aggressively running at all the hens to drive them off and secure the food for his 'Min'. The thought occurs that he may have got injured by trying this on with one of our roosters and been taught a lesson by them.

But, some days are definitely 2-yolk days and Saturday was one of them, with Liz having a problem free 2 hour run up the roads and motorway from the Silverwood's to here, home in time for 'wine o'clock'. It is good to have her back. This place works so much better with 2 of us knocking it into shape and enjoying the fruits (and veg's!) of our labours. Thank you Mrs S for allowing her to come home. Get well soon and enjoy all that 'sugo', cock-a-leekie soup, chicken curry, lasagna and cottage pie.

Back on the Barge

Mum having had her 'turn' at holidays, it was Dad's turn to have a break from us all here on the 'farm' so it was almost inevitable that he'd choose to spend some time with the Thames Sailing Barge Cambria. The old girl is between charters these 2 weeks, so is moored on the big new floating pontoon by St Andrew's Wharf in Gravesend. The charters are for young carers 'respite breaks', youngsters who spend most of their non-school waking hours looking after disabled, blind or sick parents, siblings or other relatives and are rescued by the Rotary Club for a week each year to have a complete break from these onerous duties and go play on a sailing boat while the Rotary funds a replacement carer to fill the gap.

The intention had been for the barge to go on display to the public on 'the wall' (the concrete quayside) at St Andrew's Wharf, but as the barge was coming into the Thames the weather took a turn for the worst and fierce squally winds meant it would be dangerous to try to come alongside on such an unforgiving structure and the barge diverted to the pontoon with a plan to move to the wall when the weather calmed down. That side of the pontoon can not be opened to the public. Dad had intended to join the volunteers showing the barge off to the public but now only had to man the barge at night for security reasons, like a night watchman of old. He would be free to wander about town etc during the days and spend some time away from the barge to visit Pud Lady, (brother) Tom and friends.

Mum dropped Dad to the Knock Airport on Monday 24th from where he flew to Gatwick, collected the hire car (Seat Ibiza) and drove round to Gravesend to park in the Port of London Authority (PLA) car-park and find his way aboard down the new pontoon. This proved OK except for having to hop over a padlocked barrier but the barge keys were in the prescribed hidey-hole and Dad was able to get in, open the aft hatch, climb down the companionway (all familiar territory even in the pitch dark) and find some light switches. The fridge was well stocked with milk for coffee and with food from the previous charter, so supper was easy and the Captain's Cabin was set up with duvet etc. The Cambria Trust Ops Manager (Rob Bassi) dropped in briefly to check all was well but then left Dad to it, rocking gently in the swell from the storm.

Morning dawned sunny and mirror-calm. Incidentally, you can see on the 'full barge' shot here the black plastic kestrel kite which hovers very realistically  above the pontoon keeping the nasty poo-y pigeons off. Behind the scenes, the 'management' were now trying to get the barge onto the wall or to the inside of the pontoon where it could be open to the public, but Mr Insurance Man (and common sense) says you can only move the barge when there is a qualified skipper aboard and we needed the back end of an ebb tide to do the job. These days possible Skippers are our Master Shipwright, Tim Goldsack, or one of the two charter Skippers, Richard Tichener or Ian Ruffles. The first to come available was IR and he not till Thursday's afternoon ebb tide. This meant Dad would just have to amuse himself through Tuesday to Thursday lunchtime, with no public to show the boat off to, so it was going to be a relaxing break. There were occasional visits from fellow-volunteers like Dave B and photographer Jason A and from Rob Bassi again and then Chairman Bruce Richardson and there are plenty of eateries and pubs in Gravesend, especially the Rum Puncheon and the Three Daws which are right on the River. The Three Daws does a rather fierce chilli con carne!

On the Wednesday Dad heads for Hastings to visit Pud Lady and his own brother Tom for a long chat and lunch. He returns via Challock where he can drop off some genuine peat turfs (from John Deere Bob's bog) to Irish chum Rona, who'd been missing the smell of peat fires. From there to Boughton to drop in on another chum, Mazy-Lou and then Faversham to visit ex neighbours Angel B and Jim and then newly married Diamond and John. Back in Gravesend and on board he is joined by a gang of the former painting-volunteers, Dave B, Mrs Dave B and 'Mum' and Owen P for a trip to a Chinese restaurant for an 'all you can eat' style meal.

Thursday was the day for moving the barge, so they were joined by Skipper Ian Ruffles and Mate Denis Johnson. The short version of this task’s description is that you let the barge drift backwards off the pontoon while controlling the drift with the thick mooring warps (ropes) and then, when the bow is clear, put the helm over so that she slides sideways in the current till she’s line up with the other side of the pontoon, and then winch her back up against the tide using the dolly line. Needless to say it’s not as simple as that and there’s a lot of preparing by, for example, hauling the barge-boat inboard, then nipping about letting go one rope and making fast another, setting ropes up so they do not tangle on bits of pontoon, fending the barge off the sharp corners of the pontoon and, of course, heckling Ops Manager Rob Bassi (red overalls) on the pontoon. Also hauling up the anchor, taking the outboard back off the boat and squaring away ropes etc at the end.

In this, a pic from  Jason A, on deck (l to r) are Denis Johnson (admiring the view while dangling a fender ‘bladder’), Skipper Ian Ruffles keeping an eye on things and issuing instructions, Dad taking up some slack on the big yellow and black warp and Dave Brooks giving it some on the dolly line, a surprisingly strong but thin cord. Looking at it, you’d not think it could start a 90+ ton barge into forward progress against a 3-4 knot tide flow, but it did with Dave leaning on the windlass. All good clean fun!

Thursday night had Dad and Dave B heading for Hoo Marina to see if they could find and photograph the only known Galway Hooker in Kent, Ray Rush's 'An Dreoilín' (The Wren) and to visit Dave's barge-model builder father, Tony. 

That brings us to Friday and the end of a nice break. Dad repacks his stuff, retrieves the Seat Ibiza from the PLA car-park and returns it to Hertz in Gatwick, grabs a breakfast in one of the cafés and waits to be called to his gate for the flight home. Mum brings me to Knock to meet Dad so we can all have a happy excited re-union. Brilliant holidays!

Deefs

Getting There

There's no arguing now that we are approaching the final run in to completion of this renovation project. With the plaster drying fast we have started painting and with painting done and also tiling nearing completion we can start to move onto the final visible bits - radiators hung on walls and connected up, the electrical "second fix" stuff like switches and sockets, carpentry like door frames, architrave, skirting board and so on; all the "finished house" stuff. The plaster that is a bit slower to dry gets 'encouraged' with an oil filled radiator left in the room overnight. It's the one from the caravan, so dogs and mere humans are back to the caravan's gas heater for their home comforts.

Dad's role is mainly to do painting and there's a lot of it. We've managed to buy lots of brilliant white matt finish from B+Q who are doing a 3 for the price of 2 deal on the big ten litre tubs. This is new raw plaster and very absorbent of water, so the paint is watered down for the first coast as a primer. First coat gets 2 litres of water mixed into 10 litres paint, and 2nd coat gets 1 litre water to 10 of paint. As usual, Mum and Dad can do their teamwork bit. Dad loves doing edges and 'cutting in', Mum does rollering on the 'acre-age'. Some of the ceilings are very high, so the roller gets stuck on the end of telescopic pole, or Dad's up the extending ladder with his brush. Most places are getting three coats, but some get 4 if the finish is still not 100%. The kitchen gets completed first as Mum is keen to start assembling the kitchen units we bought from IKEA last weekend. By the end of the week we have used up most of the 30 litres of paint (35 if you include watering down water) and today we need to head back to Roscommon via the B+Q in Athlone for some more.

Mum gets stuck into assembling the IKEA units armed with screw drivers and trusty allen key. These are unusual style ones which stand alone, rather than the standard look of rows of cupboards at ground level with a common work top, or wall units. The cooker unit will have an electric oven and a gas hob, the sink one a double sink. Separate shelf units will have hooks for hanging pans etc. Mum is so happy she confessed to shedding a tear when she saw what she had built. There was a mini hiatus when they discovered they had not bought a vital bit of work top for the cooker unit and Dad had to do a mercy dash back to IKEA in Dublin (6 hour round trip!) for this bit so that the unit could be completed.

Sparks, meanwhile does his normal blizzard of multi tasking. He finishes the tiling and grouting in the bathroom so that Mum can start the deep-clean and polishing the tiles, and he can start installing the toilet, sink, shower (glass) doors and heated towel rail. The toilet and sink obviously involve making holes through walls for the waste and the 'soil', plus connecting them up outside and making a 'soil stack'. He also starts the carpentry/joinery of the stairs bannister and hand rail. This is a lovely job of mitre joints and slotting pre-cut bits into place with a load of cutting thrown in. The spindles sit in a rebate groove top and bottom but are spaced apart with thin infill bits which just fit the rebate bringing the whole back to flat as if the spindles were in individual holes. This is in lovely 'red deal' wood and will not be painted but sanding sealed and clear varnished to bring out the grain. The colour scheme overall is going to be white walls and varnished wood, which Dad hopes will give the place a bit of a 'yacht-y' (or even 'barge-y') look like SB Cambria.

It's all going very well and we are all delighted with it.
Deefer

Back to the Barges

With a free day, Dad is keen to head back down to the Standard Quay in Faversham to renew his acquaintance with the Sailing Barge Cambria, to take a few pictures to use in the 'barge blog' and to see what's new and different. The Quay is nice and busy with plenty of barges in port, so plenty of work for the local shipwrights including new arrival on last night's high tide, SB Lady Daphne in for a general winter refit. Other barges currently in include Pudge, Tollesbury and Beric as well as Faversham regulars Greta, Henry and 'us'.

It's bitterly cold with ice on all the puddles and the water in the bottom of the barge's life-boat frozen solid. Dad nips aboard and lets himself down below decks and is bimbling around taking his pictures when he hears the clump of sea boots and the rattle of an anchor chain 'upstairs'. He has happily coincided with the shipwrights needing to drop the rigging on Cambria so there's something interesting to watch and take his pictures of. There are four of the boys involved including Master Shipwright Tim Goldsack, 'Frog' and Ryan, plus the rigging expert and well known barge-man 'Nozz' (these barge boys love their nicknames).

It is interesting to watch them at work preparing for the 'lower', moving the stays and rigging out of the way, laying out the stay-fall cable, detaching the starboard side mizzen shrouds to allow the sprit pole to 'land' safely on the saddle chock (and, sorry, I am not going to explain all those terms. If you don't know them and you need to, head for the 'barge blog' - Volunteer Views on www.cambriatrust.org.uk.

All done now; rig safely lowered and everyone has been able to retreat indoors to warm up. They were well wrapped for the job anyway, hats and bodies, but they find it impossible to manage fiddly ropes and rigging shackles with gloved hands so they work bare-handed in the wind with the metal parts all painfully cold to touch, damp ropes left on deck frozen stiff into coils. Brrrr.

Rather them than me
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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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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.

We here.

Well, here we are. We (Haggis and I) have emigrated and are now residents of the Irish Republic. Dad has come with us to bring us here and will be heading back to UK at the end of the month to bring Mum and the 2CV and little Fiat over, then we'll be back together again.

We had our last night at Pud Lady's on Sunday night after which we packed everything back into the bags and cases. Dad pulled the plug on the new inflatable mattress with me still on it so that I gradually descended to the floor while breakfasts were eaten. Tom helped carry everything out the car. It just about fitted with us on our dog beds on two thirds of the back seat, a little bit easier than on the original journey down because we had offloaded huge bags of allotment onions and spuds onto Pud Lady. We all bade each other fond farewells and piled into the car. Pud Lady will miss us and the games of Scrabble. The final series score after 64 games was 32:32

We headed first for Faversham where we were left in the caravan while Dad went off to see a private screening of the new Mike Maloney barge film "Red Sails", a veritable gathering of all the great and good of the barge world, from officers in the various National barge organisations, former skippers, the ship wrights, sail makers, barge owners and a fair smattering of the Cambria Trust lot; Dad's crowd! The film was excellent and lasted about 50 minutes after which there was rousing applause for Mike and a question and answer session. Dad came back to the caravan for a kip, setting himself up for the long evening drive to Holyhead.

We leave Faversham at 15:30 sneaking through the Dartford tunnel before 17:00 and missing most of the M25 traffic, but it's a bugger of a journey anyway with massive tail backs on the M6 just before the toll road starts and then more getting back onto the M6 at the end of the toll bit. We stop every couple of hours for a breath of air and a comfort stop in a variety of motorway services. We then hit more trouble when the M56 is closed because a lorry has fallen off a bridge onto the carriageway, killing the driver and shocking a couple of passing motorists. We arrive at Holyhead at just on midnight, tired out. More 'comfort stops' in the car-park waiting to board the ferry.

We sleep in the car for the run across, Dad grabs a cabin on the boat but can't sleep well. By 06:30 we are driving off the ferry and headed SW towards Limerick. By 07:30 we dogs are breakfasting in a farm gateway just outside Emo and by 08:30 we are at Mrs Silverwood's getting welcomed in and causing a certain amount of chaos as we nip out the back for a wee in the yard and inadvertently let the three resident dogs (Westies Lily, Maxwell and Yorkie Coco) through to the kitchen where they get under all the kids' feet as they are getting readied for school. More chaos later as builder Tommo is in the house today putting down new laminate flooring in the living room.

Enough for today, though, as Mrs S wants to unplug me to re-arrange the broad band cabling.

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Dad's Back!

Dad finishes his latest stint aboard SB Cambria
and is back home by lunchtime. This morning he's been showing a party of school children the barge, from a school nearby to St Andrew's Wharf (Chantry School?). It was a bit hair-raising, he reports, 29 small herberts (9-10 years old) chasing about perilously close to the knee-high rails, peering down companionways and down through hatchways trying to get the attention of their classmates who were below decks, and so on, but Dad and his colleague Basil managed to keep everything together for the hour, let the School teachers and Trust people take their many many photos and filed the kiddies all off again onto the solid concrete without damaging any body. Big sigh of relief!

Across the week, they have had a brilliant time, being visited by many many more people than they ever get in Faversham, receiving lavish thanks and praise and getting a 'war and peace' sized wad of positive comment in the visitors book. Aside from the first night aboard, where they got a bit of hassle from some inebriated Eastern European 'youths', they've had no trouble at all, quiet comfortable nights of solid sleep except where they were obliged to set alarms for the 01:30 highest tides and nip up on deck to check the mooring lines and fenders.

But now it's all over. Cambria finishes her open-to-the-public stop at Gravesend and will next be used on another 'young carers' sail-training charter on 7th to 9th October. Meanwhile she will be pulled off the moorings at tomorrow's high tide and moved 100m out into the deeper water to be moored to a pair of 'trot' buoys (mooring buoys fore and aft so you can tie up both ends and don't swing around through 360 degrees as the tide turns each time).

All clever stuff

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Mate's bunk

Dad has spent the last few nights on the 'night shift' looking after the precious barge, SB Cambria, sleeping in the Mate's bunk (pictured) and then last night promoted to the Skippers bunk at the beautifully restored, 105-year old panelling aft end. These are big tides (6.4m) and the barge needs checking every now and then to make sure the fenders (between barge and quayside) are still in effective locations as the barge rises and falls on the tide (usually inconventiently in the middle of the night!).

They also need to keep the barge looking occupied and obviously lived in, to deter any mischief from the local herberts, who tend to use the St Andrew's area as their place to park cars, get the drum'n'bass sound systems a-thumping, get themselves round a few cans of beer and plead with the barge occupants to let them aboard in the dark. Stand by to repel boarders! Go home lads.... Go to bed... get some sleep!

Wrapped around that, Mum is looking after us and having a nice quiet relaxing weekend, but Dad is looking after the Treasurer job at the town's Hort Soc Flower Show and leading a 7-mile hike through Challock Forest for the Friends of Kingswood. He is beginning to feel like everybody wants a chunk of him and wondering how he ever had time to do any paid work.

Today we are off down to Hastings to visit the Pud-Lady and we are taking dinner to save her having to cook for 'us'. Mum and Dad have spatch-cocked a chook and loaded a bag with allotmemt spuds, green beans, lemon tarte, hot (when you make them hot) chocolate soufflés and fizz (Pud Lady does like a drop of fizz and at 84, who is going to argue?). God Bless Her.

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Strictly Come Barging

Something a bit different for Dad today which ends up with him shaking hands with TV presenter John Sargent. The barge is currently at Gravesend as part of the celebrations around the civic event, the opening of the new St Andrew's Wharf. This is the bit of Thames quayside between the little St Andrew's church and the Town Pier. 'We' are moored there now till Weds 14th, the civic ceremony happening on Friday at 11:00.

While we are there the BBC call on us to see if they can borrow the barge. They are producing a film series covering the photographic career and post-card empire of Francis Frith, Victorian photographer whose mission it was to photograph every town and village in the UK. There are now hundreds of thousands of Frith black and white images in a big archive, many of which have gained historical importance.

The BBC is looking at a few locations on a then-and-now basis in films presented by John Sargent, one of which is Gravesend. One of the famous images shows a Thames sailing barge moored alongside Gravesend waterfront at a point where a big Civic Gardens tipped out onto the quayside through big ornate gates. We think it might be the Clifton Marine Parade one seen now as ref 49042 in www.francisfrith.com/gravesend or http://www.francisfrith.com/gravesend/photos/clifton-marine-parade-c1898_49042/ . We think this is now a huge Tesco's.

Anyway, keen to get a similar picture with barge and to do the piece on Thames Barges as part of the programme, the film team plus John spent a couple of hours out and about, afloat, filming from the barge and from a motorboat. This was all done by the time Dad was scheduled to arrive and the crew were filming a last few bits and pieces including the 5 guys in this picture (incl, obviously, John S). Dad's job was to help secure the boat against this rather sloping mooring as she "took the ground" (sat down on the mud). The guys are, left to right, our Master Shipwright Tim G, Cambria Trust Chairman Bruce R, skipper Richard T, John S and crew-man "Stretch".

Dad admits that John S would barely have known he was there, so it's hardly hob-nobbing it with the famous, but John Sargent did shake everyone's hand and thank them all including Dad as he hopped off the barge.

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Larruping it on

With one eye on the weather forecast, which gives rain in the afternoon, and following yesterday's "rain stops play" aborted effort, Dad is down at the barge as soon as he's dropped Mum off to work to start painting the second coat of pale blue deck paint. A couple of the shipwrights are still kicking about so the painting has to be done around them, leaving them dry walkways to stroll to and from on. One of these guys, John, is doing old fashioned caulking with hot bitumen dribbled into a routed out groove between the deck planks from a very long handled, spouty ladle. Mind those splashes guys! Other shipwrights are getting the dry dock ready 'abaft' of us for the SB Beric, which vessel is going in for deck replacement and the Master Shipwright, Tim is walking the decks of Beric planning how best to attack the task. The decks are in a poor state. He's a bit spoiled for choice!

About 2/3 done by 'elevenses' Dad and all the guys retreat below decks for a coffee and a yarn (like proper shipwrights do!). He is joined by his Oppo, fellow volunteer Richard, who has showed up to help with the painting. Coffee done, and with the two guys who had been doing jobs on the barge finished, Rich' and Dad can attack the last few square yards, larruping the paint on gloopily with good wet rollers. The mission is to get a good layer on right down into the shake (the opening grain) and any air bubbles in the now cool bitumen (here it gets squidged down with a brush). They almost, but don't quite, paint themselves into a corner, retreating backwards to the gang plank, painting the last few feet while leaning over the rail from the barge next door. Job done.

We get a nice long walk today, all round the boatyard and back up through town. The town is being prepared for the imminent Hop Festival, gathering of a million Morris Men, live bands, sellers of over-priced hop bines, quaffers of beer and (usually) sunburnt, under-dressed human flesh. It's no place for a dog, let me tell you. Apart from the risk of getting squoze or trodden on in the crush as the humans mill like sardines (do sardines 'mill'?) there is sweet nothing to see of any interest to a dog apart from the odd dropped melty ice cream.

Get outta Dodge!

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Old Bob (Roberts)

With a stroke of genius, Mum is out shopping today and finds what could be the perfect beer for a link up with Dad's beloved barge, SB Cambria. Cambria was, as any fule no, the last Thames Barge trading under sail power alone in the UK, so our last sail powered merchant vessel, the end of an era. These sail powered vessels and their captains were referred to as 'Sailormen' and Cambria's last skipper, clinging onto the sailing tradition because he hated the new-fangled diesel and steam powered craft, was a bloke called Captain Bob Roberts.

Bob finally gave up on the sail powered life in 1970 as the barge was getting too old and starting to leak like a seive, not making any money as a business, and Bob was also getting older and less able to wrangle rigging and winches. He sold the barge to the Maritime Trust as a museum ship and briefly ran a motor coaster called Vectis Isle before retining to the Isle of Wight to live out his final years with his wife.

He died in 1982, if I recall correctly, cycling home from the village to his house so would never have known about the recent Lottery Funded rebuild of the Cambria to its present beautiful condition. His 2 daughters have enjoyed close contact with the project and have been to visit the team a number of times. The crew of these barges was traditionally two blokes - the Skipper and a Mate, plus a dog (In Bob's case a collie cross called Penny). The 2 most recent 'Mates' of the barge are also very much still with us and one, Dick Durham has written a book about Bob called "The Last Sailorman". The other, Phil (Ginger) Latham now lives in France but has been to see the barge many times and Dad has met him and had a good long (all be it star-struck) chat!

In his life he had also been an author (his books are very good), a journalist with National dailies, and was known as a folk singer and story teller around the barge ports. He and Cambria are also in a well known 1950's BBC TV documentary (might have even been presented by Roger Bannister, the runner) about living by old traditional means round the coast of the Thames Estuary (wildfowling in Essex etc).

See Culture with it!

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1000 Posts!!!!!

Well, readers, here we are! We made it to 1000 posts across these 4 and a bit years. Just some nice pictures today of Haggis and I aboard Dad's beloved SB Cambria. Haggis is presumably feeling the heat, looking at the length of that tongue. Dad took us below for a cool off just after these pictures were taken.

I was hoping for something a bit more momentous to talk about in this significant post but it's just been a fairly normal hum drum Saturday. Mum has taken off to Brighton again to visit the sick friend, and is hoping that the M25 doesn't 'get' her like it did last time, delaying her return till gone 22:00. Dad's hoping that too, as he's cooking a bit of a special meal (Nigel Slater Pork Chops) to celebrate the 1000'th post.

He's been down at the barge again today with the gang painting a complete coat of grey undercoat ("Rosy Glow") onto the decks in preparation for tomorrow's proper pale blue, bargey, deck topcoat.
He's going to miss all this when Project Erroll comes to fruition.

Ah well, thank you all, dear readers for your interest and attention over the time this blog has been running. Please do keep the comments coming in, it's the only way I actually know anyone's out there listening at all. Onwards and upwards.

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