General Witterings -
An Iffy Week on 'Rosy'

On Monday, I finished reading 'The Voyage of the Kate', the story of the first single handed voyage around England.  He went in 1869, via the Forth and Clyde Canal (wrongly marked on his map as the Crinnan Canal).  He seems to have rowed much of the way, and went into harbours most evenings for a meal at the local hotel, taking on a pilot to get into the harbour.  Sailing rations were, in the main, raw eggs, either stirred into half pints of sherry or tea.  I felt quite knackered when I'd finished reading it, so had a zizzzz.

Then the good ship 'Castor' arrived, a nice looking cruiser with a James and a Claire on board.  Whether their boat is 'Castor' as in 'oil' or 'Pollox' they don't know as it was called that when they bought it in Holland.  The boat will over-winter here.  They live near the Charente - the poor person's Provence or Dordogne.

For folk not yet aware of it, the advantages of living in France are:

• It's a very big country, so there are few traffic jams (except in Paris).
• Houses are very much cheaper than in UK, so if you have a UK house, you can sell it, move to France to a similarly sized house, and end up with oodles of loot in your pocket.
• Food here is good and cheap, meals out are very much better value than in UK, and the booze is laughably inexpensive.

The only worryette is that the Pound - Franc/Euro exchange rate is rather favourable to the Pound at present, and if that were to change, things could get a bit tricky.

On Tuesday I was invited onto Castor for afternoon coffee, so I took along a large apple tart from the local boulangerie.  Cut into three, I had a third of my third with the coffee, and took the other two-thirds of my third back to Rosy where, with lashings of custard, it served as my supper.

Wednesday was a red letter day in that packages of UK mail arrived, so much of the day was spent sorting through them.  This was interrupted by:

• Being invited back onto Castor for lunch - duck and char grilled veggies.
• Inviting the crew of Castor and Mackay onto Rosy for sun-downers.
• Cooking coq-au-vin et pommes-de-terre Écosse (boiled, put in a bowl, and melted butter and oatmeal added) which was taken to Castor where the four of us ate it, together with two rather good bottles of claret.  After which the crew of Castor produced a bottle of Cognac de Vie, home-produced by their neighbour in Charente.

Wednesday night was awful - headache, shits etc etc.

Thursday was even worse.  Everyone else was OK, so, for once, it wasn't my cooking!  In the evening I sadly contacted friend Joe over in Metz.  I was supposed to travel over on Friday to spend a weekend with him, having planned trips to Moscou (scene of a French military defeat in their 1870 war with Germany), Verdun (of First World War infamy) and Aachen (where Charlemagne (768-814) had his capital).

Time, a massive fire in the 1600s and two world wars have destroyed most relics of Charlemagne, but his Palace Chapel, now incorporated into a larger church/Cathedral, is supposed to be a real jewel.  There are no canals to Aachen (which is on the German/Dutch/Belgian border) so, some day, I'll have to make a side trip there.

Also on Thursday I had to do some urgent letter writing - a fence has blown down adjacent to my house in Huntingdon, and the newish neighbours think it is my fence - but it's not, it's theirs.

I missed Friday as I was still feeling groggy.

Saturday was an OKish day.  I managed to force down a couple of beers in the evening.

I was visited in the afternoon by two boyos, whose names, embarrassingly, I do not know.  I met one a few weeks ago on this boat.  He is a very pleasant, big, garrulous Brummy chap.  I keep seeing him, and he bends my ear, but I don't know his name.  He now has in tow an equally villainous, similarly sized chap, totally bald and (luckily) nearly silent, and with no ear lobes.  He usually looks dour, but cheers up a bit when the conversation turns to fishing, terrorism and other killing and death related subjects.  Brummy One and I are both military gents, but as Brummy Two has said nothing I know nothing of his past.

Heard on the Radio - apparently P.J.  O'Rourke (an humorous American observer of world affairs) whilst interviewing Gerry Adams, asked him, "Do you get involved with the actual killings, or do you just do the PR for them?"

Toodle pip!!

Bill