Bivouacking

Another week passed, and week closer to the trip back over to our home. It is safe to say that we are starting to get very excited and it is awesome to once again enter that period just before “the off” when time is running short to get things organised and the hard and fast deadline of “no more time” fast approaches. This week has seen several steps forwards so without further ado, here it is.

 

Double egg on gammon with Bob

The week began with a day in the office the completely exhausted me and sent me straight to bed when I got home for forty minutes of much needed sleep. It was just one of those days where you end up shattered but without much to show for it. The evening was a real blast, however, as a very good old friend of mine came over and all three of us went to our new local for gammon, egg and chips (they doubled up the egg this time, and the ratio of meat to egg was much better for it) and A suffered through several hours of model trainset talk; Bob has been planning and building a trainset for many years now and has a wealth of knowledge that I was keen to mine. The upshot of the whole thing is I am now going to go for what is called DCC which means you send digital signals to a chip inside each engine, rather than just crudely controlling the train with variable current; it is a much more versatile and simple way to build the layout which appeals to me.

It was a really enjoyable evening and it has been left that Bob will come over again in a couple of weeks maybe, and this time he’ll bring some toys for us to play with. A has said that if this happens, she’ll cook for us and leave us to it while she goes to the pub on her own. For this I could not blame her one little bit.

 

Snow dusting the pavements

The rest of the week at work has pretty much settled into the same pattern as Monday, with quite a lot of frustration at times, but also some personal satisfaction for getting things done. I have learned so much in the time I’ve been at this contract and it was definitely the correct decision to make, notwithstanding how disappointed I was when the Sheffield contract didn’t work out. I am particularly enjoying the walk to and from work and when I left on Wednesday I was most excited by the slight fall of snow the previous night which I crunched through and found surprisingly unslippery. A didn’t believe me and so didn’t go for her run that morning, claiming she didn’t want to slip; I think it was more because it was so cold.

 

A small amount of train kit stuff

When I got back from the office I was taken by a need to tidy up. I have bought so much track from so many different people that it was starting to spread and become irritating. The doorway from the living room to the dining area was basically out of action and there were boxes in the office as well as spread out in the corner of the living room. I pulled everything together then spent some time repacking the few items of rolling stock and scenery that I have and put them into one box, then gathered the track together and stacked it up neatly in the corner. I’m waiting for one more box now, as I type this, and then I will assess what I have and pack it into the boxes which will be transported home.

One of the big ticket items which has been on the list to be ordered for a while now is the scaffolding which we will be taking back with us. On Thursday morning I got round to ringing the guy and this is now sorted; it will be delivered in a couple of weeks to our house here so it can go straight into the back of Harrison. Along with this I have been thinking about taking back an electric roller shutter garage door as I was unable to find one last year while I was in Bulgaria. I am looking for a reasonable price second hand one on eBay but I think this may well end up being too expensive and I’ll just have to settle for what I can get from an out-of-town company in Bulgaria. We also have to be aware of the weight limit of Harrison as we’ll be quite close, what with the scaffolding and the sofas.

Posh spuds

Thursday evening was the highlight of our week when we went, with Ryan, Cat, Lee and Vic, to The French in Manchester. While it doesn’t have a Michelin star, the chef has three others spread over two different restaurants and it was very close to achieving one of its own this year. The report said that it was let down by slight inconsistency and I can’t help but agree. It was absolutely wonderful; four hours or excellent company, fantastic service and exquisite food however the main course (of duck with parsnip, basically) was a let down; for me the parsnip was the biggest fail in that it had no crisp at the tail end at all, but other people commented in the same way that the duck didn’t have crispy fat. It is nitpicking really, and please go if you get a chance as it is a wonderful place to eat, I am just saying I can understand it not getting the star. We had a brilliant time and the legendary Smoked Turkey night has now be arranged as well so that’s to be looked forward to in a couple of weeks.

 

Lee's favourite dish; Ox in Coal Oil

Puddin'

Anyway, back to the food at The French; Lee had been raving about the “Ox in Coal Oil” and when it arrived we were not let down. This is an awesome dish and everyone could have easily eaten ten times the quantity. My favourite was one that I didn’t get a picture of (as I ate it too quickly) and was the salad. It had so many different flavours that every time you picked up a forkful you were treated to a new dish. Wonderful. The other highlight was the cheese board which was stacked with awesomeness including the Irish cheese that A had chosen from the cheese stall in Keswick market. It was gone eleven when we finally left the table and made our way to the bus stop to get back to the car parked outside the old flat. An excellent night.

 

Pitched the bivvy in the snow

A was off to Blackpool again on Friday and so I again got the pleasure of watching her have to get up and leave while I stayed snuggled in bed but, as last week, I didn’t lie in long and was pretty soon sat at my desk working away. It was another really busy day and I didn’t even get time to have a proper lunch as I was glued to skype talking to people scattered around the country. I did take a little time away from my desk midmorning to go outside and pitch the bivouac as my plan was to sleep in it that night. It was sunny, but slightly raining, as I was putting it up and later on it snowed but that wasn’t going to put me off trying it out; if I’m going to be using this to travel across Northern Europe in March then it will need to be able to cope with this weather and worse, possibly.

 

It was a tad nippy when I went to bed

I worked til late but then had to stop as key members of staff decided that pub was more important than finishing our task on the day, so went and ate and relaxed and then it was time to go outside. I am sure that A thought (and still thinks) that I was insane to want to sleep outside and when we got there and found a large lump of ice sat on top of the bivvy maybe she had a point but I was not going to be put off. I put the ice away onto the grass (where it still was the next morning) and then started the process of getting inside.

 

All wrapped up and warm and comfortable

It didn’t take me to get wriggled inside my sleeping bag and then zip myself in and, after snapping a quick picture for this blog, A went in to get into the lovely warm comfortable bed upstairs. It did not take me long to get comfortable and I fell asleep pretty quickly. I woke in the early hours of the morning needing a drink and the loo and so I went inside and found that fortunately A had left the back door unlocked for me. When I got back in I found that there was quite a lot of condensation inside which was putting some water onto the top of the sleeping bag but it wasn’t too bad. I lay there for a bit with the zip above my head open a crack so I could look at the stars and then I closed that up and went back to sleep. I slept so well that it was past 9am before I was inside brewing up and waking A. All in all this has been a really useful experience as I know I need some way of drinking without having to get my hands out of the sleeping bag (maybe a runners water bottle with a nozzle) and also I want a travel clock for in there. We dried all the kit out very quickly in the dining area and that is another thing learned; the sleeping bag will have to be spread out during the day to dry the condensation off of it.

 

Lovely baker and lovely cake

Saturday, having said that I slept well, I was pretty tired and my plans for getting on with the model plane were put on hold, other than a small amount of touching up of the paint. We walked over to Tesco for a shop which was excellent as I have lent Thomas to a mate for the weekend. He should be back on Sunday (today). Other than that A got her baking hat on (the banana bread last week was such a hit she wanted to try something different) and on Saturday she made a lovely lemon cake which will be breakfast for me next week.

We watched a film and then I was yawning so headed up to bed leaving her to watch another, terrible, film. I couldn’t sleep easily so I was pleased to have a quick chat with my mate Pixie who emigrated to Australia a couple of years ago, and I also spoke to Bob about specific DCC controllers the outcome of which is I think I’ve found one and know what I’m going to get. When I woke on Sunday I did a little more research and now I am convinced. I will need to get an Android tablet as the controller doesn’t come with its own interface but then I will have wireless control out of the box. Now I just need to decide which version to get and which tablet and I’m good.

 

Another dusting of snow

It had snowed again in the night but again not a huge amount; not as much as on Boxing Day even, so no snowball fights. A hasn’t even been out in her wellies yet which I’m most surprised by. She has been cooking and baking again all morning and has created this wonderful smelling and tasting Pumpkin cake, making use of the pumpkins segments I had completely forgotten we had saved from when I made the Pumpkin pie which is ALSO still in the freezer.

 

An enormous pumpkin cake 

While she was doing this I was having fun in the dining area at the table putting the transfers onto the Red Arrow. This is super fiddly work and I did lose one when it blew off the tip of the tweezers however despite this set back I’m pretty pleased with my achievement on it. For a first attempt for years it is pretty good if I say so myself. I am again not rushing this and probably won’t complete all the transfers until next weekend. I have the air ambulance to make a start on next and this will give me time to get the paints that I’ll need for that.

 

It is starting to look like the real thing now

And so I’m going to stop typing this up and relax with my book for a bit before doing a little more transferring and then I am cooking steak for dinner so A will have to leave the kitchen and let me in there. Shock horror!