Into Milton Keynes

Wednesday 20 June

The trouble with waking early is you get to listen to Sarah Kennedy; it’s almost enough to drive you to Radio 4. It was a bright and breezy day, quite pleasant for boating. We got away in good time and stopped at Wolverton to do a shop at Tesco. There’s a lot of work going on at Wolverton these days, replacing the old carriage sheds with what looks like office blocks. The access to the road from the towpath is up a long steel staircase. I don’t have too much trouble with it, but Sheila’s vertigo makes it a real challenge for her.

After a good bit of restocking, we went on towards Milton Keynes proper. People make loads of rude remarks about MK, but I quite like it. It has so much green space so near to the centre of things. We stopped at Giffard Park service block to water, and then went on past all the neat estates to moor on the visitor moorings at Campbell Park. From here, it’s a mile walk into the very centre of MK, through a very pleasant park.

Last time we came down here, about a year ago, there were few formal signs about mooring. Some new ones have begun to appear, so that at Campbell Park, at the parkside mooring on the offside that’s a remnant of an IWA National Festival, there is now a length marked as long term, and a length marked as 48 hours only. This is much more satisfactory than the old arrangement, where in theory the whole lot was visitor mooring, but in practice there were some permanent moorers there.

It is however noticeable that there are several boats on the towpath side, where it would normally be 14 days only (the default for unmarked mooring). They’ve been there for a very long time, and are clearly continuous moorers, i.e. people who don’t pay for a permanent mooring, but who do not comply with the continuous cruising guidelines either.

Having got ourselves moored on the 48 hour mooring, I found that we had a very fast internet connection. I took the opportunity to create a webpage for Daniel, using one of the photos Graeme had texted to us.

After lunch we walked into MK Centre. I got a prescription made up, we went to Marks and Spencers, and we bought a toy for Daniel at the Early Learning Centre, no doubt the first of many. It’s this kind of thing that makes grandparenthood seem more real to us.

Back at the boat we had a well deserved cup of tea, and I did the blog and some web surfing. The Nene is still shut, with yet more rain forecast. It begins to look as if we shall have to review our cruising plans.

Thursday 21 June

Here we are at the longest day again. Managed to sleep in a bit, so early morning tea was had listening to Wogan not SK, what a relief. It was a bright morning, with rain forecast later, so we headed into town straight after breakfast. This backfired slightly, as most of the shops don’t open until 9.30, but Smith’s was open to get a paper, and Boots had also opened early, presumably because they sell sandwiches and other daily necessities for those doomed to go to work. Yesterday we’d seen an elbow support that would encourage my bursitis to finally take itself off completely, but they come in different sizes, so we’d postponed the purchase until we had measured my mighty arm (this is a joke).

Perhaps inevitably, they only had medium ones in stock, and I need a large size. Very odd, as I’m really not that well developed. We found a sports shop having a closing down sale, and bought a large one there at half price, so, as so often, the glass was not only not half empty but half full with a free refill on the way. We called at Sainsbury’s on the way back to continue the restocking process.

Back at the boat the sun was still shining so we had coffee on the towpath, but it started to spit with rain as we were finishing it. I did some emailing and we had lunch.

After lunch, I started another chicken roasting to have with salad. The recipe may be of interest; it comes from the Michael Barry cookbook that went with the old style Food and Drink programme, before chefs were celebrities and had to shout at each other all the time.

I grind two bay leaves, a teaspoon of paprika and a teaspoon of garlic chips together with some salt and pepper. Placing the chicken on a rack over a roasting tin, I sprinkle it with lemon juice then with the spice mixture. A quick spray with olive oil, and then cover it with baking parchment. (Barry suggests covering it with butter papers butter side down, but we don’t eat solid butter.) After pouring a pint of water into the roasting tin, the chick goes in the oven at gas mark 5 for a total of an hour and a half. At 40 minutes I take it out and turn it round – the boat oven is quite small, and doesn’t cook as evenly as a larger one. After another forty minutes, I take it out again, remove the remains of the baking parchment and turn the bird over so that it’s breast side down. Back in the oven for ten minutes to finish, and then out onto a carving dish.

If you were having it hot, it would just need resting for ten minutes. The liquid in the tray is now a delicious stock, which can be made into gravy. In the summer, as I say, we’ve been letting the bird cool down and having chunks of it with salad and new potatoes or crusty bread. The stock gets used to make risotto or tagine with the bits pulled off the carcass after the main parts have been eaten. In this way one chicken will provide three generous meals for the two of us. It is, of course, well worth buying a decent, free range organic bird for this sort of cooking.

Whilst all this was going on, the sun had come out, so we did some brass polishing, me wearing the elbow support, which does seem to be very effective. I finished the afternoon by doing a webpage which shows off the crochet porthole doilies Sheila makes for Sanity, and anyone else who’s prepared to pay for them.