Julie's Boggle

Today feels like the day before school starts. Except instead of the chaotic piles of school kit to be labelled, it’s piles of dive kit. And it’s not about fitting all one’s books into one’s satchel, it’s about fitting as much dive kit as we can into the largest suitcase. And making up a little diving toolkit, and adjusting regulator hoses. All very exciting !

Quite a while ago, just after we booked our trip actually, we were scratching our heads as to what to do for regulators and BC jackets. One option was hiring from the people who run the dive trip – for £75 each for the week, which seemed rather a lot. On the other hand, brand new ones would probably set us back about £400 each – at best! Then the very day after I’d speculated that we really needed some good second-hand kit, an email came in from a fellow club member saying that there was second-hand kit available from a dive school that was closing down; and we could buy a BC and regulator set for £150 each (pictured below).

We charged over to go and try them on and after a test session with them in the pool we were happy to hand over the money. We were keen to get the regulators serviced as well, and our seller volunteered to handle this, so we left those with her.

That was more than a month ago, and the servicing proved to be much trickier than any of us had considered. It wasn’t really the seller’s fault but the detail is really tedious so I’ll skip to the part where all ended well (after quite a lot of stressing). This was when we got a message from a friend at the club yesterday morning saying he had managed to get them back and we picked them up last night. Sweet relief!

All that remains now is the clothes packing, which Tom is already well ahead on, and then tomorrow morning it’s up at the crack of dawn (05h30 – ow!) to drive our car to Gatwick where we’ll park it for the week we’re away. (This was because getting public transport at 02h00 on the morning we returned was improbable, and a taxi back would be as pricy as the week’s parking!)

So that’s me signing off for a week – here’s our itinerary (we’re doing Wrecks and Reefs), and I’m sure there’ll be lots to share when we get back!

Tom and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary this week with a trip to The Gaucho Grill. These guys are renowned for their steaks but we had a feeling they wouldn’t come cheap so we were saving them for a special occasion.

There are a number of Gaucho Grills around London these days; the one we went to is about 10 minutes walk from Tom’s work, in Chancery Lane. For us, only their reputation preceded them, but it turns that their menu and style is Argentinian.

You know a restaurant takes their steak seriously when the waiter comes over with a wooden board decorated with 5 raw steaks while you’re looking at the menu; and proceeds to describe (in heavily-accented English) the pros and cons of each cut of meat!

One that looked particularly interesting was the Argentinian specialty Churrasco de lomo which is a “spiral cut fillet”, marinated for 24 hours. (All their steaks are proudly proclaimed as Argentinian beef so no getting away from the food miles on these babies.)

With that new information on board, we returned to our perusal of the menu. Unlike some steak places, Gaucho’s do have a wide range of alternatives, but we were there for the steak so we didn’t linger over the other pages as we nibbled on the tasty bread they brought to keep us going.

Considering how much we were likely to manage, we chose to share a fillet – small, 225g – and their Churrasco de lomo which only has one size of 300g. To go with that, we opted for a blue cheese sauce and some creamed spinach. And an Argentinian Cabernet to complement it all.

The Churrasco de lomo was definitely the star of the show. A flat strip of meat, it was fantastically tender – everything you could ask for in a steak. And the blue cheese sauce was delicious! We could have used two of those. The plain fillet wasn’t as impressive after the churrasco in that it had some fairly chewy areas despite being rare. But still well better than average for a London steak and we devoured the lot.

We were more than happy to look at the dessert menu when it came around. Earlier we’d spotted whisky Don Pedro on the menu – something that we’d never seen in London except at restaurants serving South African food. I think we now have a better idea where this South African favourite orignated from! (If you haven’t met it, this is a sweet combination of blended ice cream and shot of whisky / Kahlua served in a glass.)

So Tom had the don pedro, and I had the Argentinian pancakes with vanilla ice cream and dulce de leche. I wasn’t completely sure what to expect for the dulce de leche, but guessed it was some form of caramel. And that was exactly it, just like caramelised condensed milk, in wavy stripes all over the top of my pancake, under which nestled two generous scoops of vanilla ice cream flecked with dark vanilla pod specks.

All in all, our evening rated far more highly than our visit to the slightly disappointing Chez Gerard this time last year. It was also more pricy than any meal we’d ever had to fund ourselves, but worth it for the good food and interesting experience. An excellent way to celebrate a great nine years.

After getting into a fairly good routine of riding to and from work a couple of times a week last summer and autumn, my riding activities were sadly curtailed by the evenings creeping in around October. It’s hard not to feel more vulnerable as a rider in the dark, and Tom wasn’t happy with me riding at night, so I packed it in for the winter. (It was starting to get too cold anyway.)

Once the long days were back, it was really just a case of waiting for the weather to warm up sufficiently – clearly I’m not an all-weather cyclist, so I’m not going to pretend otherwise! Then with Tom away at a programming conference most of last week, I decided it was finally time.

This was my first opportunity to use my cheap bicycle basket that I got hold of towards the end of last year. As I’d be coming home the usual way, I chucked my coat in there with my work bag, and put my change of clothes in my satchel. Once outside with the bike, the first thing I noticed is carrying the bike up our narrow stairs with a full basket is jolly hard! The basket also changes the bike’s dynamics at low speeds requiring a lot of concentration not to end up with the heavier front wheel weaving off on its own mission.

I could feel my lack of fitness as I puffed along Kensington High Street, but fortunately the route gets better from there.

Once over the last hill of Kensington Palace Gardens, I could relax a bit; enjoy the lush green lawns – you’d never guess there was a drought on – and the trees very slowly catching up to spring. (About 50% are still winter-stark, but the rest are in that lovely semi-green state where they’re either covered with half-size leaves or with a green fuzz.) Then on the long downhill gradient through Hyde Park I was accompanied by lots of dramatic galloping sound-effects from the horse-riders on the adjacent riding track.

It’s all quite flat from there, the only real effort is negotiating traffic, and when I got to the bike stands at work, I was pleased to see that I had clocked 42 minutes from start to finish. Not bad at all, and a great start to a new season.

Well I wasn’t looking forward to this, but it wasn’t that bad. For starters, we got from bed to car in just 20 minutes, and slipped out of London in a mere 17 minutes on roads that were practically deserted (not a surprise given it was before 08h00 on a Saturday).

Two hours later we got to Stoney Cove and discovered that the Easter weekend is the time to visit. Usually unless you arrive at first light, you have to take a spot in the grotty top carpark with a steep hill between you and the water that all gear has to traverse in both directions. This time we were waved into one of several free spots in the waterside carpark!

It wasn’t really warm, but there wasn’t a wind which makes a big difference (as Tom commented back here). Our instructor Frank was running a bit late so we only got in at 11h40 in the end.

The water was about 7°C but aside from an uncomfortable thrill down my neck as the first trickle made it into my wetsuit, it wasn’t painful – just hands and feet getting a bit numb. Below the surface the visibility wasn’t bad at all, and there were hundreds of baby roach darting around at 6m which added an interest factor.

As it was a training dive, we had to show Frank our dive leading abilities, practise using each other’s spare regulators to ascend from 6m, and (the ouch-factor) practise replacing our masks after complete removal. That caused a cold-headache for a minute or so but we were nearly done then anyway.

Once we were out, it was warm enough (about 18°C in the sun) that I didn’t even need my usual hot shower. The main imperative was getting the rapidly-cooling trapped water away from my feet and hands by stripping off boots and gloves, and then downing a cup of hot chocolate with a bacon roll. Mmm.

Frank was occupied with two other club divers for the afternoon, so that was us done for the day. We could have gone off on another dive together, but I was just as happy to wait around in the sun for the others to finish, and then make the leisurely trip back to London…

One of the best Easter treats round here are the home-made hot cross buns that Tom knocks up with the help of the breadmaker (to do the dough).

He made the first 2006 batch when we got home from the Good Friday service today and we started on them straight out of the oven, hot and fresh. They were yummy!

It’s April right? It’s supposed to be getting warmer! You wouldn’t think so to see the pictures of parts of the southern UK under 12cm of snow yesterday!

The bit that I’ve been trying not to think about, in between the icy winds and condensing breath, is that we’re be doing some training dives on Saturday…

We’ll be off to our favoured inland dive site – the Leicestershire quarry site Stoney Cove – and they’re forecasting a partly-sunny 13°C for Saturday. I don’t even want to speculate yet on what the water temperature might be – but sunny skies would definitely help.

These dives are with one of the highly skilled divers from our club; a great teacher but a man who has no sympathy with my lack of enthusiasm for the cold – and he also dives in a wetsuit!

In casting my mind back to how we ended up doing this in April, I can only come up with the excuse that this was the only weekend for several months when we all free. I guess it has to be better than the January dive we did last year but I confess that I’m struggling to work up enthusiasm…

For more details how it all goes, watch this space.

I should call this one “Tom’s new toy” because he’s been so happy with it, and had loads of fun playing with it since he installed it.

We don’t usually go after the latest and greatest, and in fact haven’t bought any new PC hardware for a while now. Generally we tend to be pretty happy with what we’ve got. But our previous printer had started to become quite tiresome…

To explain, I need a very brief foray into PC networking. Firstly, to note that the old printer needed to be plugged into one of our computers in order to work. And since we bought it (in 2001), the technology has moved on to the point where you can buy printers for home use that don’t need to be plugged into another computer. They can be plugged straight into a network – which we have – and used by independent computers.

It was all very easy for us when the printer co-operated and plugged into our server that lives under the couch in the lounge. That meant they could both comfortably live out of sight and out of the way. But when it decided that it wasn’t up for that game any more , it started to become a hassle.

We do buy a lot of stuff online, but we’ve been stung before by the hefty costs of sending faulty items back by registered mail. So we decided to stop by Tottenham Court Road – where every other shop sells electronic goods – in the hopes of finding both a bargain, and someone who we could return the goods to, in person, if anything went wrong.

After traipsing around TCR for a good long time comparing prices, we finally decided on a slick little Hewlett Packard printer/scanner/copier. We’d toyed with the idea of getting one that faxed too, then decided that for an extra £50 our very occasional fax requirements just weren’t worth it.

Back at home the printer was a fantastic success. It replaces our old scanner that was on Tom’s desk and takes up only half of the space. Tom got it all hooked up and running off his machine, and it is so fast, and so quiet, does good scanning and its photo printing is really impressive.

Big grins all round for a slick little piece of kit.

This afternoon was really pleasant out. An oh-so-slight nip in the air but brilliantly sunny.

To celebrate the weather, and the fact that I got out of my training course and was on my way home at a sprightly 16h15, I decided to get off at Lancaster Gate (3 stops early) and walk the rest of the way home.

It’s a lovely route, and I took careful notice as I went of all the cherry blossoms that are just getting started. It was just the odd few over the weekend, but now it’s coming along in leaps and bounds. Very cool. For me, cherry blossom trees are what make the start of spring so special.

According to my trusty pedometer it was 39 minutes of vigorous walking to get home which I felt quite good about. However I’m paying for it in discomfort now as the slight burning sensation near my big toe did turn out to be a blister forming. So much for my what I thought were my comfy work shoes!

We went to our first dive show this year. We’ve never done any of the big London exhibitions before now so this was something new in more ways than one.

They have several dive shows every year (I’ve always maintained that it’s what divers do to keep themselves busy in winter), and the one we went to one London International Dive Show at the big ExCeL exhibition hall in Docklands.

There’s the potential to do quite a lot at the dive shows. Firstly there’s the dive equipment shopping which can be done from a massive range of stalls encompassing all the major suppliers. Secondly they often have other interesting things like “try-dives” which are carried out in giant porta-pools inside the exhibition halll. Thirdly they have every dive destination you could imagine trying to sell you their diving package. And lastly, they have speakers giving talks for the entire two days of the show.

We just went for the experience really – and to buy some kit that we needed. Just walking around, we found the dive computer we were getting for me (one that matches Tom’s) at a number of different stalls, with a price variation of £60! It was really crowded, so once we’d done our shopping and seen all the stalls, we made our escape.

I’m not sure I’d go again if we didn’t have any equipment to buy – unless we planned better and went to the talks – but it was worth seeing. And of course we did get some great bargains on our new kit.