David Morris – brassedoff.net

Having sucessfully navigates by train from Dusseldorf airport to the city centre and found the hotel, I’m now sat in a restaurant outside quite close to the River Rhine which flows through Dusseldorf. I’m eating alone because my colleague who was driving from Paris to Dusseldorf was late leaving the office then got stuck in the (often horrendous) Paris traffic.

It’s interesting watching the river. There’s a lot of commercial traffic – big barges – any of which would dwarf the Seth Ellis. Come to think about it, Seth would struggle to make any headway at all looking at the speed of the river. It’s quite fast-flowing. I’ve got some pictures of a couple of barges passing each other, one with a big bow wave, one with no wave at all. Fascinating stuff.

I’ve also found the concert hall and the opera house. The LSO under Sir Colin Davis are plaing at the concert hall soon.

Some other time perhaps?

I couldn’t resist another blog post, from another train, this time sat at Dusseldorf airport waiting for the train to depart to the centre of Dusseldorf whereupon I’ve got a 15 minute walk to the hotel. I could get a taxi… I’s on expenses after all, but a taxi is €20, the train is €2.10 and more of an adventure! I may or may not get to the hotel tonight!

Oh, this journey makes it the third train in the third country in three days. Cool or what?!

Not only am I waiting for a plane at Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, but testament to German efficiency, the Lufthansa flight is delayed, or as the French put it, “retarde”. I’ll leave you to choose which version you prefer.

I don’t believe it…. Now, I’m about to go backwards to Paris as well. It’s like the old song: “boldly going forward ‘cos we can’t find reverse”. They should have tried travelling with me!

The train was over 10 minutes early into London St. Pancras International. Following the signs, downstairs into what was once the bowels of the station, you enter a light airy area with bars and shops. Putting my credit card in the terminal at the eurostar ticket office, it was rejected first time (can see booking but can’t retrieve) but second time, it have me the correct menu and let me print out my ticket. Check-in at the eurostar security was ridiculously simple and straigydoewsed. No queues or delay. I’ve now got 30 minutes to wait befor my train to Paris departs. I could have done with the train from Sheffield being on time – I wouldn’t have had as much time to kill!

…I’m sat on a train going backwards to London. At some point I might end up gong forward because the First Class accomodation is in front of me at the back of the train, and they normally run First Class end in first to St Pancras so the rich people don’t have to walk as far, but we’ll see.

Mrs Woolforbrains dropped me off at the station in Sheffield this morning, I got my ticket out of the electronic dispenser, boarded the train and I’m now coming from London (!) to catch a Eurostar service at 15:10-ish to go to Paris. It’s all very clever these days, but I understand that I’ll still have to queue at London to get my Eurostar ticket becaue the system may not be able to manage with printing a Sheffield / London ticket at Sheffield and a London / Paris ticket at London. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m just enjoying the experience of travelling by train – something I’ve always enjoyed doing, and I’m looking forward to the Eurostar trip.

Right now, it’s lunchtime and the buffet is just behind me, so I’m going to grab a sandwich. See you when I  get to France.

I’s started a blog on the Seth Ellis site, so if anyone wants to see what the boat crew have been up to, head on over there now. So far, it’s only me that’s added anything, but I’m hopeful that I can encourage a few other of the crew to contribute.

Ever get the feeling that you’ve just averted a disaster?

In my case, it was ending up with the kitchen sprayed with 5 gallons of lager and pressure vessel… let me explain…

I transferred my lager brew from the bucket to the pressure vessel (keg) last night and added he priming sugar to kick-start the secondary fermentation to produce the (natural) CO2 to make it fizzy.

The keg has a safety valve on it which is supposed to release excess pressure and prevent you from over-charging it with additional CO2. It’s a fairly simple affair consisting of a brass pipe with a hole in it over which is fitted a rubber sleeve. Simple and foolproof… except in this instance it doesn’t appear to have worked properly.

I suppose I should have investigated the noise from the kitchen which sounded like something falling over, but it wasn’t a breaking sound, so I let it pass. A few minutes later, Mrs Woolforbrains asked if I’d put the keg on one side to allow the sediment to move. Intrigued, I looked at the keg, and the whole of the usually concave bottom had distended due to internal pressure, had ballooned out and had caused the keg to rock to one side, fortunately, not falling on the floor in the process.

It clearly shouldn’t have done that. I’ve contacted the manufacturers, local (Staveley) company Hambleton Bard for their advice and for the time being, I’ve arranged the valve sleeve so the vent hole is open. I’m off to Paris tomorrow on business and I don’t want a beer explosion in the kitchen whilst I’m away, lest she doesn’t let me back in the house!

I’ll report back when I hear from the manufacturers as to what could have gone wrong.

I’ve realigned our webcam to point a bit further over to the right. Why? Caroline’s moved the feeder with the niger seeds in it on to the patio. It’s stuck in the planter with the ornamental grass in it. If you’re lucky, you might just see a goldfinch on it.

Click on the thumbnail image of the webcam on the  right of this page. You can also get to it by going direct to www.gardencam.co.uk. It’s a live image, so every time you view or refresh the pag, you should get a new image. Check the date / time stamp on the top to make sure.

Sorry, but there’s no zoom capability.

I’ve long harboured a desire to enter in to the world of home brewing, and this week I took the plunge (not literally). On my way back from a band job (helping Woodhouse Prize Band out at St Lukes), I stopped off at Brewmart on Abbey Lane (web site here) and am now the proud owner of a 5 gallon fermentation bucket, a 5 gallon pressure barrel, syphon, CO2 cylinder, beer paddle and a Coopers Lager kit. So, bubbling away in the kitchen at the moment is a tub full of what’s destined to be lager.

It should yield around 40 pints of beer which, at around £10 for the extract, comes in at £0.25p/ pint. I don’t know what pub prices are, but in cans, it’s around £1.00 per can (1 can = 440ml = 0.75 pint [imperial], so £1.33/pint). It’s going to take less than two barrels full to recover the capital outlay of all the equipment which is something of a no-brainer, assuming it’s actually drinkable.

In time, I’d hope to be able to experiment with different kits. I’ve started with lager because we’ll both drink that, but once that’s under way, I don’t see why I shouldn’t kick a beer kit off and bottle that instead of putting it in the barrel. I’m not destined for starting from raw materials just yet though. It sets me in mind of a friend back at University who decided to give home brewing a try to make his grant go a but further. He bought a dry ingredients kit and rather than reading the instructions, mixed the hops and barley together. He then read the instructions which detailed the different preparation that each ingredient needed. We spent several hours separating them before we could start over. If John Long ever reads this, I wonder if he’d remember that incident?

On Monday (9th June), we took a charter trip from Retford to West Stockwith. One way; the boat was coming back with the same party and a different crew on the Tuesday. It was something of a historic occasion because it was the first time the Seth Ellis had ever been to West Stockwith, and as a result, the boat has now navigated the whole of the connected section of the Chesterfield Canal. Indeed, it makes it (probably) only one of a handful of boats to have navigated BOTH sections of the canal, bearing in mind it was launched for the trailboat festival on the Chesterfield section near Tapton Lock. then craned out and moved.

Anyway, a nice day was had by all, and the late spring conditions made for some nice photographs.

It was a treat to see this boat because it’s not often we see BW workboats actually working on the canal. We thought for a moment that it might have been dredging, but no such luck. It turned out to be tree pruning…. still a worthwhile activity though!

Lunch stop at Drakeholes. The rest of the crew and the passengers had gone to the nearby pub. I volunteered to stop with the boat, eat my sandwiches, have a cuppa and take some photos. There were another couple of boats mooered nearby so I got to chew the fat with their occupants as well.

Not far from Misterton… I wonder how many photos I’ve got in the past couple of years since I’ve been working on the boat that feature that jerry can?