The brew cupboard revisited

It was supposed to be the airing cupboard, cosy-warm over the calorifier, but there was clearly another something going on when the top shelf went in high, high enough to accommodate a five-gallon barrel with an airlock on the shelf below.  And below that shelf a spacious shallow drawer, coincidentally the right depth to take tubs of yeast, campden tablets, and all the bitty stuff that go with wine making, and beer brewing too.  I’m not complaining, I was a willing convert and then perpetuator and definitely a benefactor of the outcome.  And really, who needs more than one shelf to store linen ?  Anyway, the Bloke slatted one of the shelves in a wardrobe by way of compensation.

 The elderflowers seemed so slow to blossom this year, I watched and watched, and now suddenly they are setting berries.  Maybe it’s this part of the country.  But we do have some dandelion on the go, a first for us.  We’ll try to leave it at least until December before sampling.  By then we probably won’t have the bedhole to store it in, our wine- and beer cellar:  below the waterline, steady temperature at all times of year, perfect.

For the boater-bikers out there

Here’s a picci of our Harley-Davidson Sportster 883 resplendent in her own private quarters on Freyja’s front deck.  With the handlebars dropped, the top-plank up and tarps down, she’s as snug as a bug in a rug and nobody knows she’s there.  The Bloke has corrected me, it’s a “he”.  Sorr-ee.

We load and unload with a wide ramp that chains to points on the gunwales.  Nothing complicated and it works.  And it is amusing to see jaws drop when we decide to go for a ride and the Bloke rolls up the tarps and we unload her-him-it;  usual comments are along the lines of:  “Well, I’d never have guessed that was there.”  and then we hear about all the bikes they’ve had.  And we eventually get to go for our own ride.

Getting her, um it, was another story:  we went into the dealership with a tape-measure and had a puzzled sales team following us around as we measured up everything we fancied.  Funnily enough, this was the one we liked most and the one that fitted perfectly.