and the Sunday sun shines down

So, I may have mentioned at some point earlier this week that shimgray is the proud and somewhat bemused owner of a canoe. Well, a kayak. Well, a CANOE. (I named it Gnu the Canoe. He objects. He is quite wrong about this. I mean, if you had a canoe, what would you call it? Precisely.) I have spent most of my weekend doing things of and pertaining to said canoe. We got it home yesterday with what others may call a minimum of effort but what I call being squished on the floor covered in blankets in the back of a Ford Fiesta and hanging on to some ropes for dear life. We put the canoe on the roof, tied it down with blankets and rope and bundled me in the back, while they sat in the front and drove out very slowly. And then, over speed bumps and up and down hills and chiasmata mentioning blithely that she'd have trouble if we had to do an emergency stop.

"Yes!" I yelled, somewhat muffled, at this point. "If you do an emergency stop I WILL BREAK MY NECK!"

Quoth my dear friend and my boy, "It was nice knowing you. Goodbye."

(Note: Shim has just said that he didn't do anything to me yesterday save turn me into a "bonsai Quasimodo". I think I should just let this speak for itself.)

Sweethearts, all. Anyway. We passed policemen on bicycles, and I did hide under the blankets while clinging to the rope, and we were not arrested. We got the canoe home and carried it into the garden and felt very pleased with ourselves. The rest of the day was spent making cakes - glorious sticky chocolate golden-syrup things; we eventually made four batches of the things, and I fully plan to foist the recipe on likethesun2 later this week - and, once we had a pack of people to eat the cakes (triptogenetica and luminometrice found the house by asking the neighbours "which house had asbestos removed recently" and brought with them eighteen tubs of Petit Filous) we watched Doctor Who.

On which I have ( this to say )

Following Doctor Who, we watched Dr. Strangelove. Which was, frankly, a surreal experience. I'd never seen it before. I probably should have watched it before I spent three months of my life studying the Cold War. The evening descended into soft sticky-cake eating and dissecting Who, and, finally, lying around reading (currently, the latest by Mary Roach - she who wrote a book about corpses (Stiff), one about death (Spook - I bought it at the Strand in New York a year ago) and now, Bonk: a study of sex research. (I have to stop myself reading out the bits about penile implants when there are men in the vicinity; they tend to cringe.)

This morning, bright and early - well, no, at quarter to twelve - we went out to Hinksey Park, onto the boating lake, carrying a canoe down several streets to get there, and had a go. No one fell over, or out! chiasmata discovered a veritable talent for canoeing herself about, but I had a marvellous time too, pottering about scaring the ducks and just about mastering the art of cleaving a straight line through the water. It's odd, actually, being on a level with the ducks. And there were ducklings, and wee baby froglets bouncing about. It was a delight. I hadn't been in a canoe for about ten years, but it was great.

Tomorrow, quite probably - although, not for certain - my degree results come out. But, right now, I'm happy. I am not up north. I'm here, I'm happy, we have a canoe, I'm getting a cat. Next week, chiasmata and shimgray are going out again, possibly on the river. The river leads to the Thames which leads to the estuary which leads to the sea. Next week, I will be on the Pacific coast. I will go down to meet them being washed up in San Francisco Bay.