Boating on the River Thames

OK, we did it! We officially rowed the inflatable on the Thames last night. When I first inflated it in the back garden a few weeks ago, it took 40 minutes to go from unpacking it to it being finished, but yesterday I did that in 20 minutes. This is a nice bonus, as it means we can do evening outings without it being a big hassle to inflate the boat. It actually took longer to deflate it and get it back in its bag, but only maybe 5 minutes, and to be honest I didn't time that bit, so I might be totally wrong anyway.
We went down to Medmenham, just upstream of Marlow, at 5.30 and it was nice and quiet there, which is what we wanted for this first attempt. Getting the family into the boat proved much easier than getting them out again, but that should improve with practise. Not having been to the gym for a few years now I quickly learnt that might right arm is stronger than my left, which consequently meant my left arm having to do twice as much rowing to keep us going straight. We headed upstream first, to get the hard bit out of the way. It was slow progress, mainly because of my zigzaging, but we probably covered 300 metres in just over 20 minutes. Lara was complaining about wearing her life-jacket most of the way up, which meant we weren't going to carry on for much longer, so we took a couple of photos and a quick video and turned around. Heading downstream was much easier, as expected, and really is just a case of having to steer to avoid the trees growing out of the bank. It took a couple of attempts to get a good grip on the bank where we wanted to land / dock / disembark* (*delete as appropriate), and some one-handed passing of the baby, which we'll need to work on next time we're out, but everyone ended up shoreside safely and still dry. We'd been out for about an hour, and it was everything we'd hoped it would be. The rowing part does mean it's slow progress, but it's also good exercise for me! That said, I reckon any other trips this summer will be one-way ones downstream, with a bus journey back to the start point to pick up the car - after all, we've bought the boat for fun, not for struggling kilometres upstream working up a sweat. We'll almost certainly buy a second-hand outboard motor off eBay over the Winter and then next summer the world will be our oyster (and Lara's life-jacket won't drown her, for want of a better description).
Here are some photos and a short video that we recorded for posterity:

Cricket update - LGCC

I missed the first league game of the season by being on a Stag Do, but it seems I was surplus to requirements as Littlewick won away from home against Wargrave First XI. Like in county cricket, we get different points depending on the runs we score, the wickets we take, the result of the game and the decision made by the team who won the toss as to whether to bat or bowl. It's complicated, but the bottom line is the maximum points a team can achieve is 30, and Littlewick got 30 in their first match. In recent seasons there haven't been many 30-point wins, I can tell you. So you can imagine the surprise when we won other game on Saturday, achieving 30 points again!
We bowled White Waltham out for 124 in 38 overs - this relatively low score due in no small part to the opposition being without their opening batsman who scored something like 203 on his own against us in their home game last season. I did contribute by catching their new opening batsman out, and I'd love to say it was a diving one-hander down the leg side, but it was about as straight-forward as wicketkeeper's catches get. I was pleased it stuck though as this was the first time I'd put gloves on since the end of last season and I'd arrived late at the Green and had no time for a warm up.
In fairly typical Littlewick style, we struggled to 127-6, although we did have a strong batting line up, so our Captain and best batsman decided to give other people a chance and he batted at 8 rather than 4, which no doubt annoyed White Waltham when he came out to bat with only 13 needed to win. Batting at number six, I managed three runs before being bowled by as good a ball as I can remember getting in all my cricketing years, and I'm not just saying that! Their wicketkeeper called it a "jaffa" at the time, and my batting partner at the other end, who used to be our opening fast bowler, told me later that "it was a damn good ball". For those who care, it pitched on leg stump (the 'keeper told me he was heading down the legside to take it), I played to defend it on that line, it moved off the seam and hit the very top of the off-stump, and this is from a lively medium pacer, not a spinner.
I'm missing this coming Saturday's game at Little Marlow to be at Ollie & Jo's wedding in Devon, so fingers crossed for the weather.

A Future Baywatch Babe?

(NOT Lara!)

Olga took Lara swimming today for the first time, at the pool in Marlow. One of our postnatal group mum's suggested it, and they went together this morning. There were seven mums with babies there, and they spend half an hour singing nursery rhymes with an instructor, in a circle in the pool, then the last ten minutes is "free play". During the half-hour part, the babies are "dunked" three times, Lara was ok, if almost teary after the first one, but when she heard the nursery rhymes and saw the other kids, and realised she was OK, she was back to normal.
It was a bit of a test for the Mothercare Swim Nappy we'd bought, but Lara did her bit by not number two-ing. Whether there was number ones, who knows!?
Lara was asleep by the time she'd had a quick feed straight afterwards, and our friend had said that her daughter sleeps for two hours afterwards, so Olga was thinking about some peace and quiet in the park; I came to meet them and we chilled out in the park, with Lara asleep in her car seat (with us in the park, not in the car!) until the wind blew her blanket over her head and woke her up. Anyway, Olga is going to take her again on Thursday morning, and this time we'll see if Lara will sleep for two hours (then Olga can mow the lawns, work on her veg patch, tidy out the summerhouse, clean the windows, hoover, walk the dog, do the washing up, iron my clothes and maybe have a powernap)..

You might not be hearing from me again once Olga reads this...

Quality TV!

I don't mind admitting that I would watch pretty much anything, even Desperate Housewives if nothing else was on (don't tell Olga that!), but I think I've found something that would have me flicking over to find out the latest from Wisteria Lane.... on National Geographic HD at 9pm tonight (I normally watch anything on "Nat Geo") they offered "Secrets of Shaving", and here's the blurb about it:

Shaving: This 30,000 year old habit has developed into a multi-billion dollar industry, with spage-age advancements in blade technology. A look back over the history of shaving.

Needless to say, I opted for Discovery Knowledge Channel's "Myths of Pearl Harbour", and that because I'd already seen the episodes of Frasier and QI that were on other channels.