How to make coffee

OMG T shirts!

Ooo ooo ooo ooo I finally pulled my finger out and scanned a few drawings to turn into t shirts and things.

For example (here):

 

The one I most want to get myself is this (here):

There's even a mug! (TBH I was a little disappointed with how pricey it came out to be. If there's enough call for it I might try and find somewhere in Cambridge that will do it cheaper - drop me an email if you're keen.)

So there you are. Don't worry, I'm not going to go all douche-y on you and try and sell you stuff all the time. There just appeared to be a (small) demand (and there is a massive lack of vaguely nerdy rowing t shirts out there) so I thought "what the heck" really. 

If you want any designs altered a bit or have any requests, drop me an email and I'll see what I can do :-) Knock yourselves out people!

>>>>>STORE HERE<<<<<

Oh and Frankie, this one's for you:

Happy New Year (and all that)

Hello everyone! Hope you all made it though the Christmas holiday unscathed!

I think the following picture sums up my festive holiday:

 

Oh. My. God.  This combined with the fact I'd not been rowing for a while due to stupid ice everywhere now means I have a slightly "was once athletic but has recently put on a load of weight really fast" look about me. It is not a good look.

And I know I should have done and ergo instead. However, between writing this post and Christmas I have been very much library bound, and to be perfectly honest, a bit of a slob. I have consumed a lot of cake. I am not proud. 

If there hadn't been so much fucking snow around I would have gone out on t'Bianchi for a blast or headed out to Ely for a date with the boat. But not being able to do either of those things I just though "Fuck it" and returned to the inviting warmth of the department. I think I needed a little time anyway to sort my head out. The important thing though is that I'm over the "being a slob" hump now and want to train again (though with a strict limit of one session a day to prevent degree fail-age...).  Including running Monday, Wednesday, Friday in a bid to be less fat (my rather boring New Year's resolution).

The one time I did go out when there was ice out it was minus six (shit that's cold) and there were pieces of broken up ice floating around that were TWO INCHES THICK. 

HOW FUCKING THICK THE ICE WAS, as modelled by Charlotte :-)

 So, with a great amount of trepidation and layers of kit, I headed out into the great unknown. It didn't take long for me to hear the horrible crunch of ice hitting my bows. Then I caught a c. 3 metre square bit with my blade. Now, I maybe one for hitting the catch too hard, but not even my aggressive catch placement can get through two inches of ice.

I got to the closest you can get to falling in, without falling in. Now if you've never been out in a single scull, you won't be able to relate to the terror of this.

 You're instantly full of adrenaline and time does that weird thing of slowing down (that happens when I crash my bike too). However, unlike crashing your bike when you know what's coming to you (i.e. the fucking hard ground at a rate of knots), in this situation you have the sickening unknown ahead of you. Are you going to rescue it and sit in your boat for the next five minutes gripping your blade handles very tightly and saying "Shit that was close shit shit shit" over and over again? Or are you going to fall in the river and, given the ambient temperature, very quickly die of exposure?

Seriously, I'd given this dying thing some thought. Some background on rowing in Ely: it's got a 5K long straight (yessssss), with about 1.5K of wiggly river to get to the stretch with the boathouses on (illustrated below).

OK, so let's say, hypothetically, that it's below freezing and I fall in 3K up the straight. I'd have to get back in my boat in the middle of the river (it's got tall corrugated iron banks/banks of reeds on either side so no dragging your boat to the side) which is pretty hard in itself (especially if you've just been winded by how cold the water is). I've then got three options:

1. Row the best part of 4.5K back to the IoERC. Only there's no boathouse there, and no source of warmth at all. I do have dry (cold) kit though. I get changed into that then cycle as fast as possible to the station to get a train home. Result = I die on the platform waiting for a train.
2. Row 5.5K to the CUW boathouse. Break in (I know the code, it's fine. And it's my old club, so no worries). Perhaps boil a kettle? However, I'd have no warm kit to change into. Still very likely to die.
3. Row the 5.5K to CUW, but then walk to the left a little to the CUBC boathouse. They have hot showers in there and a changing room full of Xchanging kit and I can see coffee and a kettle in the kitchen bit! I'm saved! However, being a girl and therefore not hugely eligible for rowing for CUBC, I don't have the means of getting in. (I could smash a window I suppose, if I have the energy...). Result = I die, staring at the means of getting warm and clawing at the door to the boat bay.

This is why I decided that rowing when there's ice out is stupid.

EDIT Apologies, I completely missed off the Cambridge Lightweight men. They boat from a car park a few hundred meters down from CUBC and win the prize for having the worst facilities ever. (But they are closer to the train station, Tescos and Costa coffee than all of the rest of us). Only in Cambridge could you get such a huge discrepancy in the facilities between different university boat clubs. But I'm not bitter. Not at all. (I should mention, for the record, that CUBC do let CUW and CUL use Goldie boathouse for ergos.)

Oh oh oh! I did do something active in my six week cake holiday (as it shall henceforth be known). I played squash for the first time AHAHAHAHA.

Now, I have the hand-eye coordination of a quadriplegic, blind elephant. There was a fucking reason I was always "wing defence" when we were forced to play netball at school and that reason is that I am a badgering retard whenever there is a ball around. I was therefore not expecting great things from my first ever game of squash, but I went into it anyway with a sort of cheerful resignation that I was going suck just a little bit.

I am a fan of honesty. Brutal, brutal honesty.

I was right.

One of the problems with squash is the walls thing. I ran into a few.

Even when I concentrated really hard on serving and was like "Yeah, going to totally nail it this time". NOPE.

However, when I finally hit the ball, overzealous celebration was required, nay necessary.

I probably won't be invited again to be honest. But anyway. I digress. Christmas. Yes.

Cool presents included a MARMITE TEAPOT

 

And and and this little firesteel striker thing. For making fires :-)

This is the reason why me and my brother spent a good two hours on Christmas day setting fire to a box of tissues on the hearth.

The fire-making joy loop.

Good times :-)

There were also awkward conversations with grandparents to be had...

 

...and AS Level Maths to teach to my brother. I have a rather interesting teaching style, namely aggression.

Sorry Toby. But you really should write neater.

And you'll never guess what sneaked into my luggage for the return journey to Cambridge :-D

 Ooooo! Look at this! An interesting treatise on stellar structure!

But I have rambled on in a very incoherent fashion for far too long now. And it's Friday, which means running time.

With that I bid you goodnight.

I FOUND MY LEGO!!!! (Or, 'The Railtons Do Christmas')

Pretty much the first thing I did upon getting home was FIND MY GODDAM LEGO. Therefore, logically, the obligatory festive blog post is going to be told via the wonderful medium of lego knights.

I try to do some work

See. Working. Working very hard indeed.

OH FUCK!!!! A FUCKING DRAGON!!!



It's alright. I think they sorted it.

A caffeinated beverage is require. Dragon slaying is tiring.

TAKE THAT YOU STAPLER-Y BASTARD!



Fuuuuuuuuucccccccckkkkkkkkk.



Poke.
                                              Poke.
Poke.                                    
QUIT IT!

        Poke.



Argh! Get it off! GEDDITOFF! *flail*

 Yeah. I wasn't doing much work.

I moved to attacking Christmas decorations.

I is in your Advent Calender, eating your chocolate.

 Little bastard ate my Twirl.

Vague Father Christmas abuse.

Quite serious baby penguin abuse.

OK, OK. When I first took this I really didn't consider the *ahem* slightly NSFW aspects of this photo. I am really quite thick when it comes to making mistakes like this. My excuse: the polystryene underbelly was the only place I could get the sword into. (I am not a baby penguin deflowering lunatic and do not endorse such activities.)

How to ask for stuff for Christmas

It's simple. Just leave catalogues lying around with helpful annotations.

I also quite fancy one of those cool fire-making thingys on the bottom of the page. I could then carry fire on my keyring! Then if someone was like "Oh, I really wish I could light a fire right now" I could be like "I HAVE THE POWER!".

A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.

But mainly I want a hammock (who doesn't?).

How to deal with The Dog

I have a bit of an issue with the dog. It keeps staring at me. I think it's due to the fact that I wasn't around when she was a puppy, so now I'm some sort of weird evil dragon lady or something.

That and I tried to put lego on her and photograph it. That didn't go down well. Not in the slightest.

But anyway, the dog hates me. Her method of attack? Intense staring.

Staring. Always FUCKING STARING.

 I tried reasoning with her.

 Eventually, I did what any normal person would do and ran in the face of such powerful hatred rays.

 She doesn't just reserve this staring thing for me though. A couple of days ago she came into my room where I was actually doing some work (I know!!! :-o) and proceeded to stare at the radiator for a good minute or so.

 A minute is actually a long time when your just looking at an inmovable object which is, to be perfectly honest, very unlikely to do anything interesting any time soon. But that is what she did.

She eventually decided it wasn't going to eat her and fell asleep in front of it.

I don't understand dogs at all.

Decorating a Christmas cake (The Railton way)

The lego tried to help, but to be honest they were a bit crap. They've just not got the dexterity in those little hands of theirs.

OMFG! "Regal-Ice" means it belongs to me, right?

A really unhelpful attempt at cutting the cake

The marzipan MUST DIE.



Om nom nom nom.

 So yes, they turned out to be quite shit at cake decorating. Plan B: Intense Railton Concentration Face.

Must. Knead. Icing. Well.

My sisters didn't quite grasp the gravity of the situation, deciding to play with my camera instead.

This one doesn't even wear glasses. Even the dog is confused. And still staring.

SIBLINGS: If you take stupid pictures of yourselves on my camera, they are going to end up on my blog, OK?

:-)

But anyway, that icing was very well kneaded. By the power of my Concentration Face. That is one powerful concentration face.

So, lots of INTENSE CONCENTRATION and two hours later, the sum total of the Railton family's efforts is this, The Christmas Cake 2010:

The dog is STILL STARING!!!!

(I made the rug, sofa and clock. GO ME! :-D)

 The binge-drinking Merlin is unlikely to form part of the cake on Christmas day. Mainly because he's scared shitless of that massive, staring icing-dog.

But yes, GO GO TEAM RAILTON.

Anyway ANYWAY. I'm tired and need sleep. There's only one thing left to say and that is I hope you all have a great Christmas and aren't all screwed over by National Rail/BA/Eurostar etc. in your various bids to get home.

See you in the New Year! (There are going to be T-SHIRTS!!!)

All the best,

Anna