Time travelling
Lochmarin
Sat 12 Apr 2014 16:47
We spent yesterday steadily going back in time through the 20th Century...
We have put a way point in the GPS, plotting the position of the Marquesas, so the GPS gives us a bearing and a range, the direction we need to aim for and how many miles away we are. When the range was over 2000 miles when I glanced at it it meant just that: 2000 plus miles to go, not even a third of the way yet. But Yesterday morning it was suddenly in the 1990s and every time we looked we couldn't help but see dates.
So the Twentieth Century slowly passed backwards for us, significant dates came and went, people we knew were born, the Berlin Wall was torn down, we moved house, started jobs, celebrated Silver Jubilees... and for me it all happened to a sound track - New Romantics gave way to Punk with Queen and ELO popping their heads up along the way; I heard Sexual Healing for the first time in decades and Barclay James Harvest struck up their orchestra for me again; then the radio tunes of my childhood returned: Madness, Mud and Gary Glitter. Someone wondered 'Where's your Mama gone?" and then I was back with the reassuring love songs of the Beatles (always with a backdrop of screaming fans).
It didn't stop when we passed my birth date: scenes from black and white news reels came and went, the war years arrived, my Uncle, then the other Uncle, then my Aunt then my Mother were all born and I thought of how my Grandmother managed through those years... the '30s brought images of America in the depression, soup lines and "Buddy can you spare a dime?", then the roaring twenties made their appearance with flapper girls and dancing.
Now we're below the nineteen hundreds they've turned back to numbers again for me, instead of dates. But Phil, who's history is better than mine, still exclaims things like "The Boer war!" or "The French Revolution!" from time to time. For me, 1793 just means a heck of a way still to go.
Food:
Day 9: Scrambled eggs on toast; sea food paella; cheese and gherkins on pumpernickel.
Day 10: Bacon and fried tomato on toast; steak, sauté potatoes and peas; bananas cooked in juice and soft brown sugar.
That's the end of the bananas now, in fact, apart from limes and two small shriveled satsumas that's the end of the fresh fruit. We have plantain, but that's provision, not fruit!
As well as the banana muffins I was able to make chocolate caramel shortbread (Phil calls it Millionaire shortbread), having found some cooking chocolate in Galapagos. It's been great with our coffee mid morning. I also made some mincemeat oat slice, good for night watch munchies. Cooking has been challenging at times in lumpy seas. Especially that moment when I'd just managed to measure out and sieve half a kilo of flour, turned to put the flour away and a lee lurch sent the entire bowl over the galley.
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