The Way of the Wombat

It is TT! The first since 2019. An expected 36,000 extra people will be on the island by next week - currently about 15,000 of them are here and it is already busy, busy, busy!

We are running a refreshments service at church as usual; our church is on the course, less than 500m from the start line, and has a large outdoor area where the bikes go past only 3 or 4 metres away from our stone wall.



This is the church garden - you can see the stone wall at the left.

We sell basic tea and coffee, crisps, some bought in chocolate bars, and then filled baps and lots and lots of home made cakes.

But at least when I am at home, busy doing some of the baking, my own garden also looks good as I stand at the kitchen sink!



Note the washing line of assorted towels and oven mitts :)

We are currently in the midst of the TT motorcycle festival which, for me, means I am making what feels like industrial quantities of carrot cake - not to mention chocolate cake, chocolate brownies, flapjack, gingerbread... We sell filled baps, hot pasty, and lots and lots of home-made cakes at church to the spectators, as our church grounds are an excellent spot to watch the racing.

So this was yesterday's baking in my house -



That was the third 18 piece carrot cake I've made, and I will make at least one more. The chocolate cakes behind, together, come to the same size but somehow, on that angle, they look a lot smaller. I know now that these are 'sheet cakes' - thank you bojojoti - in this case dark chocolate with chocolate frosting and fudge chunks.

I've also done 3 trays of chocolate brownie, 2 trays of oat flapjack, and one of gingerbread the same size as the carrot cake. And D-d has also been turning out her specialities - cherry frangipan, fruit flapjack, rocky road and tiffin. I reckon, just between the two of us, our personal cake sales will raise about £170 - and our input is about 10% of the whole!

For something completely different, there are a few pictures I took a week or more ago, just of the sea, and a stairway to nowhere... ( Read more... )

Oddly, considering last week was TT Practice Week, and today is Mad Sunday, this post is completely free from pictures of motor-bikes. (TT - Tourist Trophy races - the centre of the TT Festival where our island plays host to about 15,000 motor-bikers. Mad Sunday - the midpoint of the two week festival - when everyone, and occasionally his dog, goes out to 'do a lap' of the course.)

Much of the week has seen me going 'get-up, go to work, go straight to church to help man the snack-bar, come home and take S2C to work, cook dinner, (about 10pm by then) and do some more baking for the snack-bar' as bikers eat an awful lot of cake whilst they watch the racing bikes go past.

But the pictures are a lot more tranquil!

( click for plants, boats, and a baby bee... )

I didn't post any pictures yesterday - LJ wasn't always loading properly for me, and so I busied myself writing and baking rather than looking at what I'd taken pictures of this week.

It is the beginning of the TT Festival (The island pays host to tens of thousands of motorcyclists from all over the world for two weeks - the centre of the whole thing is professional motorcycle road-racing - for a bit more read the official site).

So far I've seen German, Spanish, French and Swiss bikes - but when I say worldwide I do mean it - last year I also spotted Canadian and American bikes and quite a few Australians and New Zealanders.

For me, as many friends here know, TT means baking! We sell vast amounts of tea, coffee, sandwiches and cakes at our church, as the garden is a good place to watch from. All the cake is home-made, and anyone who can bake...does.

You've seen pictures of industrial amounts of carrot cake and chocolate cake before - but I have made some special cookies which are here, along with some birds and flowers and silly things ( under the cut )

Also - last night I watched 'Going Postal' and have to agree with my husband who has already said, on his journal, how goos it is. The casting was so much better than for the previous two Pratchett stories that Sky have done - apart from not having Alan Rickman as Vetinari; but Charles Dance did a very good job.

But I won't be able to watch part two straight away - I'm off to church to do the first lot of teas for tonight's practices. Bother! Still, I can watch it later, and it's not as if I could really be spoiled for a story I read within a fortnight of it being published, I guess!

So - it has been a very busy week in off-line life!

Mum got home from hospital on Monday - I have been up to see her a couple of times since - my sister has been off work this week, so she popped in on the other days. Mum is walking quite well with a zimmer frame, and looking well in herself. D-d and I went to see her this afternoon - D-d has been really worried about her Granny and wanted to see her for herself.

Ah, yes - Daughter-dear got home yesterday for a few days - she has actually finished her Finals - every paper is completed and handed over, the dissertation is in, every essay has been marked off as complete - all she has to do now is wait for the results... So she came home for a few days of TT.

TT - well that has been keeping us busy - our church is on the course, and we open it each practice and race period for people to use the toilets, and buy hot drinks and snacks. That's been keeping me busy most evenings - and then taking S2C to work each evening as the TT disrupts his bus to work, coming home and baking more cakes or cookies for the next night, and so on!

And at work I have moved office.

Busy week.

So - apologies for not having the next chapter of Brotherhood ready - but it is fairly much completed and S2C is off for 5 nights, so it should get betaed fairly quickly after I write the last paragraph!

And the pictures from this week sometimes reflect the above - and sometimes don't ....

( click for the pics )

I really must get on, now, with doing a leaflet for the church flower festival in .. meep! four weeks!!

We've got our new car. It is very smart, gun-metal grey, high trim level, and a boot big enough to hold Belgium. The old one had an enormous load space, but this is even bigger! I think I will need a trained ferret to retrieve things for me...

The only point of argument is what we are going to call him - he is most certainly male, I think. I quite liked Gordon, but S2C vetoed it as he says there is no proof that the car is Gay. So probably something Czech, I think. (It is a Skoda - so actually made in the Czech Republic.)

For pretty pictures ( click here )

As you can see from the pictures, it has been a nice day - suddenly it is summer. Probably because it is the first TT practice tonight. So I will be busy baking for TT Teas for the next couple of weeks... For those new to this journal since June last year, I explained TT here in my journal in 2005 - it explains pretty well!

ETA - the car is called Minsc - after a character in Baldur's Gate. Pity our little car is called Po, rather than Boo, really!

Well it's a busy time on LJ - or it would be if the damned thing was not moving like a sloth on Valium.

I will make an effort to keep up with things over on GJ, which is where my second journal is, but despite everything I will keep posting here until everyone I know has left! I have said, as a comment on someone else's journal, that LJ is my spiritual home on the internet - it is a bit like citizenship - we might disagree strongly with the way we are being governed but it is hard to emigrate and actually give up your nationality totally!

So - around here it is the Centenary TT - there are almost 50,000 extra people on the island - our population is usually about 80,000 - so this is a big increase! It becomes very much the Isle of Man as most of the extras are male!

D-d is home for the weekend - she couldn't bear to think of TT without being here. Her 'boyfriend-on-hold' is here too - they are not currently 'in a relationship' as from a few days ago, but are 'best friends' - goodness knows what they'll be next week, but he is a nice young man, and they both seem happy enough which is what is important.

Unfortunately today was the only racing they would see - and all racing was cancelled because it was damp on the mountain part of the circuit and misty - and it is not good to travel over mountain roads in the mist at speed which touch 180mph! However I took them out around much of the course this morning by car for B-o-h to get a feel of the place, and he was quite fascinated by just how many motor bikes were on the road and how many people were sitting in all the hedges waiting for the (soon to be cancelled) racing.

I think that they are currently in the beer tent!

Well that's TT over for another year - sadly it ended on a sad note - as a competitor crashed off in the last race, killing both himself and a marshal that he hit - very sad.

But I thought I would just share some of the more surreal moments of my TT with you.

As I have mentioned already this week we run a snack bar (for want of a better description) at our Church. As you come through the entrance there is only one door accessible before the point where we put tables right across the hall to block it. This door has the word 'Toilets' on it in quite big letters, and yet if we had 10p for every time someone asks us 'Do you have a toilet?' during the time we open to sell things we would make hundreds of pounds extra!

We decided on Sunday to add hand drawn 'Ladies' and 'Gents' signs, and after much discussion the versions that got the vote from at least four Church Elders and the Minister have not only 'Ladies' and 'Gents' written on them, but also 'Tarts' and 'Vicars'!!

Apart from the frequent 'Have you got a toilet?' from people standing beside the toilet door, today someone who had just been given his cup of tea and told 'Sugar and milk are on the table beside you' put sugar in his tea, reached out until he had his hand on the jug full of milk, and then asked 'Do you have any milk for the tea?' I'm afraid I answered 'Yes - it's the white stuff in that jug you are holding.' He looked down as if he had never seen anything like it in his life and said 'Oh, well all right then.'

On local radio we have coverage in four languages - English, French, German and Italian, and at one stage I heard Mavis, who does the French coverage, explaining in French how to say 'Hello' to the Fairies at Fairy Bridge in Manx!

One rider, being told by the radio interviewer that he had been given a five second time penalty came out with a few choice expletives, then said 'there again worse things happen at sea - I could be out there right now in an open rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic with no oars, rather than standing here talking to you, and then where would I be?'

Another podium placed rider complained of pigeon shit- strikes slowing him down by obscuring his vision.

And one local competitor with long wavy hair was asked, after coming second in his race, was it true that he was going to celebrate by having his hair cut. He did more for encouraging open discussion of health problems than anyone else I've come across by answering 'No, no, that's just a rumour - I did think about it a couple of weeks ago when I caught nits off the children but the wife got rid of them for me - couple of nights going through it with a nit comb and it's fine now - no need to cut it.'!!

The Manx radio 'man in the pits' was also heard interviewing someone after they'd gone to the loo - including 'Are you alright in there?'

You don't get coverage like that for Formula One!

And finally - in totally none TT related stuff - I'm pimping! sockmonkeyhere has put all of her post NFA story 'Re-entry' up on her LJ yesterday - all 20 Chapters, one at a time. Starring, amongst others, The Littlest Slayer, Spike, Illyria AND Fred. I read this on ff.net a couple of months ago, a place I hardly ever venture, and was so entranced by it that I stayed up ages after my bed-time to finish it. So, especially if you don't like WIPs, get over there - start at Chapter One, and keep going!!