Things That Don't Work

I've promised you a gloomy post, and here it is.  I need to get it done today because I think I'm about to have a really fun Thanksgivingy end of the week and weekend.  I'd better be gloomy while I can.  Watch this to get yourself in the right state of mind:

Now that you're appropriately forlorn, I give you: Things That Don't Work.

Me.  I don't work.  I don't work at all.  I am bruised and pulled and generally broken.  Yesterday I walked to a riding school to be assessed for dressage lessons.  They presented me with a 17.1hh-ish dark bay Warmblood gelding named Harbor (although they probably spell it Harbour because they're weird like that).  He was a good old schoolmaster.  He was very pleasant, and he expressed to me that if it was all the same what he'd really like to do was walk along the rail with the full weight of his head and neck resting on the bit.  It took a lot of muscle power to inspire him, but he was obliging as long as he was convinced that I was putting forth more effort than he was.  We got some good work done, and I really liked the instructor.

Oops, I've gotten cheerful by accident.  I'll try again:  With the exception of a single ride in October, it had been two months since I'd been on a horse, and all evening yesterday I could feel my back and legs slowly tightening, like a vice gradually clenching down on something.  I woke up this morning, sat up on the mattress, and it hit me like a brick wall.  OW.  Every muscle in my arms, legs, shoulders, hips, and especially lower back hates me and would like me to know it.  I feel about 90 years old.  So...when do I get to ride again?

Next on the list of things that don't work is the shower.  On my first morning here, I stumbled into the shower room, which would be nearly big enough for one person to stand in if the door didn't open in, and turned on the shower.  It was icy.  As in, hurts-to-hold-your-hand-under-it cold.  I waited for a good ten minutes, and nothing changed.  So, slimy from a two-day journey from the US, sore from my first night on the world's worst mattress and a pillow that a flight attendant would blush to give to someone, and mired in a haze of jet lag, I stood outside the minuscule shower and stuck my head under the frigid water to wash my hair.  I decided at that moment that I hated this country--a position which I have since substantially revised.

Immediately after my "shower," I called maintenance, and to their credit the guy came in just a few hours.  He tested the shower, and--it was fine.  So then we went through the routine of him explaining to me how a shower works.  I couldn't quite communicate to him that, yes, I do understand the concept.  It was really cold this morning.  I don't know why it's not now.  But I do actually understand how to use a shower.  Ah well.  The water is hot now.  You still can't actually adjust the temperature, but the one it's settled on permanently is acceptable.  The only remaining issue with the shower is its size.  Upon stepping into the shower, the temptation to say "Beam me up, Scotty!" is almost irresistible.  Like the small space in the shower room outside the shower, there is nearly room for one person.  The water pressure is, I would say, enthusiastic.  True, it's better than too-low water pressure.  But when you turn the water on and the pressure is so high that the shower head pivots up and slams itself against the wall with the water rocketing sideways into the opposite wall, well above your head, a shower then becomes more of a challenge.

We have a thief on our hall.  Two weeks after I got here, things started disappearing from the kitchen, including my plate and fork, someone else's knife, and someone else's chopsticks.  Despite days of passive-aggressive post-its all over the kitchen door, my plate and knife haven't reappeared.  The really awkward thing is that we're pretty sure we've figured out who it is, but we don't quite know how to broach the subject.  I mean, what do you do?  Knock on the door and say "Hey there flatmate!  How's the coursework going?  By the way, you stole my plate and I want it back now."  That's just a level of uncomfortable that I had hoped to be done with at 24.  On the very unlikely chance that our thief reads this blog, however, I'll just write a quick note:

Dear Thief,
Give me my dang plate and fork back.
Love,
Anna.

Lastly, I shall tell you about my skylight and how it doesn't work.  Everyone who comes in here admires my skylight--if only they knew.  It is the bane of my existence.  Complaint 1) The shade on the skylight is both made of paper and torn.  Ergo, when the sun comes up, my skylight says to me, "GOOD MORNING ANNA IT'S DAY WAKE UP!" and it gets really very bright in here.  Complaint 2) My skylight is broken.  It won't actually close all the way.  I came back from London early in the term one Saturday to find literally dozens and dozens of bees crawling around in my bed and coming in through the cracked skylight.  It was the first cool day of fall, and they were coming in  and dying in my bed.  The best part was that there is no one around this place on the weekends except resident students, so I had to wait all day Saturday, all night, all day Sunday, and again all night before maintenance got my message of distress.  So I invested in some duct tape and spent that lovely weekend picking bees out of my bed and laundry and carpet and...everything.  Maintenance came on Monday morning to "fix" the skylight, but I still think the duct tape is the only real barrier between me and nature.

That's probably enough gloominess to counteract all the cheery things I've been writing, don't you think?  The next time my happiness gets out of hand, I'll tell you about the radiator and my closet door.  But for now I think this is sufficient.

Vive la Flo-Flo!

You should all move to Oxford.  Seriously.  I worry this blog might get dull because every time I write I just talk about how great everything is.  I'll think up something gloomy to write about next time, but in the meantime, I give you two and a half brief tales of joy:

1. My dear Florianne came to visit me on Sunday.  For those of you who don't know her, she came from France to spend a year at Jewell while I was an undergraduate there.  We were there together for the fall semester of that year, and then I spent the spring semester in Vienna.  We kept in touch through Facebook and Skype and email, just waiting for the next opportunity to come along, whenever that might be, when we would be in the same place again.  We hadn't actually seen each other in four years.  Well, now she's moved to the UK, and we're only about an hour and a half apart!  We had a wonderful day of wandering around Oxford and catching up.  I'm so glad to have an old friend near.

1a. After Flo-Flo went home I had choir (always a good thing), and this was followed by a truly stunning performance in the Exeter College Chapel by Schola Cantorum of Oxford.  Lots of Bruckner.  Yummy.  Bravi to Sam and Bex!

2. I just got home from an especially marvelous C.S. Lewis Society meeting.  We read a series of unpublished love sonnets by Joy Davidman (Lewis's wife).  I thought they were extremely well-written, but surprisingly violent and tormented.  Also, apparently Lewis had a thing for blondes--or at least, Joy thought he did.  We went to the Eagle and Child for a bit afterwards to discuss.  I made some new friends, including an ardent Wagner fan and non-musician who professes to hating all musicians and once produced an opera based on Lewis's Perelandra.  Sort that one out.

Tomorrow will be a long day spent cloistered in my room working, but tonight was a night to feast on some of the great things Oxford has to offer.

Fin

Burn the traitor!

If anyone out there is still in doubt about how much I love choir, you live under a rock.  This week was a week of much choirness, and it was glorious, despite the constant procession of migraines that came with it.

On Monday (Halloween) we sang Evensong at Christ Church.  I recorded part of our rehearsal on my camera.  Wha-bam:

Audio quality is terrible, but my camera was both designed to take photos and buried in my purse.

After that I got together with a few friends to make pizza and watch Young Frankenstein in honor of the holiday.  Halloween = complete.

Tuesday was a long day of lectures culminating in a very fun dinner out.  On Wednesday the choir sang yet another service, this time in our home chapel for All Souls' Day.  It was a somber service, but remarkably well done by our chaplain Jonathan.  We cheered ourselves up afterwards with dinner and a performance by Out of the Blue, an Oxford men's a cappella group who recently made it to the semifinals of Britain's Got Talent.  Click here to see them on Britain's Got Talent.  One of them lives in the same college as a couple of the Wadham choir members.  They performed in a little ice cream parlor that was stuffed so full of human that the windows were completely covered with nasty human sweat fog.  We stood outside in the fresh air and listened through an opened window.

On Friday I heard the Oxford University Orchestra perform Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Mahler's Fifth Symphony.  It was an impressive performance.  That Mahler likes his brass and percussion.  I can only imagine the cacophonous performances he must have given as a toddler with the pots and pans in his mother's kitchen.

On Saturday we remembered remembered the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason, and plot.  All day long fireworks could be heard throughout the city.  I went to the party at Wolfson College in the evening.  The headmistress initiated the festivities by climbing into a bulldozer with a glass of champagne and giving a speech about horoscopes and construction in ancient Rome.  I didn't really follow it.  A mighty fireworks display over the punt harbor sent traumatized ducks fleeing for their lives, and a HUGE bonfire thoroughly dehydrated all the surrounding trees.  It wasn't a good night for nature.  But it was a great night for us, so who really cares about the ducks.  Burn the traitor!

Yesterday was truly enjoyable--I heard two services at Christ Church in the morning, then had lunch with friends, then enjoyed the brisk Autumn day with a long walk, then had a very relaxing tea, and off to choir for rehearsal and Evensong we went.  After Evensong and dinner the choir went back into the chapel for--guess what--more singing!  For the next two and a half hours or so we stood around the piano and sight read through a vast quantity of choral anthems.  We started out making some really nice music (Rachmaninoff's "Bogoroditse devo" and Bruckner's "Os justi" were lovely), but by the time the Christmas carols came out, the situation had devolved and we sounded more like geese a-laying than anything else.

It was quite the sight reading exercise.  Many of the carols and even more of the words were new to me.  When "Good King Wenceslas" was requested, there was a gleeful cry of "Ooh, can we sing all the sexist lyrics??"  What sexist lyrics? thought I.  Oh...right.  I see.

By this point I think we had more men than women singing soprano.  There's a really special modulation at the end of this one:

It took a good hour for my larynx to come back down from on high where it had gotten stuck after all that singing.  One of these days I'll get a good recording of our choir.  That day is not today.

Full album on Facebook!

This week's English as a Second Language notes
A sweater is a jumper.  A jumper is also a sweatshirt.  And a hoodie.
A vest is a tank top.  A tank top is a vest.
A wife beater is definitely not an article of clothing.
Now: I dare you to tell me what this is called:

Choral Shenanigans

BAhaha!  Made it two weeks without writing every tedious detail of my currently not-very-tedious-at-all life.  The self control ends now.

First of all, to address those of you who accuse me of having too much fun and not working enough: I'll have you know I wrote an entire piano piece and accompanying essay in under two weeks.  It's simply more fun to tell you about my punting adventures and harrypotteresque high table banquets than it is to describe myself sitting in my dorm room of an evening, nose three inches from the computer screen, puttering away at the midi keyboard.

So besides that, some of my accomplishments these past two weeks include making the pilgrimage to Christ Church to see the "real" Hogwarts (and forgetting my camera), seeing a play, and having two weekends-full of choral monkey business.

The aforementioned play was a spontaneous outing last Saturday afternoon with two friends to see The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Oxford Playhouse.  Despite committing the almost unforgivable sin of being a play without music (I should say "without songs;" there was a small string ensemble perched above the stage that provided mood music from time to time), Dorian Gray was marvelous.  Behold the trailer:

Oh, I picked a church.  It's the cathedral in the college called Christ Church (but woe betide ye who try to call it "Christ Church College," for ye shall be smote.  Smitten.).  Last Sunday was "Bible Sunday" (it's a Church of England thing, don't ask me) and the sermon was mostly about various translations of the Bible. The priest had unearthed some really fantastic King James passages that talked about children issuing from Abraham's bowels and souls being plagued by "a superfluity of naughtiness."

On Monday I had a dinner in the hall.  This was the Introductory Dinner, so it was the only one we don't have to pay for.  Ergo I went.  Dress code was "smart" with robes.  It was multi-course and candlelit and all that, with an army of waiters buzzing around making sure everyone's plate landed on the tablecloth in perfect synchronization.  I found the food a little strange--the salad, for instance, was a bowl of hot stringy smashed beet goo (Dwight Schrute would be proud), followed by a main course of exceptionally dry chicken and culminating in a tiny dish of cobbler next to a great wad of whipped cream--but it was hot, and as I said before, FREE.  And I got to wear my dress.  Huzzah.

There was a bit of unscheduled excitement on the hall the other night...a neighbor of mine came into the hall just after 1:00 am, presumably drunk out of his mind and swearing loudly.  He began to be loudly and violently sick, swearing and hollering the whole time.  This went on for about an hour and a half.  I stayed in bed and heard the entire performance.  I will say in his favor that he was up early the next morning scrubbing the bathroom with great dedication.

At the complete opposite end of the fun scale is all the choral debauchery that has gone down in the past two weeks.  I've learned that wine seems to be really integral to the basic structure of the Wadham College Chapel Choir.  The chaplain came into the choir common room one night deeply concerned that we didn't have any wine and bearing fresh bottles.  He himself solemnly vowed to keep us well supplied.  "I shall never let you run dry," quoth he.  Last weekend we saw a celebrity in a pub.  I vaguely recognized him from Love Actually.  Apparently he and another guy host shows over here like "Britain's Got Talent."  They're known collectively as Ant and Dec.  Didn't mean much to me, but the rest of the choir was all atwitter and trying to nonchalantly take secret pictures of him.  The guy on the left in the striped sweater is the one we saw in the pub:

And the secret photo:

Last night after choir rehearsal was another absolutely wonderful evening of choir shenanigans, beginning with a potluck dinner (the concept having been imported by a Lutheran from Michigan and rechristened by an Englishman as "a bit of a knees-up") and concluding much later in the King's Arms pub.  Hopefully pictures will be up on Facebook soon, but I didn't take them so I'm not in charge of these things.

This coming week is packed full of choir events, so look for another report maybe next weekend.

Linguistic notes from this week:
- The term "restroom" may or may not lead you to a toilet.
- Math in England is plural.  Here at the University of Oxford one studies "maths."
- And the coup de grâce: whipped cream is called "squirty cream."

Inklings

Well, I hadn't intended to write here every week, but so many crazy things have happened this week that I have to share them.  Off we go:

Thing One is that I joined a choir!  I spent most of Sunday afternoon and evening and again Monday evening auditioning for the Wadham College Chapel Choir.  We'll sing Evensong at Wadham College Chapel every Sunday night.  Look how pretty!

On Tuesday I had my first classes--called seminars.  In the first one the composers shared our work with each other and defended it, and in the other I heard a lecture about amateur musicians in a small northern English town.  They were both awesome and I could recount them in more detail, but it might not make very interesting reading.  Less interesting, at any rate, than...

The C.S. Lewis Society meeting!  It's sort of a continuation of the Inklings.  Every week they bring in a scholar to give a lecture about something to do with C.S. Lewis.  This week a Chinese/American guy talked about Lewis's translation of Virgil's Aeneid.  It really was fascinating.  The famous Spud was there, and I sat right next to Walter Hooper, Lewis's friend and secretary, and member of the Inklings.  Wait what?  Yes, you read that right.  After the lecture, Hooper raised his hand with a question and started saying things like "I remember when he was working on this..." and "he said to me about that..."  I looked over at the dude next to me, I'm sure with my eyes bugging out of my head, and nearly fell out of my chair.  I can't wait for the next meeting!

On Wednesday I went to the Gamelan Society meeting in a hot little room full of gamelan.  Google "gamelan" if you don't know what that is--basically it's an Indonesian percussion instrument in many parts made of brass and wood and played by several people at once.  Oxford claims to have one of the best/most complete gamelans in the country.  York's is also pretty spectacular; they showed me theirs last January.  We had to take our shoes off, so then it became a hot little room full of gamelan that smelled like feet.  It was a good time though.  They keys, pots, and gongs are numbered 6, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3 from low to high, with some variation.  An octave has five notes in it, so "low 1" is an octave below "high 1."  The tuning is pretty wonky, and the different parts of the instrument are not in tune with each other (at least according to my concept of what is "in tune").  The tricky thing about gamelan is that, as you strike a key with the hammer, you dampen the last one you hit with your other hand.  So most of the time you have the right hand forging gleefully onward as a very confused left hand struggles to repeat the melody out of phase.  It was great fun though, and I hope I'll be able to keep going back, although the equestrian team might conflict with it.

That night a group of friends and I saw The Graduate (1967 comedy with Dustin Hoffman) with the Magdalen Film Society.  I highly recommend it.  Thursday was a leisurely day full of Jane Eyre, friends, and pubs.  A German-only evening was declared at the Crown pub that night, giving my brain a serious workout.  Comprehension was good, but speaking was extremely frustrating.  I felt like I was trying to have a conversation with people on the other side of a wall.  If my German friends are patient enough though, I am very eager to keep working at it.

If anyone is still reading this very long blog entry, we have now come to the pièce de résistance.  Gold star for you.  This morning all the freshers of Oxford got up at the crack of dawn and put on our subfusc to matriculate.

Let's discuss this concept just briefly, if we could.  Subfusc, while it does confirm my suspicion that we are all actually at Hogwarts, is about the most impractical arrangement of cloth I have ever put on my body.  Let's begin with the mortarboard, shall we?  Has anyone ever questioned this truly striking fashion statement?  Hey, I know, let's take a cardboard square, slap a tassel on it, and wear it around on our heads!  We'll look SO dignified and educated.  Also anyone who thinks a skirt and white button-down shirt is enough clothing to wear outside for several hours on an October morning when it's 5°C should be boiled.  My fingers were actually numb by the time we finished with all the (outdoor) photographs and marching through town in parades of freezing besubfusced freshers.  I have news for you, folks.  An open, sleeveless cloak with wings on it is not a whole lot of help as an outer layer.

Anywho, we were cold.  But it was pretty great to have everyone together looking like penguins parading down the streets of Oxford with tourists lined along the sidewalks taking our pictures.  We processed into the round Sheldonian Theatre, heard some dude say some stuff in Latin, then give us a speech for about 20 minutes, and shabang--we were matriculated, and therefore official members of the university.

We went out for tea afterwards, then three of us changed and went punting on the river.

Please see Facebook for the full album and a video of the ceremony!

Pudding

Well I've just had one of the most amazing weeks of my life.  It was beyond words.  I shall now describe it in words.

Actually, one word: Pudding.

Pudding is a word I have yet to solidly define.  Most of the readers of this blog will use this word to refer to a specific type of noxiously sweet dessert that has a consistency similar to that of yogurt, usually comes in vanilla or chocolate flavors, and is popular with children.  However, in my brave new world of Oxford, England, the word seems to mean a variety of things: It can be a general word to describe any dessert, or it can be a certain kind of sweetish bread (NOT to be confused with "sweet bread" under any circumstances), or it can be a gooey, spongey, cakey thing.  I am still unearthing further meanings and will keep you updated.  In the meantime, I would like to tell you about my amazing week, organized into vignettes named after the particular pudding that accompanied the adventures.

THE ULTIMATE BROWNIE
On Monday I went to dinner with one of the most fun groups of people I have ever had the pleasure of dining with.  Three delightful business colleagues of my dad's took me out to Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant for a very nice dinner.  We were joined by (I'm not kidding) the world's leading C.S. Lewis scholar, who goes by the nickname -- wait for it -- Spud.  Yep.  We discussed Lewis's work, debated the great music of the Western tradition, analyzed European and American cultures, speculated about the end of modern society, and made underwear jokes.  The best meal (by far) that I'd had in over a week concluded with a seriously good brownie.

COOKIES/BISCUITS
On Tuesday I spent an exhausting day with my department.  I can't tell you how excited I am to work with both of the composition professors here, as well as with my new peers in the music department.  It felt so good to be drowning in musicians again.  I learned that my schedule will consist mostly of independent work.  I mentioned my secret Beethoven project idea, just to test the waters with the faculty, and received an encouraging reply.  I can't wait to start.  Another highlight of the day was touring the Bates Collection of ancient and world instruments.  I got to play Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" on a Beethoven-era piano--with the pedal held down for the entire piece, of course!  At the end of this whirlwind day, new and returning music students gathered in a music hall for drinks and cookies.  Sorry, biscuits.

SCONES
Scones, people.  It's ALL about the scones.

Wednesday was my college's version of Tuesday.  Events, explanations, registrations, and tours dominated the day.  Another exhausting day, but a lot was accomplished, and I did get to spend the better part of the afternoon and evening with three seriously fun people from my college.  We had tea and scones* in the Hall, then went downstairs and did battle with the communal TV/projector/DVD player arrangement for a few hours, then went to a pub for a very satisfying meal, then returned to the college to watch Amadeus on my laptop.  One of my best evenings so far.

*Scones are what would happen if Jesus decided to bake something.  Forget whatever you've eaten in America that bears that name.  This is so much better.  It's a sort of shortbready cookie of awesome topped with jam (not jelly, which here means jell-o; try asking someone in England how they feel about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  You'll get a pretty good expression in response.) and clotted cream, which is basically thick whipped butter carefully designed to clot and stop your heart.  Scones.  Eat them.

MACINTOSH APPLE
On Thursday I went to the Freshers' Fair and signed my life away to about fifty different groups and clubs, including auditions for a number of choirs, the German club, a few churches, the Oxford equestrian team, and the polo team.  Polo is probably not actually going to happen, since lessons are £40 each, but until I turn down the first lesson, I figure I'm on the Oxford polo team, right?  Probably yes.

I caught the train in the evening to Paddington Station in London to meet my dad, who had just come from a business trip in Paris.  We spent the evening wandering the streets of London, and passed by the tribute to Steve Jobs that was laid out on the sidewalk outside the Apple Store.  People had left flowers and candles, and the windowsill of the store was lined with apples with one bite out of each of them.  It was a touching and creative response to the death of a very creative man.

APPLE AND BLACKBERRY TRIFLE
Friday was spent entirely in London.  We had lunch with a variation on Monday night's group at a super-swanky restaurant, where I had a glorious dessert made of layers of fruit, custard, cream, and other stuff, at least one of which is probably called pudding.  Dinner with another of Dad's friends was also quite snazzy.

I like Dad's and my approach to London.  We walk and we eat.  We get up and eat.  Then we walk and walk and walk and look at stuff.  Then we stop and eat so we can walk some more.  Then we walk and walk and stop for tea.  Then we walk.  Then we eat dinner, and afterwards we walk until we're ready to collapse into bed.  Good times.

FONDANT AU CHOCOLAT
This morning we got up in London and took the train to Oxford.  We had a wonderful day of exploring the city.  I got my sub fusc (read the post I write shortly after October 15 to find out what that is) and a wool St Cross College scarf, which I shall treasure.  I showed Dad everything I could think of.  His reaction to the Bodleian Libraries was particularly enjoyable:

Dinner with Spud was the perfect bookend to my amazing week.  The rest of the day can be described better with pictures and videos than it can with words.  I'll include a few highlights here, and the complete album can be viewed on Facebook.  Don't miss the two videos at the end of dancing street performers!

inside St Cross College

Pimms and Punting

This post contains photos.  I don't know if these will come through for those of you who are viewing the blog through Facebook, email, or Atom feed.  You can see the post in all its glory at annackrause.blogspot.com.

Life continues to be fun and fancy free.  That could have something to do with the fact that classes haven't started yet, but I'm not going to examine it too closely.  I continue to meet lots of fabulous people from all over the world.  Yesterday I discovered that St Cross is home to a healthy population of Germans.  I approve of this thoroughly.  I chatted a bit today with a political theory major who did not slow down his speed-of-light German a bit for me, which was very gratifying, if exhausting.

The days so far have been comfortably full without inhibiting my quest to sleep 9-10 hours every night, thereby conquering jet lag as quickly as possible and storing up excess sleep hours in preparation for the undoubtedly sleep-deprived days ahead.  We've been given a schedule of events for Freshers' Week that advertises "Croquet, Pimms, and Nibbles" most days at 1:30.  Intrigued and bemused, I ventured onto the quad yesterday to investigate.  I had no idea what Pimms and nibbles were, and only a vague understanding of croquet, but I figured if nothing else I could at least maybe nibble the Pimms.  It turns out that no one really cared about the croquet, there was nothing to nibble, and Pimms are a fruity cocktail popular at posh garden parties.  Ah well.

Today we went punting.  What's punting?  So glad you asked.  Think gondolas: low, long, flat boat with someone standing in the back pushing a boat with a stick.

Let me just tell you, it's harder than it looks.  Morgan, who seemed to be somewhat in charge, informed us that he had never heard of anyone falling out of a punting boat.  We formed teams of five, went to our assigned boat, and almost fell out of it while climbing in.

My team comprised a Ukranian-turned-Englishwoman, a Canadian, a German, and a Frenchman.  We each took a turn punting the thing, which is really quite difficult and gets you all wet, but is a fantastic upper-body workout.

Most of us steered into the bank or another boat at least once.  I think I was the only one to go directly through a tree growing just over the surface of the water.  Our German teammate quickly emerged as the most proficient punter on the river, thanks to previous canoeing experience.  I wish I'd taken video of the adventure.  It was particularly funny at the beginning as we were all spinning in circles and going sideways and generally creating chaos on the river.

Despite our mad punting skills, our team had the most epic failures in the group.  Our pole got stuck in the mud at one point and the boat continued to float peacefully away, leaving the pole poking up out of the water.  We floated helplessly for a bit until another boat retrieved it for us.  Our biggest misadventure was when our boat was driven onto a giant root hidden just below the surface of the water.  We nearly capsized a few times, and it took another boat and someone on the bank pushing and shoving to dislodge us.  So that was good.  But we made it back in one piece and headed straight for a pub to recover.

All in all it was an excellent day.  I am now going downstairs to meet some people for dinner.  See Facebook for the complete photo album from today.