4th May 2024

We needed a break.  We’d just made 28 lemon posset desserts in 4oz paper cups to be topped off with a compote of summer berries out of the irreparable freezer.  The fridge part works but the freezer is no longer freezing and it got the thumbs down from the Samsung repair man who checked it out. So we had to clear out what we could from the freezer.

The fridge-freezer has had a minor problem for years – a small and slightly annoying leak in the back of the fridge compartment such that there was always a very small amount of water in the two fruit/vegetable bins at the bottom. If the fridge got used a lot, it would frost up at the back and then this would slowly melt and drip down.  But it still worked fine and I wasn’t about to change it – it cost a lot of money 9 years ago and needed a cherry-picker to lift it onto the balcony to get it into the kitchen.

So now it’s inescapable – I’m in the market for a new fridge-freezer.  There’s always something with a house, isn’t there?   It’s early days but I’m guessing from what I’ve seen so far (see below) that this retail experience will warrant another story.

Anyway, the day looked absolutely lovely, a contrast to most of the week.  I was in shorts, much to Sabine’s consternation but it was actually warm.  So we headed out to the Boat Show.  We caught the Number 1 bus into town, and walked across Liberation Square and the main road to get to boats in the harbour and the stalls around it.

Now, please understand that, sadly for me, my boating days post the Muskoka cottage are over, so we weren’t going there with any intention of buying a boat; we weren’t really that interested in what the boats were on display.  It was just a nice sunny day to visit the show.  In recent years the weather quite often has been awful for it, with the show completely cancelled one year, but not 2024.  All good.

We walked up the line of booths on the east side of the harbour, past the RNLI in its prime position, and immediately came across one selling kayaks and paddle boards.  The outfit selling them had come over from the South Coast.  The thing that made us stop was the design of the kayaks – very thin corrugated plastic sheeting folded into the shape of a kayak, that unfolded and could be put into a pictured bag about 75cm by 50cm by 30cm.  Very light.  Could withstand being scrunched on rocks just below the surface that I would find without any difficulty.  The two very solid kayaks I have now are heavy, and cumbersome to carry along the drive, through the beach gate, down the stairs and across the beach to where the sea is, so this light weight design was really appealing. 

We said we’d think about getting one (or two more likely).  Remember I said we weren’t in the market for a boat, a position that really included all types of watercraft, but even so we were tempted.  However, we immediately completely forgot about kayaks because we saw the paddle boards they sold and Sabine’s eyes lit up – it’s been something she’s really wanted to do.  They were blow-up boards, not expensive at all, included the paddle and the pump and were just what Sabine wanted.  So we are now the proud owners of one (repeat ONE) paddle board.   The day was perfect for Sabine to start (falling in) with a flat calm sea too, but we had other plans for later, so we still have that pleasure ahead of us.

We bought an orange one – it fits into the backpack you can see.

One very happy rookie paddle boarder

We arranged to pick it up later – after all, it came in an easy to carry backpack.  The boats in the harbour beckoned.  They’d gone slightly down-market from the last time I was there when there were wall-to-wall Sunseekers with prices in the millions.  There was one beautiful 56 footer with 2 x 1100 litre fuel tanks and an unsurprisingly long line of people wanting to inspect it.  There were a number of ribs of different sizes, very expensive to my mind and, not yet for sale, two Royal Navy Archer Class patrol boats complete with crew, HMS Express and HMS Ranger, similar to the ones we see around the submarine base on Gareloch.

We went for the tour of one of them (on the right in the photo) but drew the short straw. Our tour guide was a rating based on HMS President, a training ship on the Thames moored on the Embankment in London, which meant that he was a raw recruit and wasn’t able to explain a lot about the ship. To confirm his lowly status, he mentioned that he’d had to polish the ship’s bell the day before and how filthy it had been (it was gleaming when we saw it and I got to ring it).  Sabine was quite curious about his impressive braids.

We wandered around the rest of the boats, and managed not to buy one.  One was really striking – a very very fast ocean-going racing boat painted green and gold.  Here’s the link: Thunder Child II – 54 Knots.com(opens in a new tab)

No, the fast boat is behind the inflatable chick.

There was another section of booths on the other side of the harbour, just a short stroll away in the sunshine, so it had to be done.  Sure enough, we nearly bought a Finnish sauna for the house in Rhu at one of the first booths we came across in this section.  It was beautiful, roomy, of an attractive barrel design, the choice of a wood or an electric burner, and not as expensive (especially with the Boat Show discount) as I suspect the garden pond will wind up costing.   Fortunately for us we didn’t buy one – I say fortunately because on our way out we saw another barrel-type sauna by a different manufacturer, slightly more expensive, but that looked a lot better made.

We went up the right hand side of the booths and back down the other side.  After the sauna inspection, there mercifully wasn’t anything that caught our eye until Sabine cried out with glee and ran into a large booth selling …… Thermomix cooking appliances.  I blame her brother and sister-in-law for all this, because they have one and Susanne showed it off to great effect over Christmas.  Like the paddle board, Sabine has wanted one for years. 

Don’t get me wrong, they’re very good (German, naturally) and of course the Boat Show pricing had some attraction (it needed to, given how much they cost). https://www.vorwerk.com/gb/en/s/shop/products/thermomix/c/thermomix  

But the cynic in me thinks it’s a bit of a con because you HAVE to buy through a specially trained agent as you couldn’t possibly understand how to use it, and the agent provides that crucial after-sales culinary service that you didn’t know you needed –  a bit like a personalised Tupperware party.

So we managed to escape from the Boat Show having only bought a paddle board that we had no intention of buying but had two close calls, having found ourselves magnetically attracted to Finnish saunas and kitchen appliances that we don’t need (as opposed to a fridge-freezer that we do need).

And to finish that story with the latest update, our next stop was in town at a retail establishment (no names) that sold these latter products.  We’d been to another shop the day before which had several American fridge-freezers on their website but not available to view and the one I really liked (Fisher & Paykel, a brand I’d never heard of but which came highly recommended) they hadn’t sold for a while.  The next best ones (also not on display) were by LG, a brand I know of but know nothing about (and neither did the salesman).  Hopeless.

The shop we visited after the Boat Show had the same LG model on display (a result), but it was so close to another model that you couldn’t open the doors properly and then you noticed the prices of these display models were massively discounted (several hundreds of pounds) because they had large dents in the doors.  But the huge discount for the LG model that was also sold by the first shop brought the price down fractionally below the undamaged price quoted by the first shop.  Hopeless.  I’ll keep you posted.