At last, after a long wait and an even longer winter, ‘t was time to wake up our hibernating Billy Bailey from his storage field and make preparations for two weeks in Dorset. I actually collected him on Friday so I’d have all day Saturday for spring cleaning. To refresh my memory as much as anything else, I parked him in front of our house using the fancy remote control mover. The mover has power actuators which drive the actually mover motors onto and off of the caravan’s wheels. It took a while but I remembered how to activate them and drive him into his preparation spot. I pressed buttons to remove the driving motors. Only one came off, the other remained firmly in place. Repeated attempts produced the same result.
I felt like a pilot coming into land when the co-pilot calmly informs you that only one undercarriage leg is down and locked. There is a manual removal mechanism requiring many turns of a spanner; the flying analogy continues with visions of Memphis Belle, frantically winding down the starboard undercarriage leg manually. I summoned an engineer who’s coming the day after we get back. I waggled a few wires around attached to the remote controller’s main control box and lo, all was now well. Relief! Something needs looking at, though.
Saturday preparations went well but I really must stop trying to multi-thread. That’s a skill requiring the female of the species. Whilst loading Billy and our car, I fired up some charcoal to barbecue a fine-looking Gressingham duck. I continued loading. After 45 minutes or so the briquettes were ready so I hastily decanted them into my trusty Weber and, even more hastily, slashed the skin of our duck and popped it in to cook. I finished loading.
90 minutes does a small duck nicely with most of the fat running out. I removed our fine-looking Gressingham duck. My heart sank as I noticed the duck’s tail (it’s parsons nose) was still bent back and tucked into it’s body cavity. Firstly I removed the parson’s nose. Secondly I removed the plastic bag of giblets from inside our fine-looking Gressingham duck’s body cavity. ARGHH! In my multi-tasking haste, I’d completely forgotten that, unlike prepared chickens, prepared ducks come with their giblets (or accessories, as one Farmer’s Market lady likes to call them) tucked inside them. The giblets were bubbling away inside their plastic bag and seemed quite well cooked.
All was well, the plastic had not melted and the duck was delicious. No more multi-tasking, though!
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