Tape on absolutely everything, that’s the secret of completing the ‘mad’ Maldon Mud Race. Originating in 1973 as a challenge to a local landlord to serve a meal on the River Blackwater in Maldon, Essex, a year later the race across the estuary became the sticky gallop that we know it as today.

One of the most unusual events in the UK, it attracts both local and global media attention. While one of Suffolk’s best known winter traditions is the Lowestoft Christmas Day swim, Essex has the Maldon Mud Race. And believe me, even as a spectator, the competitors who brave the North Sea a few miles up the coast traditionally a week earlier than their Essex counterparts, have got it easy.

The 250 entrants today started from the beach, ran through the river up onto the mud banks behind a ship moored in the estuary, and then navigated the river once more, before crossing the finish line on the same side of the river from which they set off. The quickest racer completed it in around five minutes, with his second-placed compatriot a whisker behind.

Around 10,000 people watched and cheered from Promenade Park, and even though we had agreed it would be a different way to spend a Sunday morning, we weren’t quite prepared for the biting winter cold. Wearing thick coats, and our warmest gloves, scarves and hats, we stood on the river wall for 90 minutes before the event started, our feet numb from the icy air.

But we were toasty warm compared to many people a few yards away in the river. Wetsuits under fancy dress were largely the order of the day, but a few brave souls were stripped to the waist. They must have been beyond cold, and as the last stragglers came to the end, the mud they were covered in gradually got higher and higher up their bodies.

If you’re one of the first to finish, you’ve had a good run, as the mud is pretty much undisturbed, but if you happen to caught in the mid-field, or are one of the last, you have to walk, crawl, or even roll through the dirty deep sludge which is a now gloopy and full of holes where your faster, more successful competitors have trodden before you.

And the tape? Duct tape is the answer to a mud racer’s prayers. Used to securely fasten gloves and shoes onto bodies, if you don’t use it, you could be in big trouble as the mud sucks off your footwear, leaving you to fall face down in the sludge. One entrant hadn’t thought of this before he started, but just in the nick of time managed to fasten his shoes with parcel tape, making sure he finished, didn’t come to a very muddy end, and got his cold shower from water pumped from the nearby lake.

So, would we do it? Not a chance. From our front row vantage point, we decided there and then that we would forever stay cosy and warm, watching the charity racers do their bit for their chosen good causes. Metaphorical sticks in the mud, if you like.

Well, we’ve stuck to our guns, and over the last two days we’ve been revisiting some old haunts, and discovering some new ones. Aside from walking, one of the activities we’ve missed doing is geocaching, so we’ve been seeking treasure, and getting out into the Essex countryside.

On New Year’s Eve we strolled around Thorndon Park, near Brentwood, and sought three caches, before having a birthday dinner at Verde in Chelmsford (it was my 35th), and then settling in for the night. Sticklers for a quiet life, our now traditional way of seeing the new year in is with the cat, on a rug in the lounge, with warmed camembert from the oven and crusty bread.

As yesterday dawned dry and cold, we drove to Highwood, just outside of Chelmsford and walked the familiar Loves Green geocaching route, which takes in a circular walk through woods, fields, and tracks, and has traditionally been a place where you can see herds of wild deer.

Last time we considered ourselves lucky when we saw a small family group of three, but this time we thought we’d not been quite so fortunate. Three were galloping through the woods just to the left of us, but were so quick, we only just caught sight of them.

Then, in the last field were 43 of them, dancing across the top of the soil. Some distance away, they stopped, stared at us, and then carried on their new year gallop, unaware of both the new resolutions we’d made the night before, and that the new day marked the first day in another year of their lives.

But, will the car give its enemies a bloody nose and defeat them as thoroughly as the chief designer in this Volkswagen launch commercial for the car?

Update, 5 January 2009: The Guardian newspaper’s website reports that the Advertising Standards Authority has received over 100 complaints about the ‘Fight’ commercial, citing excessive violence and pre-watershed showings that may not be suitable for children. Full story here.

We’ve had another very enjoyable Christmas, with a mixture of entertaining, and being entertained. After spending time with Nik’s family in Galleywood on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we hosted mum, Bart, and Geoff at the house, which meant planning a menu and cooking the dishes on it.

A soup was of course always going to make the menu final cut, and after the two dishes we’ve recently made, we needed a new variety to try. So, inspiration struck us while watching Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen, and we found the recipe for her roast squash and sweet potato soup.

Squash is such an autumnal/winter vegetable, and it looks tasty even when it hasn’t been cooked, the bright orange colour contrasting with whatever you choose to mix it with. Nigella couples her soup with a blue cheese and buttermilk sauce, but we chose to leave this out, as it’s not to everyone’s taste.

In Nigella’s recipe, the squash is roasted and blended with sweet potato

While the vegetables have to be roasted and then blended (amazingly with all the skins on), the recipe is simplicity itself, and makes a thick, hearty, and warming soup, full of spicy richness. If you’d like to make Nigella’s roast squash and sweet potato soup, you can find the recipe here.

Three hens-a-laying (left to right): Margot, Gerry, and Barbara’s eggs

With impeccable timing, it was at the start of last week, just in time for Christmas. It was a good job, too, as we needed some more of the chickens’ eggs for the neighbours’ Christmas hampers, which we put on their doorsteps on Christmas morning. Our friends in the road were very pleased; the eggs rubbed shoulders with jars of home made apple chutney, apple jelly, green tomato chutney, and bottles of home brewed beer wine.

Our home made 2008 Christmas hampers, full of self sufficient goodies

But, now that Gerry has matured (she now has yellow feet and an ever-growing comb) and started to lay properly, she’s getting a boisterous streak. It may be that with her new found skill, she’s also got new found confidence to quite literally bite the hands that feed her and her feathery chums.

Just last night when Nik went out to collect the eggs that had been laid later in the day, she nipped his hand through the egg collecting hatch of the Omlet Cube. And, on Christmas Eve she carried out a blocking tactic, standing in the doorway of the chicken house so that we couldn’t close the door and make sure that all three hens were safe for the night.

She’s certainly not living up to her hen-pecked Good Life TV character namesake, more the ginger-haired mischievous one formerly from the Spice Girls. And, rather fittingly, her personality seems to be getting spicier by the day…

The former chancellor’s daughter has always made cooking a little like porn with food, but never so much so as in this very rude but well-edited clip, posted by an enterprising YouTuber:

I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before, it was so easy. It’s only the second time we’ve bottled our home brewed beer, so perhaps the lack of experience played against us last time. Last night, though, we poured our latest batch of the dark golden stuff into its glass containers, learning some valuable lessons from the last time.

In April, we did it the tried and tested way, following the instructions to, quite literally, the letter. That means connecting the drainage tube with the filter on, and siphoning out the contents by way of an airflow into the bottles. Once it starts, it goes very fast and there has to be two of you; one to direct the siphon into the bottles, and one to have another bottle ready to swap when the previous one is full.

What the directions don’t tell you is that you end up with a very messy floor (unless you use a plastic bowl to stand the bottles in as we did), which the cat would delightfully drink up given half the chance. It’s undoubtedly a quick way of doing it, but as we found out, a bit too speedy. Then, it’s a case if wiping everything, and then capping the bottles themselves.

This time the method was a little longer, but much the better (and simpler) one. An initial siphon is given to separate any drinkable liquid from the sediment at the bottom of the fermenter, and any added wood chips which give the beer its ‘aged’ taste. Just the same as when we did the wine a few weeks ago, another fermenter is more than handy at this stage.

Then, rather than siphon the cleared brew into bottles, we used a large glass jug and a funnel to manually pour the beer into our brown bottles, which we’d already put a teaspoon of sugar into, to condition the liquid while it sits for a couple of weeks. And what a difference this method makes. While it may take a little longer, the whole process is much less messy, and virtually hassle-free.

In fact the only problem we had was a shortage of bottles. The home brew kit told us that we would make near 50 pints of ale, and as we only had 27 500cl bottles, we had to pour more than a good amount into a demijohn, and the remainder into one of the snap-top bottles we use for the fruit-tinged spirits. Even the capping seemed easier this time, too.

All in all, after just over an hour (and a little over a week to brew), another success. We had a taste, and our finished Woodforde Great Eastern Ale is very pleasant, and should be even more palatable once the sugar has worked its magic, giving us plenty of perfect brew, ready to be cracked open and drunk over the festive period and beyond.

Bagpuss was my most favourite TV programme when I was a boy, and I have fond memories of the 13 episodes that Firmin and Postage made. And, although I haven’t watched them for years, I can guarantee that they will have stood the test of time. Gentle tales of make do and mend were the order of the day in 1974, which, given the current economic climate, is just one of the reasons why they are still relevant today.

Rather sadly, a whole generation of children has missed out on this man’s marvellous creations and stories. In the modern age, most animation is now created by computer, whereas the Firmin and Postgate team used painfully slow stop-start techniques, which suited their tales well. And, while the rights to some of Postgate’s characters have been sold to bring to a new generation, the mended and fixed versions for the digital age won’t be anywhere near as endearing as those original classics of 30 years ago.

There are over 35 Art Deco buildings in London, and while they are sprinkled around, most seem to be in  the western half of the city’s centre. Walking to Covent Garden to have our post-wedding breakfast at Upper Deck, the café  in the Transport Museum yesterday morning, we chanced upon one of them, Russell Court, on Woburn Place.

My flat in Ipswich is part of an eighteen-strong purpose-built development in three blocks of six built in the late 1930s. I thought that was unique in itself; at the time the apartments must have been quite luxurious – they’re certainly large, quiet, well-made, and eclipse anything modern. But they have nothing on the scale of Russell Court.

A development of over eighty apartments over eight floors, and made of dark red brick, there almost definitely some similarities with my place in Ipswich. Rows of crittal bay-fronted windows give way to two concrete column entrances. Russell Court is certainly obvious, imposing and grand in scale, but yet somehow glamorous, too.

Around the corner in Coram Street there’s yet more flats, just as equally packed in and with as beautifully stylish a façade as their relatives a few yards away. One of the best aspects of the development, though, is the Coram Street car park, which is tucked away underground, and with 90 spaces, provides out of sight and off-street parking for £19.00 per day.

Close-up: rows of crittal windows on the corner of 1930s Russell Court

Now run by NCP, dark and open-mouthed tunnel must be famous for something other than swallowing cars for combustion engine powered commuters. I’d heard about it before, and seen it on the television, but I could turn up nothing noteworthy about it or Russell Court on the internet. The brickwork above the entrance curves around in a gentle fashion, and rows upon rows of tall windows look out onto the sun in the west.

A forecourt and filling station used to reside on the corner of the car park entrance, at the junction of Coram Street and Woburn Place. Well-to-do motorists used to have to drive into the car park over part of the filling station forecourt, and there have been many previous planning applications to change the building just in front of the entrance, all of which have been refused.

Rightly so, too. An underrated and spectacular display of 1930s architecture, Russell Court and its underground car park are more deserving of a more sparkling and less ordinary history that seems to have eluded it. Of course, if you should know of a more glamorous previous life in the history of the development, please post a comment below.