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My viewpoint too. If I can afford to get someone to do what I don't particularly feel like doing, I will. If I can't, I'll do it myself. I feel the same way about engines - a Lister isn't exactly a complicated beast but why risk making a botch if I can get a bloke to do it? I'd rather spend the time playing the trumpet. Mind you, the neighbours would probably prefer me to be fixing the engine...

An alternative theory is that the engineer who built these two locks had a sense of humour, and thought "This will fox them in 200 years time, trying to work out why I did this. I bet they come up with all sorts of weird theories. A similar argument may explain why the Oxford switches from single to double bottom gates at Banbury (though construction did pause there for a few years).

Today in 2012 we were in the basin at Erqulinnes on the Belgian French border preparing to join in the protest cruise on the Sambre Oise waterway which had been closed for a few years because of a small subsidence of an aqueduct.. The Sambre river after Charleroi is very attractive and the locks are for the 38m peniche although unfortunately it is not used much by the commercials . It is a good link from Belgium to France and both ends are busy commercially but nothing in the center section except pleasure boats. Even now 9 years later it is still closed although work is now going on

Indeed, I wouldn’t trust our solicitor to do an engine service!?

When I said "Dip the headlights..."

As Pluto says it depends to some extent to the boaters area of operation. Many boaters speak with various accents in one sentence. As boaters mainly learnt by listening, picking up the pronunication of words as the locals in the towns and villages they passed through. Mike will say "Oxford" with a lovely drawl and in the next breath say " 'tis ar" with a Black Country accent. Others: Welluck, Braaaunston, Brummagem. To turn a boat he will say wind as in fart.?

Spelling is important to me, as is grammar, but then I am fortunate to have had a good education. Not everyone is, and not everyone learned English as their first language. Anything in the public domain -- signs, books, news articles, etc. -- should obey the rules of spelling and grammar, but it doesn't make someone a lesser person if they can't, any more than it would make them a lesser person for having a big nose or sticky out ears. winding or winding - to wind (rhyming with inn) as a verb means to burp a baby or forcefully eject air from the lungs making it difficult to breathe. To wind (rhyming with wine) means to turn. A narrow-boaty friend says "winding holes" (to rhyme with inn), I think he's talking shite (to rhyme with fight)...

Whenever this comes up I ask, "How do you know how the 'old' boatmen pronounced it?" There is evidence (eg Shakespeare) that wind as in the air that blows was pronounced w-eye-nd not w-i-nd as now. I have not so far been able to find out when the change occurred - the only likely evidence comes from verse where rhyming is indicated, not that reliable. However, the use of wind to turn a canal boat does seem improbable. OK, if it was blowing the right way it might help but as often as not it would hinder or just be unhelpful. It seems to me much more likely that the original term came from the operation of turning a boat around. In which case w-eye-nd is more likely to be the 'proper' pronunciation!

And when you turn up in a 70 footer and there are a couple of shorter boats in the queue in front of you, you have to go in last, and come out first!

When my mum passed we let the solicitor do the probate. Mum had always hoarded paperwork, there were bank statements and share certificates dating back to the mid 70's. She'd had a friend who was an ex-bank manager and had dabbled in lots of small investments over the years on his advice and it was impossible to easily tell which were existing or cashed out. Also my wife works for one of the "big four" accountancy firms so there was a compliance issue once we inherited everything as potentially some of the shares were in their client companies. we had done a lot of the legwork, but i was happy to hand over three full fileboxes of paper to someone else to sort out and chase down. It took them around a month and a half to sort, and cost less than a grand, worth it for less stress and peace of mind.

Our lad isnt opening his until may 17th. It all depends on overheads and outside space. The pub we went to last evening has a huge garden with a purpose built outside bar so can operate well, they also are a proper pub as in beer with a small amount of food so easier to do. The lads pub takes serious money but mainly inside and its not worth him opening until he can operate one hundred percent. There were a lot of smiles here now people are getting their lives back and at the pub last night.

That does have a certain appeal. Much of the worlds ills are caused by commercialisation and demand for more and more 'goods'.

A skew viaduct, the now defunct Leamington Spa to Rugby, via Marton Junction railway at Radford Semele over the GU.

Our standard bog isn’t gas.

Thank you everyone - some sound advice along the feedback here

the usual Norman 32ft is back, but this time it looks a little different

as the seller, you'd still be liable to pay the listing fees to eBay calculated on the BIN price of £40k no matter what you actually settled for personally i wouldn't list/sell/buy for any amount of money on eBay that i wasn't prepared to lose, but that's just me.

Two as you ask.....and yes they are very good friends with each other with similar interests.

simple the next lock down is Somerton Deep Lock, which would drain the pound above it, if the weir lock was not able to pass down the same amount of water.