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Last year I came across a boat moored overnight on the only working Great Hayward water point at 7:00am, after I had specifically got up early to get water. They weren't impressed when I woke them up by breasting up and running my hose over their boat. I merely pointed out that if you don't want to.be woken early, then you shouldn't moor on a service point and carried on filling my tank.

Not a question! I thought I'd describe how I did mine as it might help someone on a budget. It cost me pennies. Horrible gold coloured anodising - I don't know why anyone would choose that but I guess is sort of looks like brass if you squint and matches the portholes. Mine looked like this. As you can see not only has the anodising broken down but some twot screwed them on with cheap screws. That itself deserves a thread but I did manage to get them out/remove heads and removed the windows. To put them back I had to drill another set of holes. I used S/S screws to refix. Finding a small/big enough countersink bit was another headache, but that's the fun of these things I suppose. I looked into having them stripped and re-anodised but the cost was similar to new windows and due to the chemicals it's not a DIY possibility. Next I looked into painting them. I thought I ought to spray for a good finish. There are many options but all involve using a decent ali primer of course. Eventually I decided to try a rustoleum one coat metallic paint that claimed to be suitable for aluminium. This stuff. https://www.rustoleum.com/en/product-catalog/consumer-brands/universal/universal-metallic-spray-paint Cheap as chips and one can covered 3 windows following the instructions. When I did mine, Screwfix were selling the paint for £6.99 a can. First of course I had to clean sand them thoroughly. I think I went for about 240 grit to make it reasonably easy, then followed up with brown scotch brite to get into all the corners. Carefully masked to avoid painting the main glass seal and went for it. No need to remove the anodising, you're just prepping the surface for paint, it took 2-3 hours to sand each - maybe longer, time is a good healer! Then thoroughly clean - I used paint thinners (proper stuff, not turps). Blowing the dust off with a compressor would have been a good start but I did mine in the back of a van in the car park. Also I chose to do the job in the summer so everything stayed nice and dry throughout. At one point I got a nasty run on a drip bar so had to wash it off with thinners to start again and what I saw was fascinating (to me anyway!). Despite 2 coats with about 20 minutes between, this clever paint had separated itself into layers - there was lacquer on top, metallic gold under that then a grey undercoat and finally a white primer at the bottom - how do they do that?!!! Seeing that gave me some confidence in the paint. The insides of course were in good order, like new once cleaned up so I left them - you can't see both at the same time. I left the main frame in one piece, but removed the hopper catchers, condensation drain covers and drip rail to paint separately. I replaced all the seals apart from the main glass seal as it was in good order and I didn't want to risk taking the main frames apart - those are held together with self tappers into the extrusions and no doubt some would have snapped with the ensuing nightmare that would cause. In fact that would have made the window junk, impossible to sort out as you cannot drill hardened steel out of aluminium so I would advise anyone doing this to leave them as I did. Top tip for seals - cut them too long - all of them, foam, plastic - those screw covers on the picture below were an order of inches longer than needed but they compress - this allows for future shrinkage so hopefully they'll still meet in the corners in 10 years time. Cram as much in as you can is my advise. Here's how it finished up. They are into their third winter now and still looking the same, no defects. It's quite soft for a while so we avoided cleaning them for a few months but it's hard enough to reassemble and refit without damaging the paint. Not too bad? I did pick one that wasn't too "in your face" gold and not too metallic sparkly. I hope that's interesting and some use to anyone scratching their heads for a cheap refurb option. I'm very pleased with the results.

Yes, I can offer advice on prepping steel for two-pack epoxy; the best forms heating your boat in winter; correct pressures at which to set an accumulator and hot water expansion tank for your freshwater system, etc. However when it comes to organ transplants I wouldn't have a clue so it's probably better to follow the opinions of the medical experts. If doctors disagree with each other then ask some more questions about why they think that, and then put their points to each other.

You can't go to Mornington Cresent on a diagonal

A new COVID19 mutation has been identified circulating in the population of Wigan. It has been designated the Pi variant.