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Which, if you are going to the elsan every few days anyway, seems to negate all the effort of separation in the first place. Mind you, "tree huggers" do seem to occasionally struggle with logic !!

I remember doing Atherstone back in the mists of time, without vollies turning up and interfering with my peaceful and unhurried boating. Those were the days.....

This morning, lock 13 W&B. There's just a higher quality of graffiti near Worcester!

Good for you, another rare land owning separating toilet user... but it's notable that you and others extolling the virtues of separating toilets still avoid addressing the wee issue unless pressed and don't have an acceptable practical answer. Or do you transport 3 months of festering urine to your land too? I suggest the vast majority of liveaboards are not land owners or they wouldn't live on a boat. IMO it's irresponsible to encourage people to install toilets with no acceptable means of disposing their waste products.

That’s sadly what’s now wrong with the world… “you’ve got insurance so why worry”….. much the same as I was told by plod after having £40k worth of kit nicked from a site…. Somehow it’s always someone else that pays….in reality we all pay through higher premiums.

Every time you mention ceramic bowls an pump out tanks and £1,000+ and £100's on maintenance you sound more and more desperate. You are over egging it. e.g. I'm a liveaboard and have a cassette toilet and spare cassette that was on the boat when I bought it 5 years ago. So far it's cost £0 to maintain and £0 to empty it. Your £100 home made bog seems expensive to me. I suspect anyone with a cassette toilet is laughing at your attempts to justify your choice on cost. You tip your pee god knows where, put your poo in dog bins? Street waste bins? because there is no "green" way for you to deal with it and your toilet cost you a comparative fortune. Cassettes, even flushing ones use almost zero water so you can't win there either. You're loosing the argument on all fronts, in fact I suggest you get a cassette toilet so at least you'll be able to stop dumping your piss and shit in the local environment. No need to thank me.

I always get given a box of various real ales at Christmas by several people, none of whom have noticed I hate the stuff. Luckily my wife likes it, and whisky, which was my tipple of choice until it struck me that I was up to two or three bottles a day and it possibly wasn't too healthy. I haven't touched the stuff since. If we get invited to a party I make sure I'm driving as it saves bothering with explanations. I was never an alcoholic, I just could never see the point of stopping drinking until the bottle was empty.

Alcohol eh? The government approved heavy drug of choice. Rather a lot of people equate how much fun they're having with how drunk they are, it's a fact! Then some of them find they can't enjoy themselves without being drunk. Then some of those become alcoholics who can't even function without it. A slippery slope for some. I used to love getting completely fall down drunk when I was a youngster, in the pub every night for 5-6 pints of real ale was just normal and even at college I had a couple every lunchtime. Got bored of it eventually.. or maybe it was when I had kids... or maybe it was when the weekend hangover lasted all week. Don't drink at all these days or go to the pub to be bored stupid by drunk people who think they are amusing. Sober people should probably be banned from pubs, we ruin the atmosphere.

The magnets would be better employed stuck on your oil filter can. They are doing nothing on a fire extinguisher. Needle in the green? Just give them a good shaking every month or so.

Give 'em a shake now and again and they are fine. Just a handy place to store magnets which "like" to be stuck on something known as a keep to stop them loosing their power. ?

Maybe it’s because of my day job but I have a rule of no alcohol till moored up & finished for the day. ….friends I’ve taken on day trips don’t see why but if the worst happens and I end up being called to a coroners court Id rather say that I wasn’t impaired by alcohol…if that’s boating or running a show.

Do you think any composter will take their liquid waste to the elsan?

It ceased to float.

A friend of mine is a retired copper who if prompted after a pint or three, will happily regale you with tales of how few real coppers there are nowadays. There were weekend shifts sometimes when he was just one of three on duty, expected to police the whole of Berkshire from Slough to Hungerford. And how making just one arrest would result in the arresting officer spending a day or more in the office filling in paperwork so they were always reluctant to arrest anyone, as it was such a ball-ache for them. Really quite disturbing and the reason he was delighted to get out when he did.

A few years ago you could not make all male/all female bookings. I'm not sure when that changed, but it looks like most hire companies. permit it now. It all comes down to money. The 10 / 12 berth boats are nice little earners. Out of interest, I just checked online how much a 10 berth ABC boat would cost next weekend. £1550 for 3 nights. I wonder if the hire companies insurance covers them for the loss of a boat in circumstances like this? I mean, who in their right mind would hire out 3 boats to a stag do and not expect trouble?

Why is that farcical? Have you been the victim of a burglary or theft? Maybe if you had arrived at your parents house to find it ransacked as I have you might appreciate some effort to catch the culprits…or perhaps if that’s not going to happen we should be allowed to carry out our own justice…when my kit was stolen and we said to plod we and the local hells angels which one of my crew was a member would sort it then we were told we would be arrested…..

Maybe if the bins are low enough you could take a direct shit in one. You could carry your own two foot plank about, with hole in so you can put it across the top of the bin and sit without the worry of getting your arse stuck.

Sounds about right, but you're missing the efficiency generated by adding in private sector incentives (the NHS fires the rower before hiring him back via a newly-formed private contracting agency specialising in rowers with NHS experience that's run by the Director of Steering's old schoolfriend at twice the previous annual cost) "Creating a market for canal service innovation" consisting of paying inflated fees to contractors with good relations with government ministers might be the best hope of the CRT keeping its grant though...

Almost certainly 1 paid CRT employee and 5 volunteers, especially when you see the ages they look. Something similar to this appeared on Facebook a few years ago when a group of us (all volunteers) were cutting the offside vegetation. We'd moved to the towpath to stop for some lunch and a nearby moorer photographed us standing around. He wrote something derogatory like 'this is what we pay our licence fee for'. Some people seize every opportunity to have a go at CRT and I agree much of the time it's justified (especially with the erection of unnecessary signs). And I have to admit I did find this photo of the sign erection funny 🙂. But a lot of CRT haters take it seriously and really do think it's their licence fees being wasted.

Scratch up the surface and bung on the bitumen.

Looks like the locking stud has sheared off or is that just the mark of a bolt end that was pinched onto the shaft? It should have been a pointed screw in a drilled dimple. I reckon a Centaflex would lock onto the remains of that shaft, they have a lot of wind up in the collet.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm quite confident it will be ok now

One hire company has advertised that they will pre-stock the boat with lager if requested, so the hire companies know exactly what type of customer they want to attract.

No doubt after the alcohol has passed through their system into the cut, they will turn up suitably chastened with so many stories between them that the truth will never appear. Any (financial) charges that are made above their deposit will be promised and immediately forgotten about. Legal follow up will be so fogged by time, memory and multiple stories the only winner will, as usual, be the lawyers. I much prefer, as mentioned above, the Hells Angels type response which is immediate and memorable. I know, I'm a bad boy for suggesting that. I'm really, really sorry.

Thank you all for your help and advice but just to report I located a Port Navigation Light on E-Bay. It has a chrome body, but as I'm only interested in the lens, it was a good find. Regards and Thanks Brian.

The only cops I ever see "on the street" are community police, not proper ones. They are there just for show and to direct people to the nearest public convenience. Real cops wouldn't lower themselves, they are far to self-important and busy in the station one finger typing up reports on crime they failed to attend.

Judging by the way my local plod seem only too keen to put how they are stopping people parking on the curb etc on Facebook I suggest it’s less to do with lack of manpower and more to do with having an easy life

Sorry, the word "farcical" was used ironically, as I thought would be obvious from the context. Judging by the response of other coppers, they think it's a daft idea, which, in view of staffing levels and the virtual improbability of catching a culprit, it probably is. If you want a decent police force, properly trained etc, you have to pay for it, not cut numbers endlessly and then try to patch it ip by arming "specials" with tasers.

One really must go a bit further when taking the piss. Some drivers speed etc etc, that doesn't mean we stop all driving.

OK for you in the middle of nowhere, but what about the hoards of trendies in that there London where I suspect the majority of separators reside - down the nearest road drain along with their old engine oil?

Or the poor addicts who have to steal to get their fix, or the drunks with "mentol helf" who are really not responsible but are sick. Perhaps they will learn. Eventually.

This is a better way to do it....

Bagging dog shit was originally invented by dogs as a way of ensuring that their DNA is protected in the event of a silly end-of-world scenario which would probably be caused by humans. Dogs are clever. They realise that some humans would survive and they would probably have the technology available and seek ways to recreate canine companions. It's entirely probable that this can be done from waste products. Preservation is key here.