Arthur Marshall

I got the local welding blokes to knock mine up for me. There are reports most years of boats sinking because of badly fixed weed hatches, I was lucky, mine sank for completely different reasons.

When I got my boat, the only thing holding the weedhatch cover down was a bit of breezeblock. Wasn't until the test came in that I realised there should have been something more.

And bear in mind that in thirty years of boating I have always bought good quality automatic bilge pumps, and on every occasion when they should have worked, they haven't. Result, one sinking, two near sinkings. I still have one, but I wouldn't trust it and am surprised so many do.

Just out of interest, how do you break a composting loo?

Ah, it is in the Sun. Someone who has been earning 90 grand as a solicitor can't work out how to put a portapotti in the boat, or a shower? No wonder she lost her job/decided to change direction. It's just a reminder that the tabloids are about as good an information source as the internet!

Me too. Me raising my kids, too. And, oddly enough, there are plenty of crappy bits of towns where it is still exactly the same, except with an indoor toilet, though it might well be shared. There's a lot of substandard, small, cold and damp rentals - my daughter lived in one with two kids which cost a thousand quid in fees for her to get a key. Don't make the mistake of thinking poverty has gone away just because we've gone away from it.

Can you actually stop a bilge getting rusty?

Have you noticed it's always other people doing it? It's as odd as everyone except oneself breaking the speed limit, littering or not picking up after their dog. Or, in our cases, overstaying, running gennies at the wrong time, etc etc. If only other people would behave properly, life would be so much better.

Your kind of approach would spoil half the fun on here.

I think anyone is entitled to do anything they want that makes them feel safe. What does intrigue me is that I've hardly been out of the house for a year apart from visiting one ill person who I support (who is healthy apart from the cancer), the co-op at eight in the morning when it's empty, and the only person I've been anywhere near is my wife, who is even more careful than me, and I've got a cold.

Dunno. Don't care much. I'm not. I've given up bothering about what everyone else does. I don't even care if they don't show their licence disks. People generally do what they think is right and more or less lawful, whatever that is this afternoon. Apart, obviously from the Derbyshire police, Matt Hancock and someone else whose name I forget, who don't even worry about it.