Arthur Marshall

Thanks. My first google search didn't find it. I wonder if you book a 3pm passage and there's no one coming the other way, if they'll make you wait? They showed a fair bit of common sense last year.

Black Prince website says the Harecastle is open for unbooked passages 8am to noon, but you have to book for an afternoon , with only one northward passage at 3pm, and two southbound at 2 and 4. I can't find anything at all about it on the CRT website, where the last info I can find only goes up to last October and I don't recall seeing anything in the (always informative) Boaters Update. Does anyone know if this information is correct? If not, I'll contact CRT myself to check.

The house I was buying had been rented out, and the tenants knew they were moving on in six months, so did the solicitors and so did I. I just sold my house and moved onto the boat for the interim. My solicitor rang me, said she was getting nowhere with the vendor and refused to deal with their solicitor any more, so I rang him. He said "there are tenants in it" I said I know, we're getting ready for me to buy it at the end of their tenancy. He said "But there are tenants in it. Aren't they naughty?" and put the phone down on me. I got off the boat, drove up and tried to kick the practice d

Troubles is, with 96 pages of legalese written by politicians with no training in anything but PR or journalism, you're going to get loopholes. If it had been kept simple and direct, people would know where they were. We're still trying to make head or tail of the situation for band rehearsals - guidance is often self-contradictory and changes every couple of weeks. There are rules, exceptions, advice, suggestions and interpretations. The guidance for churches is incomprehensible.

Certainly for house purchase, most of the work is done by the most junior person, which is why usually the quality is dire. I've been in the middle of selling a house to buy another only to discover that I hadn't actually bought the first one properly years before and had to sort that out before selling, and a solicitor for another who simply refused to supply any paperwork. Oone lot, I only got any action by threatening to report them to the Law Society. My current house, the lawyers missed rights of way across the land. I found if you don't hassle the hell out of them, nothing happens.

A few from my mooring have been out for a day or so. A couple of hire boats have wandered past too. I may be out next week, though I'd rather not, but my wife's got stuff to do in May so if we're going to have an early trip it's then or never. Just hope it stops snowing.

What will drive the numbers down is simply the collapse of the network. You'll have people living on them virtually stationary, hire boats, and that's it.