Arthur Marshall

As long as it's still got some water in it on Monday I don't care.

Reopening tomorrow (Friday) morning.

That's about right. Takes me at least fifteen hours to do a three minute music video, not counting recording time.

I use both. Nicholsons on the boat, apps at home. Route planning on the canal ststem isn't exactly rocket science unless you're either trying to navigate round sudden stoppages or going through Birmingham. My old Nicholsons have useful scribbles on them, the apps have up to date shops and pubs.

I think the problem is that boating is usually pretty dull. Not much happens on any trip, so anything like a venture down the weed hatch, getting rocked by a speeding boat or getting in the water is worth a few minutes of film. Just pottering along isn't really very cinematic.

On those grounds, the BSS could insist on a hull survey being done every four years to show the boat isn't going to sink while they're on it. Obviously, a full professional risk assessment of any landing stage, pontoon, or towpath mooring should be provided to show initial access is safe. Oh, and the boat owner should have a million quids worth of public liability insurance in case the inspector slips and stubs their toe. Farce.

Perhaps they want the smoke alarms outside the boat, just above the chimbley.

Lots of music on at the warehouse pub in the basin, can be annoying if moored there and yiru don't like it. Often folk based and sessions.

Mine was about an hour and a half, involved peering round the engine and batteries with a torch, testing both CO alarms and a fair bit more round the boat. There's probably a lot more paperwork since your day too, including a declaration signed by the owner that the boat is for leisure use etc, which is a new thing.

What on earth is "equivalence of coaching" or an "appointed experienced personal champion" ? My bloke said that any new examiners will have to have six months with a mentor, which is probably the same thing in English as opposed to manager-speak. No wonder it's getting harder and harder to find anyone local. I think he was probably right that they want it to end up at designated boatyards only (like MOT centres), which, seeing as CRT seem to be doing their best to put them out of business too, will be interesting.

CRT charge nearly £100 now for the paperwork. Which seeing as how its about six sheets of tick boxes and everything else is done online is ridiculous. The cost has more or less doubled every time.

I always knew moving to Macclesfield was a mistake. I blame the women...

It's also now £7000 in initial fees.

That was the implication. They are being asked to report how many boats have them.

Well no, because if they actually checked stuff regularly, they wouldn't break down so often as small problems would be fixed before they turned into crises. The breach a few years ago on the T&M that flooded Northwich happened partly because nobody had ever checked the spillway valves, and when the water rose they couldn't be turned as they were rusted solid. All that would have needed was the bloke walking the towpath as a spotter having a can of grease with him. But the spotters don't report problems. Got close enough to evacuate the town. I suppose they could have waited an hour or two.

I know. My last one, I suspect.

I'm sorry to say he checked everything rather too thoroughly for my liking, including doing stuff nobody else has ever done (that I can remember), such as a smoke test on the Rinnai water heater and the dates on the CO doofers. Must have been on the boat two hours. He did say that the next test would almost certainly insist on smoke detectors too. The other interesting thing that came up in conversation was that it seems all new examiners are expected to be gas safe qualified and something else I forget. He thought it quite possible that the test would soon get so technical it could only be done at boatyards with specialised equipment.

Because Richard Parry knows a lot about trains. The new boss knows a lot about running Shelter badly. Neither of them know bugger all about running a canal system. Just like the management at Thames Water know a lot about paying dividends, and nothing about sewers.

Perhaps if they hadn't cut the maintenance bloke... And perhaps if they'd got it fixed in their original timescale instead of some point increasingly vanishing into the future. What will change the rest of their "financial landscape" is a load of boaters giving up because they can't go anywhere.

Bang goes my wife's fortnight on the boat. She's not happy, nor me... The trouble with going the other way is the risk of not getting home when they shut the whole length. I can see the boat going on the market next year.

Just to wind this up, just had a test done by Michael Shaw, very efficient and very pleasant to deal with. And the old tub passed, which is always good.

Over 200 grand a year qualifies as a big salary.

I did that once, working with another single hander opening and closing each other's gates. Back then almost all the double locks were working. I suspect you couldn't do it now.

That's a good day's work. I take at least two days and sometimes three!

I've always thought of mine as a biscuit tin with a bit of padding.