Arthur Marshall

Running an Electrolux 3 way fridge on gas, I'm getting too much air into the burner if I turn the fridge up to 3. Works fine on 1 and 2, but in hot weather it needs turning up and it's trying to make too hot a flame. Is there an adjustment to the control knob that will turn it down a bit? I presume that's where the problem lies as it seems to be a smooth increase as you turn the control up rather than three specific settings. I can't find a schematic for the thing anywhere.

That's what they told me last year - all on seasonal contracts. With an agency. But I've known some of them for many years, and will miss them. And still no explanation for the need to book.

Seems to be an update of the eCanal maps, which have stopped working on a lot of phones. They say that they'll honour any previous purchases, so it presumably will load the updated maps. I look forward to finding out...

The Quakers are notorious pragmatists - remember the quote from one confronted with a burglar: "Friend, I mean thee no harm, but thou art standing where I am about to shoot." I'm sure Josiah squared it with his conscience OK! It's also hard to see how anyone could have avoided some form of contact with the products of the trade. You could well argue that the situation in the mills and factories wasn't a lot better than slavery in some ways, though of course there's still a fundamental difference. I always found it interesting that while slavery, in order to work, reduced people to property, recently departments once referred to as "personnel" got renamed as "human resources" - once again reducing humanity to the status of things like chairs and filing cabinets.

I am slightly paranoid as I've had a lot of trouble with diesel leaks into the SR2 engine oil. It's been fine for a couple of years since I replaced the leak off rail but the level showing on the stick is up a bit again, by about a quarter inch. Could this just be a result of the boat trim changing? - since I last looked I've near emptied the water at the bow and put a load of diesel in the tank at the back so the boat's at a noticeably different angle. I do have my suspicions about the quality of the replacement rail - the first on the guy put on fell to bits as he fitted it.

It's not "cancel" culture - it's just that some people have finally realised that it's daft (and possibly wrong or, at least, stupid) to consider that footballers, rock singers, dead politicians or slave traders should be held up as role models, or remembered for anything other than their actual achievements. Which in some cases were great, in most cases, like most of us ordinary folk, a mixture, and in some cases, totally reprehensible.

I suspect this happened a few years ago about the time they stopped getting paid for their lunch breaks, and were forced to stop tunnel traffic for that half hour, which actually meant a lot longer as no-one could be in the tunnel at that time either, and their lunch time was specified so they couldn't be flexible as they had been in the past. They were seasonal employees, presumably on a new contract each time, so they probably just assumed...

I don't think we need worry. Unless there was a slave trader called Mr Caldon or Sir Trentandmersey we are unlikely to be targeted. After all, no-one has stopped going to cheap car washes because they are usually staffed by trafficked folk, have they?

No doubt this why we now have to book for the tunnel, as there's going to be some very cross people if the volunteers don't turn up. There's already been one occasion when the fan didn't get turned on, and if you have volunteers manning the tug? The whole rationale for booking being due to Covid is obvious nonsense. Hey ho.

Pedestrians have already been killed by cyclists on pavements. Hasn't resulted in any enforcement... Who's going to do it anyway? Especially now the police are being told their main job is to count up to six and tell the time...

Bollington today, guy walking on towpath, cyclist belts up behind him, shouts "excuse me". Old walking guy is either deaf (like me) or has had enough, keeps walking in the centre of the path. There's no room to overtake, cyclist hasn't got a bell, so a hundred yards later as they go round the corner out of sight, old deaf chap is still trudging slowly along with the cyclist behind him. Of course pedal boy could have got off the bike and politely pushed it past him, but obviously never thought of it. Made me laugh, anyway.

I still find it weird that anyone can comfortably leave a multi thousand pound investment, full of desirable stuff, totally insecure and unattended for weeks at a time on the towpath. It reaffirms my faith in human nature that hardly any get vandalised, broken into or stolen.

How odd. Nor have I...

Has anyone ever done a marketing survey (which is what this is) that they are going to use in advertising without agreeing in advance with the surveyors what the results will be? And probably writing the triumphant press release? Luckily, now we have social media, we have lots of people who believe everything they read on it.

RCR seem to be trialling a new version of the android canal map for free, saying it's now one download for the entire system. Didn't work for me, and seems only free till the year end, but might interest some of us. It's the beta version, apparently. IOS out in the new year. Looks like they're dumping support for all the old eCanal maps, which is annoying, but I suppose that's progress, in the sense that you're supposed to bin what works fine and buy something new but not as good. Old Nicholsons are better, anyway...

Why would you want it in your own garden?

On the Macc this morning, dog craps on the towpath, owner dutifully picks it up, bags it. Puts bag tidily on lock landing bollard next to where I'm waiting to go up Bosley. "Dog bin at the next lock", I say. "There's one just back there" he says, walking off. "I'll pick it up on my way back. I'm not walking around carrying that about". The bin at the previous lock is about ten yards from where he's left it. And before you ask, by the time the conversation was done I was in the middle of the cut going in the lock, so I'm afraid i left it there, as did the boat following me.

Can't see how a surveyor could spot this as he'd have no idea of the original tank size, or how the bowthruster impinged on it. Surveyors are very keen to stress they don't look deeply into stuff, some for example won't take pictures off a wall to chevk for damp. If they can't see it, it aint there. Mostly, they're a waste of time and money.

Farm moorings are fairly secure, especially if people are living on their boats there. But there's no real security on a boat, they're easy to break into though it's still a rare occurrence. On farms, I've been broken into twice in thirty years, both times by a tramp (prob not the same one!)looking for somewhere to sleep and doing very little damage and no theft, though there was booze and money on the boat. He did eat a pot noodle though, pooor sod, so he must have been desperate. And I had a genny nicked many years ago. A friend of mine had his engine stolen though!

Thanks Tony. By the by, your advice has been invaluable over the years - I've still got printouts of some of your training sheets from years back!

I've an old air cooled Lister SR2, currently running happily after a bit of fettling. I usually fill it with Morris oil, SAE 30, API/SD/CC but someone on here said they'd been using Carlube Daytona oil, which is about half the price. It's 20/50 multigrade, and the spec is API/SE/CC. What do the experts think - is the latter OK or should I go back to the expensive stuff? I'm a leisure boater, usually about one six week cruise and three or four two week cruises a year plus a bit of pottering about.

My CO alarm went off halfway through a tunnel, which I thought a bit odd. Nothing on. Stuck it on the roof with new batteries and it went off again. Bought some at same time for the house and they're all behaving properly.

I don't think it's changed much, really. There are just more boats about, and therefore more selfish thoughtless buggers than there used to be. On the other hand, there are more of the good guys too. You just don't remember them like you do the ones that knock your whisky bottle off the shelf.