BlueStringPudding

*party pupper (I'll get me coat)

I've livened Sam up a bit 😉 Happy borkday, fren.

Yes. I like to paint the stove and flue different colours every few years, though. But I also give the paint a quick sand and touch-up every summer. The destructions on the paint say to cure it (once dry) with initially a small fire of kindling only, then before fully cooled, make a longer, hotter fire (I use kindling and coal for that) Both curings create fumes so doors and windows need to be open, and I prefer to abandon ship till it's done. However what sometimes happens is the first very cold day of winter, I must have the stove hotter than usual because it can get fumified again for a short while. Again, I just open doors and windows till it passes. After that there's no more fumes. I use Thermacure brush-on stove paints. In response to the OP, back when my stove was black, I used as many coats of black stove paint as would use up a small tin. It was quite a few coats (maybe 5) but thoroughly covered the metal. I cured it as described above. And then as Monkey does, used a black graphite looking stove polish in the summer to tart it up each year.

Couldn't give a flying proverbial who reads my whole post, or just one sentence, or none at all. It's a forum post of my opinion and experience, not a Masters dissertation with a word count. So you'll hopefully accept in the manner it's intended, my disregard for your suggestion / alleged joke. (Verbose enough for you? I could just say: "Meh, go edit one of the newbie-bulliers instead. They need it," but why should I?) 😉

I totally agree, Balloon. I rarely recommend the forum to newbies anymore., I'm am sad to say. I joined in 2006. I hate hearing myself say to people not to take it personally when (not if) one or two grumpy people on CWDF come across as arrogant, dismissive or unkind. It's a handful of people, but of course they're the most vocal, and it makes the whole forum seem unapproachable. I don't understand why anyone would want to give advice to a newbie by cutting them down cruelly. That's not advising, sometimes it seems like bullying, or "you're not in my club" belittling. Utterly unhelpful, and makes all boaters seem like arseh*les. I think that If the forum had been like that when I first researched boat-buying, and i frequently came here to ask questions about everything from technical problems to boating etiquette, I would have gained the impression that a lot of canal boaters must be unpleasant people, must hate outsiders, and act superior. I could easily have decided not to want to be part of all that pomposity, not to buy a boat, and not to become part of the canal boating community. Fortunately, 15 years ago this forum felt much more welcoming and was much more representative of the open, friendly attitude of most people on the canals. And i soon met many of the old skool forum contributors in real life on my travels and at banters, and have remained firm friends ever since. In fact, i actively wanted to meet the new friends I had made online at CWDF. I wonder how many newbies don't get to experience that, because of dismissive or patronising responses to their first posts making them think: "what a bunch of tw*t's," turn around and never come back. When the forum became more politicised and so comparatively less boaty a few years ago, there was a lot of online unpleasantness and bullying publicly and in private across here. We lost a lot of previous members (especially women) who added some balance, and several of those who remained on the books, just stopped posting. (I didn't post on the forum for a long, long time. It's still a fairly rare thing for me these days). Those people will never come back. They've moved to Facebook, in all sorts of groups, fracturing the rather special CWDF mixing-pot community that once it was. And CWDF has a negative and unapproachable reputation among some Facebook groups, which is a shame. We made our bed, now we lay in it. But I do think it does this place good when someone relatively new holds a mirror up to our faults, and reminds us that we can do better for the next generation of boaters, as well as for our existing canal friends and colleagues. (Nice one, Balloon) 👏 Let's think before we speak unkindly on someone's post, especially to newbies going out on a limb to try and educate themselves. It is possible to give honest advice while still being supportive; to at least sign-post specifically to where they can find out what they need to know if it seems like a naive question; and to resist the urge to act like a keyboard warrior or, to put it plainly: to not be a scornful nobhead. 🤔

Yes, that confused me too so I Google Mapped Heath and Reach to look for the nearest bit of canal. I'm guessing it's halfway between The Globe and the three locks? I also think of it as Linslade. I always think of Heath and Reach as up the hill, out the back of town, (where allotment gardeners congregate to gripe about the wind turbine, and the local woods are weirdly sandy) - and nowhere near the canal. 😃

It's one of my favourite. Especially out in the sticks, (where this fire took place).

Apparently a dead body has been found

Does anybody know what happened in Banbury early this morning? Apparently there were several police officers and firemen there, and some of the area of the canal by Spiceball Park has been cordoned off / closed. Police were escorting people off their boats into the park. I've heard there's a search of the park underway too.

Welcome, Lee and Helena. If I see you pootling past on the Cov, I'll give you a wave 😊👋

*Surreptitiously checks the Bristol Stool Chart...*

Well, that's an optimistic conclusion one could leap to...

I was laughing so much, Balloon, I accidentally pressed the crying smiley instead of the laughing one, just then. I know that kind of wee. It is most of my wees.

There are special websites for that kinda thing, MTB. Ironically, thanks to likelihood of in-store CCTV, I suspect there is spectacular video footage of my vomitnami from the other side of the glass at M&S 🤔

I would never cast nasturtiums on MTB. But neither would I drink his cider. (Not because he's in any way dubious, only because I had an incident with several ciders at a friend's 18th birthday party as a teenager, and ever since can't even smell the stuff without reliving the experience of vomiting up the window of M&S the next morning. Oh, and on to my boyfriend-at-the-time's black suede trainers too! (Never vomited on Tree Monkey's shoes, and that's because I'm such a catch 😂😉)) I don't doubt that to someone who has never regurgitated up a shop window, MTB's cider would be delicious and imbibed in perfect company