Peter X

It's probably meant to be an arched bridge and its reflection in the water; if it was a porthole the boat would be sunk. However if it's a bridge where are its approach roads?

Why does any organisation ever pay much money for a new logo? Just tell the PR person to offer £100 to some poverty stricken art student (world's full of those) to come up with a few designs, then pick the best one. But before doing that, remember that it costs a lot to change it on vehicles and other signs, and forget the whole idea unless your existing logo has somehow become downright offensive.

If both you and the person on the other boat are steering, you have only a few seconds in which there's any chance of making out what the other person said over the engine noise. So keep it very brief. People sitting at the bows get slightly longer. It's the done thing to say something or at least wave a bit, even in London where such behaviour would be well out of order on any other form of transport except a night bus. An exception is rowers on the Thames (probably rowers anywhere); they're always very focused on what they're doing and ignore any attempt at a greeting. Canoe people seem much more outgoing.

I think they're buns not Danish pastries:

In the first picture gbclive posted there are what look to me like woodworm holes. This suggests to me that maybe the wood was softwood which had been stored with inadequate ventilation prior to being installed. I say this because when I bought my first house in 1985 which had some woodworm in the suspended (softwood) floor in one room, the surveyor said it was because the airbrick had been blocked up and woodworm prefer a place with no air movement. But I'm no expert; I think there are different species involved, including death watch beetle which does attack oak, and maybe they like different conditions?

Any error in spelling or grammar is also a dead giveaway, most companies are image-conscious and make sure their output is all in good English. However I see no such errors in the text quoted by the OP.

This looks to me like another sign of a phishing attempt. A genuine Microsoft URL will begin with https://www.microsoft.com/ If you go to a fake site and enter your login details, the scammers will soon log in on the real site as you, change your password, then do their best to take over your online presence anywhere on the internet that they can. They love getting hold of someone's email, because then they can hope to tell all sorts of sites that you've forgotten your password, get a new password emailed to them, and thus gain access. Once logged in, they can change your contact details. Many sites have precautions for this, e.g. online banking using card readers, but it's still a problem.

That wouldn't be very effective, as anyone who's seen the original film would know. (1) Whatever it is that they fire from their weapons just bounces off metal surfaces. (2) Just say to them "These are not the boats you're looking for". This approach only works if you're a Jedi Knight, but there's lots of them according to the census.

By "later tide" did you mean tomorrow morning? I don't know the tide times, but adding 12.5 hours onto 8:30am has you going out onto the Thames at 9pm and boating (to Teddington I guess) in the dark. There's nothing I know of to stop you doing that so long as you have navigation lights on, and I don't know anything about your level of experience, but personally I'd much prefer to do it in daylight. The weather is certainly looking good, another warm day here, and river levels continue to go down towards normal: http://riverconditions.environment-agency.gov.uk/

I'd be more concerned about not having a tiller or rudder.

Also available in the baking aisle of supermarkets. Probably in a lot of corner shops too. "Baking soda" is just the American term for bicarbonate of soda; baking powder is that with cream of tartar added, probably less suitable for the purpose of dealing with battery acid. I'm no expert on boat maintenance, but thinking about the chemistry involved when acid meets steel I would say Nick is right; time is of the essence, alkali is best, failing that dilute with water, but get something done quickly.

Endless tea and some food is the going rate for crew, someone local should help you. I've crewed for various people on the forum, but it's maybe a bit far for a few hours' boating for me, outside London I tend to go for longer trips. From Newbury down to Reading navigation can get quite exciting when there's more water than usual going down the Kennet, which enters and leaves the canal at certain points. There was a CRT warning notice after the recent heavy rain suggesting that only experienced boaters should go out on it, but with the current drier weather I expect it's returning to normal about now. Apart from the flow when the Kennet is higher than usual, the other things that can make the K&A a bit harder than other canals are (1) it's got wide locks and some of the gates are a bit stiff, it helps if someone on the crew is quite strong, (2) it has various swing and lift bridges you need to operate, some key operated and involving holding up road traffic, and (3) because a lot of the banks are natural not piled, finding somewhere to moor can be difficult unless you have a plank and mooring pins and know how to use them. Does this first big journey of yours in early June involve going through Reading and up/down the Thames? It probably will, and you may find it helpful then to have someone (maybe me) aboard who's done that before, or at least to read up about it. If you're heading up to the Midlands you might want to get a week's EA licence and take your time on the Thames, or get a one day licence which gives just enough time (the day you buy it plus the next day) to reach the Oxford canal from Reading if you keep going for two long days.

There was a later meeting, apparently the width was set four years after that meeting in Stoke! I found an IWA article: https://www.waterways.org.uk/blog/james_brindley__300 which states "At a meeting of canal company proprietors in 1769 the size of 74’6” feet long by 7 feet wide was agreed for the locks on the Grand Trunk" (that's what the T&M was then called), but sadly does not name the venue.

According to this: http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=790 a meeting at which the decision was taken to build the T&M did indeed take place in a pub, but it was the Leopard Inn at Burslem, Stoke in 1765. Not a surprising location as Josiah Wedgwood was behind the project. But of course the decision about the lock and tunnel widths may have been later, especially if those involved were looking for another excuse to meet up and have a pint. Maybe in a cupboard somewhere in an old pub in Lichfield there's a wonky sketch of a lock on the back of a beermat. 1765 was a few decades before the metre was invented.

Dogs (and cats) really are pretty good at finding their way home, even when they've been transported so haven't done the outward journey, and I'm not sure science yet understands how they manage it. Some are better than others; my father said he often collected his dog from various police stations across south London (late 1940s; the police probably don't get involved with lost dogs so much nowadays)