salmiron

I thought they stuck you 'ed first down the coal'ole, and then measured the inches of leg showing. No leg showing, better fill up with nutty slack, sorry best steam coal. I am sure I have seen a picture of a rather grimey Daniel's 'ed sticking out of the coal'ole, brandishing the remaining piece of coal. By the way, do they do pink coal? Maybe that one has been cracked before.

No it isn't. How long is 37cm? I cannot visualise it.

Sums up my feelings. If (I cannot afford it) I was having a boat built, I would be looking for functionality, comfort, convenience (both as a base to live on and to cruise) and safety. These are in no particular order, except safety. What the boat looks like would be less important however it would be essential that the boat could navigate both the L&L and the Llangollen. Good design often falls out of these four. I would not be asking for a stern that looks traditional or a Josher bow because it is traditional, but if the boat that resulted from my design criteria looked traditional, well so be it. Despite his remarks, Garry's company would be on my list of possible builders. It looks like they build b***dy good boats

I am not sure I understand this, is the problem the width or the 'style' of boat. In this country I am not sure that it is worth having an inland waterways boat, unless it is capable of travelling through the majority of the canals, and certainly the rings. Being confined to the L&L (wonderful waterway that it is) is a little stultifing.

Was not Maffi's boat a 'ditch-crawler' completed last October? I may be wrong

Absolutely stupid, however it happens, unfortunately. Less obvious things happen which are just as dangerous. "Oh my God" said my wife when the boiling pasta had boiled over and swamped the burner. I rushed into the kitchen switched off the gas and then was only just in time to stop her reaching round the door and switching on the light. The light switch is adjacent to the cooker. People do not think through their actions, even when they have time to think it through. Sometime in the early seventies, I remember a great deal of mirth as a colleague read out a news article. Some poor soul, and by then he was just a soul, had a leak in his petrol tank and decided to weld it. He realized that there was a danger in this and emptied the fuel tank into a container. He also realized that the fumes in the tank would be explosive so decided to suck them out using his cylinder vacume cleaner. Of course he forgot, if he ever knew, that the cleaner's motor was cooled by the exhaust air sucked through the cleaner and that the motor used brushes, which sparked. He demolished his house, a number of other houses and himself. At 13 I was building myself a bicycle from scavanged parts. I was using a very old book to guide me and it recommended syphoning a little petrol to clean the caked old oil and grease from the chain and ball races. Fortunately I told my father before I did it; he being a mining engineer, at that time, responsible to the board, for safety in the North West Area of the NCB, shivered and explained the real dangers involved. He rather strongly suggested another solvent, non-flammable, which we no longer use, because of its toxicity at higher concentrations, cancer forming properties and its effect on the ozone layer. Such is life.