nichimyo

Internal woodwork, we have mostly Danish oil, I don't like it, it gives a very hard-looking finish, and if you accidentally put it on too thick it goes sticky. I prefer a light vegetable oil on the raw wood, then beeswax to buff it up.

Well it certainly wetted down on us and the river rose and rose and now there's a reasonable flow on it as the sluices downriver have been opened to let it all out to sea. We battened down the hatches so to speak and loosened up the mooring ropes and got the fire going again and had a good laugh at the moorhens trying to paddle upriver against the flow. House? no, not even in last weekend's weather!!

Back on topic... A cautionary tale: :cheers: My OH had the "bright" idea of chucking a load of salt on the fire to get rid of the build-up of tar in the chimney. He does this every now and again and it seems to work quite well usually. This time I think his hand must have slipped because suddenly the whole boat was filled with choking fumes. I got out quick and went for a walk!!! Even so I was badly affected and it took weeks to stop coughing. What seems to have happened is the vast quantity of salt plus the heat of the fire did its thing a bit too well and cleared out all the little cracks in the thing, plus the salt actually sublimed and we got salt vapour in the air, followed by fumes from the fire which usually go up the chimney but were now escaping through the microcracks. Be warned!

Perhaps we should have a look at the overall level of debt in the UK, and give some thought as to who those people are who are most likely to be the debtors. I quote http://www-iva.org/ukdebtmatters.pdf : The average personal debt in the UK is more than double that of the rest of Western Europe. According to Credit Action (http://www.creditaction.org.uk), the total amount of personal debt in the UK is now in excess of £1.26 trillion and rising by £1 million – hold your breath – every four minutes. Record numbers of enquiries are being reported by the debt help industry. … Here are some more facts from Credit Action: •Total UK personal debt is more than £1 ¼ trillion, as of November 2006 (actual figure of £1,278bn). For the trailing twelve months, the rate of growth increased to 10.4% , which amounts to an increase of £111bn. •Total secured lending on homes has exceeded £1 trillion (yes, it starts with a “t” and a trillion is £1,000 billion), and as of November 2006 (actual figure of £1065.9bn). In the trailing twelve months, the increase is by 11.4%. •Total consumer credit lending to individuals in November 2006 was £212.1bn. This segment registered an increase of 6.2% in the trailing twelve months. •Average debt per household in the UK is £8,765, not including mortgages and £52,811, including mortgages. •Every UK adult owes £27,180, on an average, including mortgages. •Average interest paid by each household on their total debt is approximately £3,327 each year. •An average consumer in UK owes £4,511, on overdrafts, credit cards, retail and motor finance deals and last, but not least, unsecured personal loans. •Insolvency is claiming one person as a victim every minute of any given working day. •There were 27,644 individual insolvencies in England and Wales in the third quarter of 2006 (an increase of 5.7% over the previous quarter and an increase of 55.4% over the same period a year ago). •Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVA) grew the fastest at 118% per year, and this continues to increase. •The number of people becoming insolvent in 2006 is nearly 110,000. The estimate for 2007 is around 150,000. •It is estimated that between seven and nine million people claim to have a serious debt problem. I propose it's not what you have that's the indicator, but how much you owe. Hire purchase, buy now pay later, put it on your credit card, take out a personal loan, second mortgage, loan shark, you can get a lot of stuff without actually paying for it then and there.

What we did when looking for a mooring/marina was to take an Ordnance Survey map of the area we wanted to be in, highlight the waterways and then drive around and look, stopping off at any places that seemed promising and talking to whoever was in charge. Bear in mind that on the phone you will often get onto a so-called waiting list, but if you turn up you can get a place if they like you. It took us about 5 weekends of looking (about the same as it takes to find a house to buy).

Google notebooks does it to me too, so does Yahoo groups, canalworld too. It's a recent thing. Something Microsoft has been doing?

Roger you know how scruffy our boat is but it's great for us and it's the home we chose. OH was visited by a friend the other day who declared he knew someone who has a wide-beam "and it's quite palacial". As if we want to get something with "more status"! No, we like Homey, and if we ever get round to getting a wide-beam (we are thinking about it), it won't be palacial (somehow I think I've spelled that wrong). Palacial we don't do, comfortable yes. Your observations about many people's houses quite easily map onto boats too, people often have things because they are status symbols, not simply because they need the things. On the other hand, if you want things, why not have the best you can afford if that's going to make you feel good? But I agree with the adaptation to boat life - it's taken me only a year, and being in a house often makes me feel wierd. Tell you what, though, the hardest thing is going off to work ... I'd much rather be home fishing or doing something around the boat.

I agree. You can't take a gift back, you gave it away and it's not yours any more. The only question is who had the right to dispose of this item from the dead man's estate? Without evidence from the will or probate, it won't be clear but it seems reasonable to think that the son would have had a right to sell it.