gatekrash

Years ago when I was helping run the bar at our local yacht club we had new swan necks installed when we changed breweries and they came in to instruct the bar staff on keeping their beer. One of the things that stuck in my mind as a serial glass retainer myself was that we were specifically told not to reuse the same glass due to the hygiene risk of transferring germs from the glass back into the sparkler when pushing the inside of the glass against it to get it under the swan neck.

About the same as ours. 50ft boat, 5 rads, although on 1 the TRV is set to low as we like a colder bedroom and the rad shuts off fairly quickly. We've used about 15 litres in the last week, normally it's on for a couple of hours in the morning, and then about 5 or 6 hours in the evening, so I reckon 50 hours for 15 litres - but it often turns itself off in the evening completely once the room thermostat gets to about 22 degrees and doesn't kick in again until it's dropped back to 18ish, so not all of that 50 hours was actually 'burning' time.

Bizarrely you can still buy bags of lignite coal here now even though proper bituminous coal is nearly banned. Our coal merchant sells 'union brikettes' which are brown coal. We tried them a few years back, burn nicely but clean they are definitely not.

It's definitely 'listed' now.

So we got back to the boat today after 2 weeks back home. We'd left one small greenhouse heater placed next to the calorifier and running on a stat set to low, one oil rad in the middle of the boat also set to low, all the pipework was run empty and then the taps blown down to get as much water out as possible and taps left open, but water tank was left about half full with the main stopcock closed. The marina is frozen solid and the ice is about 2 inches thick. Inside the boat the temperature was sat at 1 degree C. All pipes were clear apart from the kitchen cold supply - I suspect this was the inline filter after the pump which has frozen up as it's attached at the back of a kitchen cupboard right on the waterline. The water tank was clear of ice. Took about 2 minutes to 'recommission' in general but about 2 hours before we got water out of the kitchen tap. I was quite relieved as it's the first properly cold spell we've had since we've owned the boat and I wasn't sure whether we'd done enough. Now all we have to do is pay the £25 electric bill the heaters have used in the last few days....

And also make a point of walking sooty, muddy boots all over the carpets if I remember rightly from my mates house when he had a chimbley fire. We had one a couple of years ago at home, even though the chimbley is regularly swept. I realised something wasn't right when the stove thermometer went off the scale and the high temp silicon at the top of the flue pipe / closure plate join started to smoke ! I just shovelled the ash from the bottom on top of the fire and closed everything down and 10 minutes later everything was cooling down. We didn't actually know it had been a fire at the top of the stack until the sweep came a couple of months later and could feel the deposits from the fire as he swept it. Although he said it wasn't a good thing to happen he did reckon that with the thickness of our 200 year old stone flue it wouldn't really have done any harm.

Have to be honest, as a coastguard these things are the bane of our lives now, along with the latest fashion for "wild swimming" in a force 9 gale in December. Every man and his dog has gone to Lidl / Aldi / other budget supermarket and bought the latest "beaching" accessory, a SUP. We have had so many callouts to people who have gone off the beach because the weather looked nice, but with a moderate offshore wind and ended up blowing straight out or up the coast and been unable to get back to shore. Some have ended up being bashed on rocks, others a couple of miles away from where they started off. For some reason the majority of them don't appear to be wearing any form of personal buoyancy when they're on them. When we've asked why it's because they think having a big floating board means they don't need it. Except they also don't bother with any form of board tether either, and the inflatable ones don't work so well when they've been rubbing up against a sharp rock for an hour... We've spent years pushing the old H&S adverts about not allowing children on lilos and inflatable dinghies on beaches unless they were tethered to a responsible adult because they'd end up blowing away, and now someone has actually invented something that seems to be perfectly designed to do the same thing. I hadn't been called to a blown away inflatable for years until the SUP craze started, now it's all the time. Keep the things for calm rivers and canals (as long as theyve paid a licence ).

Definitely West country. Janners use it all the time.. 'Where we going to now ?' 'Any idea where I put that screwdriver to?' 'Any idea where Asders is to? Is it near the Cwop?' And so on.

This is where I'd go if I was looking for an ex hire boat, Black Prince have a good reputation for altering their ex hire boats to suit buyers. If you search for 'floydtilla' on the forum, @David Floyd did a blog on his build of an ex black prince boat, it may help you out I think they have a waiting list though...

Going round to Carbeile I believe, so guessing it's a drop straight in at QAB and then being pulled straight back out again over there.

This turned up at our lumpy water marina in Plymouth today. It's due to be towed across the bay to a local yard at Torpoint for refurbishment. Hopefully not today as there's a full gale blowing. I do love the tin shed roof over the front, along with the matching shed door half way along ! Anyone got any idea what it is ? I'm guessing given where it's going and that someone has paid for haulage and hoisting (and the yard that's dropping it in isn't cheap compared to canal hoisting rates) that they're intending to live on it.

Another vote here for Tom, if he's got availability. Did ours a few years ago and he was great, very easy to talk to and happy to spend the time discussing what he'd found.

It says at the top blurb that there are over 30,000 photos and it seems they come out in a random order. I managed 3 before I gave up !

I'm using up a crate of ex MoD hexamine fuel as firelighters. it's the stuff they used to issue to cook on out in the field, but they have changed over to an alcohol fuel and I've got tons of it left. Same stuff as they sell in go outdoors as 'festival cookers'. Goes up a treat, holds a flame for about 5 minutes so things really get going. We also occasionally do a top down light. Put the solid fuel on the bottom of the grate, then the kindling on top. I didn't believe it would work, but it really does as it warms the chimney up fast to get a really good draw then as the burning kindling drops down it ignites the solid. As taught in the book 'Norwegian wood' which is a must for anyone with a proper fire!

There was a lot of weed cutting going on on the W&B a few weeks ago (it desperately needed it).

I'm guessing this is specific to use of these items as 'ingredients' rather than as a separate item. As I can buy pigs trotters from my local butcher which are definitely feet!

Stop just before the Curdworth tunnel (there is good piling there) and walk up to Curdworth village. 2 good pubs, we ate in the Beehive last time which is down in the village. Family run, was a bit chaotic with service, cheap but very friendly and seemed to be where the villagers were going, and the beer was Enville and very good. The other pub is the white horse on the main road. Chain pub and I think would be a bit more up market, but we didn't eat there this time. Did look nice though. Have also stopped at the Cuttle Bridge, which looks like a motel. The problem with that one (or at least it was last year when we went there) is that it's where some of the HS2 workers go, so it was really busy. And the moorings outside are right by the main road so were a bit noisy, further down near the tunnel was much quieter.

It had definitely moved from centenary square when we were there last week. We wondered where they'd put it. As far as I know after all the public support for keeping it they were going to take it away for a period to prepare it for permanent display, as it wasn't designed to be kept. Presumably they need to do something to remove the JCB from under it. There is talk of it being permanently displayed in New Street station.

Reminds me of the sausage rolls the MoD used to buy to put in their brown paper 'horror bags' (packed lunches). I made the mistake of reading the contents one day. 'Minimum 8% meat content'. And they definitely didn't taste good.

I hope you visited Bogey Knights emporium of unbelievable tat whilst there ? The only place you can buy anything from a shackle to a dummy warhead...

It's not what it was. Black and Decker is now owned by Stanley tools, the same company also owns DeWalt. They aim their tools at different markets. B&D are their budget end aimed at the DIY market, then Stanley are mid range and DeWalt is aimed more at their pro market (hence why DeWalt stuff is the stuff you always see builders using, with the odd bit of Stanley stuff here and there). My B&D stuff all burned out very quickly when I was rebuilding my Landy. Replaced it all with a mix of Makita and DeWalt and never had a problem since. Although I've also got Lidl and Aldi stuff for less intensive jobs and they've also been fine. The Aldi multi tool has been great and did a really good job of scraping the loose blacking inside the water tank last year.

Tonight, 2022 Broad Street bridge towards Arena Birmingham. And preparing for a party conference. (no politics on this thread though please 😁 ). Loads of police about hereabouts and apparently we'll possibly be having the boat searched by police dog as we go back through Broad Street on Saturday.

The Rochdale must be open again without anyone being told. It's listed as one of the 6 'Best places to boat this autumn' on the CaRT homepage... From Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire, canal boat holiday-makers can travel along the Rochdale Canal through the Calder Valley to the old mill town of Hebden Bridge, nestled in a fork in the hills. Climbing through woods, fields and small stone towns, the journey there and back covers 14 miles, 20 locks and takes around 11 hours.

Yes, I forgot. Worked for the IT department of EDF Energy and its predecessor, SWEB for 31 years until I retired a few years ago and went to Hinkley B a few times, including being stood on top of the reactor (total anti-climax). Our chief exec back in the mid 2000s used to be found of telling us about how cheap electricity would be once Hinkley C was online and according to him 'customers will be cooking their Christmas turkeys using energy from new nuclear by 2015' ! He left shortly after!

Everyone always forgets about the standing charge, and most people don't realise that it's variable depending on where in the country you live. Down here in Devon, the standing charge is the highest in the entire country despite having Hinkley nuclear power station on our doorstep. Compared to London, we pay nearly £67 a year more in SC before we even turn a light on. Yet wages in Devon and Cornwall are amongst the lowest in the country.