Mike the Boilerman

I generally find if I'm following another single hander up a flight I keep up with them. If there are two of them it is a toss up if they are faster or slower than I am. (Some husband/wife teams are ASTONISHINGLY timid and slow in locks! Others very slick and organised.) But if I am following a boat with a crew of four or more they generally tend to hold me up as they have no routine established and instead indulge in a lot of shouting, rope slinging and running about whilst all thoroughly enjoying themselves.

I find virtually nothing on telly to watch so I no longer have one. Radio is FAR better. If R4 is boring at any given time, I just browse through the R4 programmes previously broadcast on iPlayer and pick one of those to listen to. Then at the same time I can post rubbish on here

Oh lead carbon batteries! Yes they've been discussed on here, and at one point I was gonna buy some as there are some pretty impressive claims for them made by Leoch. The I remembered they cost £300 each, twice the price of Trojans....

THREE choices then!!!!

We all have our cross to bear.....

Quite right. Alan Fincher says he drinks the water from his boat tank and it's done him no harm, has it!

What new style is that then? LA battery design is pretty much static these days, I thought.

That's FAST! I reckon a proper BSS examination, checking every single line of the regs on a boat you don't know would take best part of a day once travelling to and from the boat mooring is factored in, along with actually finding the boat in a marina containing a hundred of them, or on a half mile length of towpath mooring. Most of the checks one would fly through but there will always be two or three items that take an hour each to assess, often due to poor access or ambiguity in the rules requiring contacting the BSS office for clarification when being done thoroughly. Most inspectors 'take a view' and if the first few things are well installed they are prone to ticking the box regardless on the more time-consuming items as it is highly unlikely there will be any come-back.

I bought two Hancooks last winter and they are holding up very well. I've left them part discharged for several days while the solar re-fills them, several times over and they still seem to charge up again properly, unlike the el-cheapo pair I bought from Wharf House Narrowboats previously, which keeled over and expired faster than a fast thing.

Yes that one is difficult isn't it. Everyone likes working the locks, so a chance to 'help you out' by working your lock is often enthusiastically proposed. The "stay on the boat" instruction often given particularly irks me as it is so presumptive and I get off anyway for safety reasons. I once got the bow fender caught and no amount of hooting the horn could draw anyone's attention on the bank as they were all gassing to each other. None of them was looking out for my boat (understandably)as it wasn't theirs. Fortunately the chain broke but since then I always get off in locks so I can keep an eye on the boat, windlass in hand.

I nearly always get "Gosh isn't it really hard work doing it all by yourself?", if I happen to mention to anyone I'm single handling.... I love boating alone. Now we have internet on most canals I can post rubbish on here at the same time!

Yeahiknow.... Just yanking your chain, as you well know!!

Yeah so as you explain, there are two choices. A or B

But A is a potential choice, and B is a potential choice. Two choices! I agree with your basic point though. Another that grates is 'less than <a plural>' e.g. "less sparrows in our gardens these days". FEWER sparrows, FFS!!!

As 14 year olds, we noticed the back yard of the off licence was full of crates of 'deposit' bottles so we grabbed one and took it back in through the front door of the shop and to our amazement got 'our' money back on the empties! 20 mins later, rinse and repeat. More money. Amazing! Third time around though, we were challenged so we ran for it. This was the only time I've ever been actually physically chased up a high street by an angry shopkeeper.....

Teacher, innit....

Why? This video might help

OMG 🙀 ..... I misread that initially as 'given up thinking'....!

How environmentally does THAT seem?

Interestingly in Asda today, I bought another new bedsheet the same I bought a few weeks ago. The one a few weeks ago came in a sturdy clear polythene packaging I had to cut off with strong scissors. The one today had NO plastic packaging, only a cardboard band around the middle with the fabric of the sheet exposed to shop dust, transit dirt, people's grubby hands fingering it at all that. I didn't like this much but I still bought it, thinking ok I've done my bit to save the planet today....

They need to, but they won't. We can hope and wish and cajole and complain but the proles in their masses are NOT going to stop demanding to fly to Spain or Florida for their holidays or stop buying dresses in four sizes at a time on Amazon and sending three back (or four!) that don't fit or they don't like (apparently all unpacked returns go to landfill!!!!), or buying rechargeable drills from China because they are cheap, or insisting on eating beef because 'that's what we do, we are English innit". There is NO global consensus or will to fix climate change so we are going to end up with it. Get used to it and develop strategies to cope with it when it happens, as there is nothing that you acting alone, or a bunch of a few million enlightened individuals (or even the whole UK) can do to stop it. Yes there is every point in taking action yourself as it will make you feel better to be doing your bit but in fact in the big scale of things going to make any difference. Mark my words, or something....

Lol my Tracer works just fine. I must be doing it wrong!!!!

Oh dammit you're right. Again! Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb and Jun?!!

Yawn. And what will get used the most in Nov, Dec, Jan and Feb?!! I think I can guess....