Emily

I understand about the URL thing, it's just that apostrophe abuse affects me in a deep and personal way... I know, I'm sad. I'm a member of the forum you linked to- in fact it was from that forum that I got the idea for my shop, and from my forum name I got the title, and from the forum members I get most of my business!

It's called Furnival's Workshop, but Etsy have a cruel and sadistic shop names policy that prohibits spaces and apostrophes, so you have to spell it FurnivalsWorkshop, which causes a little apostrophe-shaped part of me to die every time I write it.

I make hair forks and hair sticks out of antler and wood and I sell them on my shop on Etsy on t'interwebs.

Cheers everybody! It's really misty here today and I haven't had time to sand any antlers and, despite contriving excuses to prod people in the face, I sadly seem to have lost my electrical charge. Thank you all for your help.

Hmm... I got some new shoes just before it started the other day! Will see what happens if I don't wear them tomorrow. Do you think I could light someone else's fart if I prodded them just at the right moment? Nah, me cooker button doesn't work.

Ah, thank you. It's definitely static then. Just a thought: I've been making things out of antlers for the past few days and spending hours and hours rubbing them with sandpaper (wow, my spellcheck tried to replace 'sandpaper' with 'endosperm') - could I be charging myself up with static? I went and prodded someone a while ago to see what happened and I gave them a shock. I don't know quite what to think about my newfound superpower.

Ooh err...

Hmm, I'll put the kettle on the burner and let it boil a bit. Thanks for all your replies folks

Right, changed me jumpers & trousers, cotton only, power still off, still getting shocks. It's a mystery. I think I'll go and plug my power back in, if this shows it isn't an electrical fault...? I've got no candles

Hmm... I'm gonna change me jumper and prod the burner and get back to you. If I'm not plugged into the shoreline (sorry for being thick), and it's still happening, does this mean I can stop being freaked out now?

Nope.

Cheers folks. I've unplugged myself from the shore line and just come back in and touched my burner and got a shock off it. Does anyone have any idea what that means? I have no other power source on the boat, I took my batteries out last week. I haven't got any new carpets or anything like that. I have been using a lot of power recently, a belt sander and the vac at the same time for hours at a time, and I've got loads of things plugged in all over the place. ETA: How do I check if I've got a galvanic whatsit?

Hi everybody. Just briefly de-lurking myself to ask if anyone might know what's going on with my boat. For the past couple of days I've been getting the odd electric shock, just little ones like static, from metal things on my boat- the burner, the radio, a curtain rod etc. I don't have any batteries at the moment and the only electricity is coming from the shore power. I'm going to ask my neighbours if any of them have a clue but I thought I'd ask here as well. It's freaking me out.

I inhaled an earwig once, from inside an asthma inhaler. I sucked it right down into my lungs. It took a couple of minutes of coughing and retching to get it up into my mouth, where I bit down upon it. It was very salty. When I spat it out and saw what it was I turned into a screaming, hysterical whirlwind and flung myself at my sister, who also started screaming and running away from me. I only wanted a hug. We both missed the school bus. P.s. I read somewhere that earwigs' penises are about 1/2" long and very brittle.

Cheers everyone, I've pretty much sorted it now- I took it off and took it apart and noticed a little screw on the pressure switch end that adjusted the pressure at which the pump kicks in and shuts off, and with a twiddle of that and loads of battery charging it is working really well. Yippee!

Cheers everyone for your responses- I'll try to explain more clearly: my last pump worked fine for months then died of this affliction, which gradually worsened, so I would hope it in't normal operation! I turn on tap: water gushes out like mad, then calms to normal flow. Then, after a few leisurely seconds, pump kicks in. I switch tap off, pump continues, getting more and more strangulated-sounding, for a whole minute or two. I don't have an accumulator, me tank is full and the wee meshy thing looked clear. I tried running it for several minutes and there was no change. Since my first post it has rapidly worsened and is now at the stage where the pump makes an incessant low grumbling sound and I've had to switch it off. B*lls!

Hi , yes water comes out immediately, and at more pressure than normal for first few seconds. If I run tap for two seconds it groans for about twenty seconds, if I run tap for longer it goes on sometimes for a minute or two. And it's got a built-in switch.

Hi I was wondering if anyone might be able to shed some light on why my water pump has gone bonkers. It's brand new- I've just replaced the old one because it was doing the same thing and it finally died altogether. It won't kick in for a good few seconds after turning on the tap, then it groans away for ages after the tap is turned off. There aren't any leaks anywhere and there's loads of pressure- more than before it went wrong. A few helpful people have come and scratched their heads at it but nobody seems to have a clue, especially me. Could it be something blindingly obvious? And if it isn't the pump, what could it be?

I just put an offer on a boat at Whilton, thinking that the fact that it is a well-known brokerage would give me some kind of safeguard against naively choosing a crap boat, but the survey I arranged said that the boat was in such dreadful condition it was dangerous, and worth about 1/3 of the price Whilton had put on it. According to the surveyor, anyone who had a clue about boats would have been able to see that this one was a right mess, and he was surprised that it was priced as it was. Apart from this, when we were first negotiating the offer on the boat, there was another boat at the marina with a similar name, and the staff were conveying our offers to the owners of the different boat, despite us spelling out the name. We ended up having made a succesful offer on the wrong boat. I'd love to have heard how they explained that one to the owner. In all, we've had a terrible experience with the place and would hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

Thank you folks for your replies, you're right- it's not a disaster but an averted one. But I could probably have averted it for a bit less than £600 if I knew a bit more or, like you say, knew someone knowledgeable in the ways of boats! Boaty friends needed!

Hello people, just thought I'd share my cringeworthy tale of ignorance and woe... After months of searching we'd finally put an offer on a boat at a marina and organised a survey. I'd expected a few things to need doing and maybe a bit of overplating as it's an old boat, but a survey dated three years ago had said that the hull was in very good condition for its age, so I was gingerly hopeful. Yesterday we went down to meet the surveyor as he worked and he apologetically reeled off a list of doom-laden discoveries- the hull was as battered and bashed as a boxer's nose as the boat turned out to be ex-hire, which I didn't know. (I hadn't asked.) He pointed out the dents where he'd hit the steel with a hammer, and the whole hull was in a terrible state and would need completely replating. The propellor shaft was like a loose tooth, there was a lot of water in the cabin bilges and, in short, I'd picked the worst lemon of the lot. The fellow reckoned that with a few months' work, spending around £10 000, the boat might be worth what we'd offered. With hindsight, I wish I had grilled the marina staff a bit more about the boat's history, though I'm annoyed they didn't volunteer the fact that it was a hire boat. Naive or what? The survey they showed me was a bit optimistic- the surveyor said yesterday that a lot of the problems would have been well evident three years ago. I must admit, I put a lot of trust in the fact that the boat was being sold through a big, well-known marina, as surely they'd be better than me at spotting if a boat was a complete sh*tter. (And if you saw the price they'd originally put on the thing, you'd be forgiven for thinking it ought not to be one...) I feel like a complete plonker. If I could, I'd put a wee crying yellow face here, but I don't know how... Apologies for the giant whinge but I definitely feel a bit better now!

Cheers folks for your advice, I shall check out the places you've mentioned. The boat I'm looking at buying is up for its survey on monday (gnaw fingernails) and if all goes well myself and my folks (bless'em) will be making our woefully inexperienced way oop North with it soon. Can anyone tell me if it'd be possible to arrange, say, a day's course in handling narrowboats? My folks have been on a couple of boating holidays but I'm not confident at all about a long journey.