Timbo

With Uncle Albert on board...and both he and I were scout leaders...I try and be prepared. Here are some of the steps I have taken: I have contacted a Broadland GP and have alerted them to both Uncle Albert and I being in the area. The Broadland GP has copies of Uncle Albert's medical records and has had a lengthy telephone discussion with Uncle Albert's home GP. I carry extra supplies of all medication in a comprehensive first aid kit. I regularly attend a first aid refresher course to keep my first aid 'ticket' up to date and have been trained in all aspects of care for Uncle Albert. I monitor Uncle Albert and choose our mooring location depending upon his condition. I carry a dual sim phone I carry an OS map and plot our current location and can provide a six figure map reference. I carry a large torch with a flashing orange beacon on top so we can be easily located by emergency services. I also have a similar app on my phone. There is one piece of emergency equipment used to call for help that is 'abused' on a regular basis on the Broads and very few people seem to know how to use it correctly. I've even responded to this emergency signal on three occasions. Twice on the Broads to a reception of blank stares from the family using said item and once on the Ouse in Bedford where a canoeist had managed to tip and wedge his boat beneath a fallen tree branch and could not exit the boat and was in danger of drowning. I'm talking about the little whistle attached to your life jackets. If you are in need of help, six short blasts on the whistle is the International Distress signal. Keep repeating the signal. Emergency services or a rescuer will reply with three long blasts and both signals can then be used to locate a casualty. Please don't let your kids prat about with the whistle on the life jacket, one day...as I found out...it might just save your life, and if I hear the six short blasts I will respond... just in case. Edited to add six short blasts on the boats horn or anything is the same distress signal...

Doh! And there was me ready to come and give you a hand on your boat for a change! Now here's a thought...just a thought...couldn't you fit torpedo tubes in that hole at the front...or an escape hatch for a midget submarine? Notice I am now googling what parts are stems and aprons!

Not guilty! But will be down on Friday for the weekend to lend a hand!

My cousin decided to leave school early and take a full time position at the shoe shop where he had a Saturday job. I can remember the shouts and screams as his parents 'discussed' the situation with him. But undeterred my cousin stuck with his plan. At 18 he was six feet tall, athletic, blonde haired, blue eyed, well spoken...his sales patter of "You look exquisite in those shoes!" produced such a large quantity of sales amongst ladies of a certain age that he's now a director of the shoe company.

As old Stinkies...that's the boat, me and especially Uncle Albert, it's not so much the flappy things that phase me, but the other stinkies that just push through while I'm timing my maneuver around the antics of the poor sod who can't afford an engine. If I'm honest I quite enjoy the challenge of negotiating my way through the flappies and admire their boating skills. I also have every intention of learning to sail so I can appreciate what they are attempting to do. Very much like dart players at my local pub, I will wait until they've thrown before making my way to the bar. However should last orders ring...get the hell out of the way I'm going to the bar, even if you are on a three dart finish to win a plastic trophy with simulated onyx base.

That boat is a thing of beauty! I can't wait to see her finished...when do we start booking sailing lessons Doug?

Good God Gramps...please keep posting don't lurk! I occasionally put my foot in it, I quite regularly ask a question that has probably been answered hundreds of times, but then if I didn't ask or post I would probably never find out 'stuff' and I would probably get a lot more work done...thinking about it. Thankfully there's usually some kind soul who will search out the relevant links for me to catch up on my reading. Apart from which I'm just puerile and childish enough to occasionally enjoy poking the odd sleeping giant...just to see what happens like!

For everyone else its 999 Maurice. But if its Uncle Albert we are talking about...and I'm nowhere to be found...please call New Delhi – 110002 and contact the offices of the General Secretary of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh Trade Union. It won't do Uncle Albert any good, but it will give me some time to make a clean getaway!

As Uncle Albert's carer I have to deal with his diabetes on a daily basis. Uncle Albert is a Type 1 Diabetic. This means he is dependant upon insulin injections. Uncle Albert is also a pillock, and will try to get out of taking his insulin and will often refuse to take his insulin. He will also decide to inject more insulin should he get the whim to binge drink or eat. Consequently I now monitor the idiot very closely and have become quite adept at spotting the symptoms of too much or not enough insulin in his system. Blood sugars for a normal human being are around 4 MMol. After a meal blood sugars will temporarily rise up to 7.8 Mmol. But everyone varies. For example, Uncle Albert can have 'normal' levels between 6 and 16 Mmols. HYPOglycaemia (PO = LOW is how I remember it) is when the blood sugars fall too low. In Uncle Albert symptoms of this are tremors in his hands, he becomes sweaty, he complains of being hungry, he can be dizzy and will often stumble or even fall. He can also be extremely irritable...read that as 'down right nasty'. Correcting a HYPO is quite easily done by giving Uncle Albert something to eat. Usually a sandwich and a cup of tea, but I keep Mars Bars on hand should he need extra. I avoid putting sugar into his tea. I also avoid energy drinks and the like as they can deliver too much and the wrong type of sugar into his system and can start him bouncing between a HYPO and a HYPER. HYPERglycaemia is the bad one. Too much sugar in the system and there is little that you can do. Symptoms of a HYPER in Uncle Albert include shortness of breath, being very thirsty, and gross incontinence. Confusion, uncommunicative, rambling...basic symptoms of dementia. In fact I have discovered that what has been taken in the past to be dementia with Uncle Albert is simply his blood sugars running too high. In the extreme Uncle Albert will present with symptoms of a stroke and will sink into a comatose state. Correcting a HYPER is nigh on impossible. In an absolute emergency I have been authorised to administer a small dose of insulin to Uncle Albert, but in the case of someone else this should not be done. There are several different types of insulin that a type 1 diabetic might be injecting and these act in different ways. Uncle Albert uses a 'mixed' insulin which is administered in specific non varying doses. Other insulin dependant diabetics may take different types of insulin in different doses in different situations, to allow for a meal out or a drink or two. If Uncle Albert's blood sugars rise above 16 Mmol in an evening I will administer him an extra 10 units of insulin the following morning. Should his blood sugars hit the 20 Mmol mark (he recently had blood sugar levels of 26 Mmol rising to 32 Mmol when he refused to take his insulin) I will ring the diabetic nurses during office hours for advice or after office hours dial 111 for advice. However in the majority of cases Uncle Albert will be hospitalised and will be administered insulin via a drip to bring his sugar levels back under control over quite a long period of time. His most recent bout of Hyperglycaemia was corrected by admitting him to a nursing home for respite care where they supervised his insulin closely...at a cost of £750 for the week! Not all diabetics present the same symptoms, or are on the same type or dosage of insulin. Type 1 diabetics will have a little blood testing machine to hand, so get them to do a blood test so you have information to hand. Listen to what they tell you...they will usually know more about their symptoms and treatment than anyone. If blood sugars are high DON'T give them sugar or sugary drinks. Of course as Maurice will tell you...its often difficult to tell when Uncle Albert is having a HYPO, HYPER or is just his usual self and talking dangly spherical things!

Talking of quotations... My other half asked me how the Timbo idiot filter worked the other day. "Why is it you only answer to certain things people say?" she asked. "I have a filter which automatically works out whether what a person says is correct or not." I replied. "Yes but how do you know?" she persisted. "They start their sentence with 'Timbo says'." I answered. Well, she did ask!

A curry house I used to frequent in Bradford had it's curries categorised on the menu by ingredients ie veg, chicken and...named meat. Named Meat? What like Spot or Dobbin or Blue Dolphin, come to think of it! No matter how good the food if it comes with 'microchips' with the main courses name and former address in it I 'aint eatin' it!

The Travelling Beer Bellies?

We had two incidents of this occurring this last week/weekend, both on the A17. First incident was Southbound and a little old lady travelling at 45/50 mph kept speeding up every time someone overtook her. The second was northbound. We were stuck behind a flatbed truck from Kings Lynn. The truck pottered along at speeds of 35 to 40 mph, speeding up to 60 when there was room to overtake him. On the Sleaford bypass I managed to overtake him, only to have the idiot try to pass me immediately. I'm afraid there was now way I was following behind him into Lincoln.

All of a sudden I'm no longer receiving updates on the threads I'm following. All the notification boxes are ticked on my settings panel tp receive notifications...just not getting them any more.

Time to put the skills into practice on something important...THE BOAT! With the new deck and bulkhead fitted it was time to tackle the cockpit canopy. So the youngest lad Matty and I loaded up the car with our new woodworking tools and headed for Wayford. Definitely a case of all the gear and no idea! For the last year or so the cockpit canopy has been propped up with a number of different lengths of timber which have been screwed together, lashed together with rope and always in a state of near or total collapse. Royal Tudor's canopy is a simple affair. A three fold windscreen, two swinging canopy sides that when all three are raised are bridged by four spars which support a canvas top. It all sounds very simple, but in reality Royal Tudor's canopy is a real pig to operate! The cabin sides are hinged and fastened to the windscreen by two cabin hooks. The roof spars fit into wooden notches. The cabin sides bow out at the back, which cause the roof spars to rotate in their slots and eventually drop...giving you a headache literally! To complicate matters the port cockpit side had some serious rot issues and sections of timber needed replacing...and Obi Wan Doug would not be on hand for help and advice! A dash to the boatyard, a quick measure up of the timber thickness, and we headed to Tim Collins at Wroxham to buy new timber for the job. If Doug were doing the job we would have had enough timber already, but as I was likely to end up with a pile of sawdust...better buy some extra! First job the next day was to remove the port cockpit side, assess the damage and start measuring while Matty got on with apply a third coat of varnish to the starboard side of Royal Tudor. We gingerly removed the cockpit side, in case it disintegrated en route, and laid it on the bank where Dyllan the Beagle gave it the once over. His pawfessional opinion? 'It's knackered that!' And it was too! The forward joint had completely rotted through and I was going to have to replace two of the timbers. What was more, the frame was made up of a complicated arrangement of angles on the joints and bevels on the edges of the timber. A spot of advice was needed on how to get the right angles...time to track down Jon! Advice given and a quick trip into Wroxham to buy a miter bevel. You could hear the Yorkshire anthem of 'How bloody much?' quite clearly when I was told the price of said device which comprised of two bits of metal with a wooden handle. Back at the yard and it was time to use the first new tool. Out with the table saw, a quick read of the instructions, throw away the wobbly fence make by own fence with a straight edge and two clamps...then 'rip' some timber to width. Did you notice the use of the technical term there? It was at this point that I noticed the new timber was not planed to the correct thickness. Time to track down Matt at the yard for some more advice. Half an hour later and Matt had kindly planed down my timber to the correct thickness. So onward and upward! Well at a bit of an angle as I tilted the table saw blade and cut the bevel on my timber...after measuring the angle with twelve quids worth of miter bevel! To save on the new timber I decided to make the second section I needed out of the good timber left from the now replaced bottom section...if you follow me? So with all the pieces cut, it was time to move onto the next new bit of kit we had brought with us...the router! A quick read of the instructions... written by a dyslexic Hungarian in Chinese it was time to pester Matt again. With some router tution under my belt it was now time to cut those half lap joints! With the odd mistake here and there I managed it! Using a square to set everything up and then clamps to hold everything in place in place, a quick application of Gorilla Glue and I screwed everything together. Now can anyone spot the mistake? Yes indeed I had fastened everything together with the power cable running through the frame! You do know I'm an idiot...right? I now ran the panel saw down each edge to tidy up the corners of the joints to get the right angles on the bevelled edges and to tidy everything up. Out with the filler and by this time the beagles needed a walk and Matty and I were hungry...plus it was raining. Sunday I got on, with Matty's help, cleaning up the frame with the sander and staining it. I also set about cutting the small beads to hold the window in place with the table saw. I mitered the beads and fitted the window back into place with copious amounts of silicone. Finally the frame was completed and the next day we set about fixing it back onto the boat. Once the frame was back on its hinges I fitted, at Doug's suggestion, two 12" cabin hooks to the rear of each of the cockpit sides. This held the sides in square, so we could now cut the roof spars to the correct length. And yes the rear pane of glass is cracked but this will replaced when the money allows, apart from which I needed to get the boat water tight first...my excuse and I'm sticking to it! It was now Matty's turn to shine as once we had fitted the curved roof spars he carefully rounded off the edges to match the profile Doug has cut onto two of them. The spars too were stained. Meanwhile I spent several hours on the roof of the boat stitching the canopy, repairing damage to the seams using a locking stitch, wax thread and a candle stub (this is one job, as a scout leader for 18 years I know how to do). I replaced the elastic that held the canopy in place and finally we fastened down the cockpit canopy...just in time to protect us from a heavy downpour of rain. In the meantime Matty had done an excellent job on the third coat of varnish on the starboard side of the boat...together with her top back on...RT is starting to come together. We may have some gear and no idea but...we are getting there, very slowly, but we are getting there!

Spent a long weekend working on Royal Tudor. Cold, wet, occasionally windy...and that was just the Beagles! Having to cover everything over every ten minutes to protect from the persistent rain showers and dragging as much as we could inside the boat became a real pain. Toby, now feeling much better, decided enough was enough and made his own arrangements. Of course when we decided that the weather was not suitable to varnishing and it was time to come home, just ten miles from the Lincolnshire border...the rain stopped and the sun came out.

Hang on a minute...as a former pub organist/banjo player/guitarist/squeeze box player...well familiar with playing tunes such as 'My Ain Folk' and other classics in the 'scuddahewoo' or 'pub singer' style are we not missing a great opportunity to form the NBN 'old Boy Band? If we didn't have a packed house there would be an abundance of free mooring space near gigs!

After being away for a few days, on my return I trawl the BBC for news of import and what do I discover? That Pesky Mod has been influencing England's wild beaver colony...then I find my glasses and discover that I had misread the headline, indeed England's Wild Beaver Colony has Kits... and not Kilts

This is a PHP file and is contained within the webcam page HTML I think. I think they have changed the way the webcam information is presented on the web page to speed up the streaming of the images. The best remedy for saving images I can suggest is to the use Print screen button the keyboard and then save the copied screen shot. Hope this helps?

An opportunity to see that rare species the Binoculared Bobble Hatted Hedge Trembler, the most cosseted, protected and dangerous species on the Broads system. The Hedge Trembler is unique in its habit of secluding large areas of water for its own use, turning the water into weed choked swamplands eventually devoid of other wildlife to generate algal bloom or in Cheshire... housing estates. A parasitic species, the Binoculared Bobble Hatted Hedge Trembler lives mainly from what it can filch from the Navicular Temprore. So be careful when you go under that bridge into the Heart of Darkness.

if the population of China were to walk past you in single file, the queue would never stop moving due to the size and expansion of population in China! God forbid they all decide to jump up and down!

Welcome to the forum! The only pub I ever took the beagles into was the Dog Inn at Ludham. However I much prefer to find some quiet back water and enjoy a drink and cigar in peace and tranquility while the beagle's nose about on the bank. I will recommend you take plenty of poop bags and a small bin with a lid to store the filled bags on board the boat, as waste bins can be few and far between, and things can get smelly if the sun comes out. I'd also recommend fastening the dog below decks when you are mooring etc because no matter how well trained the dog is, it can get under your feet quite easily. Dogs also have a tendency to follow you out on deck and make the occasional leap for the bank at inopportune moments sometimes resulting in a splash. I also have two tie out stakes for the beagles but I always keep an eye out for the public walking past and tripping on the dogs leads. I'm also wary of kids coaxing the dogs from the boat when we are moored. The beagles are more than friendly but I did have one woman complain when she came to fuss one of the boys and he jumped up and put his muddy paws on her white trousers. I also keep a very wary eye on the dogs when we are out among the wildlife. The Broads are a fantastic place for dogs and there is nothing I like better than mooching along with the dogs. You get to see some places you would not normally see!

That is fantastic Grendel! A real find. I seem to remember seeing somewhere online a database of ***** spirituals which attempted to trace their origin from plantation to plantation and state to state or colony to colony. I think, but I'm not sure, it had something to do with the Wilberforce Museum that charts the despicable practices of slavery that mars our history and seems to get brushed under the carpet.

Our fresh water tank is used for everything! I've only used bottled water while the water system has not been working and that was only so I could get hold of one of the large water bottles. I was brought up on 'council pop' and have never had any side effects. I now use the empty water bottles to fill from the tap in the boatyard as an 'emergency supply' as we go through a hell of a lot of water. I do however have an allergic reaction to buying bottles of water in a supermarket. Symptoms include, shaking of the head, muttering under the breath, tutting and rapid perambulation away when the other half goes through the motions of deciding 'which bottled water', as though one brand tastes any different from another or indeed from the council variety, to buy.

Just a quick additional note. The Asylum mentioned in the article would be St.Johns in Bracebridge Heath, now a new housing estate. My Grandfather was committed to St Johns and died in there. Those were the days when 'hardening of the arteries' was not treatable and often resulted in dementia. I can remember in one lucid moment my Granddad turning to talk to me while the rest of the family who were visitng him were involved in their own private discussions. "What's up Granddad?" I asked. "I don't know about you ar' kid, but I reckon some of these buggers in 'ere are mad!" said Granddad conspiratorially. My grandfather had been a stallion walker in his youth. Should one stallion walker meet another they would tie up their respective horses and engage in a fist fight. The winner would then have the right for his horse to service the local mares while the loser would walk to the next farming district. As a consequence my Grandfather was a tough little man and when I was a schoolboy would roll up his sleeves and jokingly ask 'Would tha' like t'partake of the ancient art of fisticuffs' (this was the only ceremony before the stallion walkers would fight) before giving me instructions on how to quickly and efficiently knock someone senseless. I have to add that my Grandfather was not a violent man by nature. He left his father's Yorkshire farms over a disagreement and went to work 'down pit' as a deputy. In his spare time he painted in oils, usually horses and churches. Sadly none of his paintings survive. He also had an interest in woodwork, I still own a bookcase he made for me as a child, and he was a lover of classical music and light operetta. I get my love of art and Gilbert & Sullivan from him.