Paul

it's the drawing it that puts me off. About the only thing I can draw is breath.

Counting myself amongst their number I cannot think that a fake signal box will hold too much appeal to the hard core fans, but it's a useful gimmick for families with train mad kids perhaps.

It was cubic inches, but sorry to tell you the wood yard I buy now quotes in cubic meters, I think that's fairly standard these days as the wholesale rate is in M3. If you actually saw some of the prices in M3 you'd be horrified. Of course you normally only buy a small fraction at a time. I still find that far preferable to what many wood yards do and sell length prices in the same way as softwoods, suggesting that it is much easier for the modern customer to see the price they pay and that they don't understand the volume method, but inevitably this leads to much higher prices. As an example I've been looking for a piece of zebrano to edge a draughts board I'm making as a retirement gift for a friend. The yard I normally use has none in stock at present, and not likely to get any for several weeks, so I have sourced a piece elsewhere in the size I need, 120 x 25mm sawn (note mm now, not inches) at a cost of £24 per meter which equates to around £8000 per M3, well over double what I usually pay by volume for zebrano and nearly as much as I paid for the African black ebony for the 32 black squares, which is a far more expensive timber.

crikey, as if the unmarked police cars on the M42 are not enough to deal with, you are now telling me we have plain clothes moderators moving amongst us? Just for the record, I know my place, I am the underclass, that happy class. I have owned a Mondeo but was never deceived by Mr Blair's attempts to recategorise us. We are the doers, the grafters which built this once proud nation, which built the greatest empire the world ever knew before "berks in shirts" sold it all to the highest bidder.

Profound apologies m'lord. We shall try to remember our place in future, jumping shoes firmly put away. If i see any other potential glitches on the forum I shall leave it to my betters to report them.

Indeed Fred, in these sad times the best many of us have is to talk about sport. Of course we are nowhere near as sad yet as those who only have moaning about others talking about sport to keep them happy. We shall pray for them.

whichever channel it is on, sadly we are not seeing any proper cricket. These first two tests - and I'll venture to add the two still to come, have been decided by the toss of a coin. With such poor pitches the side which wins the toss and bats first has a massive advantage. To put it in football equivalent as I know how much Hylander loves football it's like the side winning the toss can make their goal 50% smaller and use a goalkeeper, and the side which loses has to make their goal twice as big and cannot use a goalkeeper (a bit like Liverpool at present) If you enjoy a flutter watch the toss at the next two tests and as soon as it's done put your right arm on the team that wins it, before the bookie has time to slash those odds.

which would be all well and good were there not already a number of replies on the thread, which belies that comment somewhat and reinforces Islander's opinion of different levels of equality.

Thanks Smoggy, all becomes clear. I shall leave that debate to the in crowd and return my attention to those threads available to the plebeian class.

I have not really engaged with this thread thus far, as for a start I think there comes a point when you have pretty much said all that there is to say, and as yet my turn for the jab has not arrived, though I think it will not be too long and it is encouraging to hear of so many people getting their vaccination. But, having been shopping this morning I have to say that it appears that we, the great unwashed, the army of "little people" have learned very little, despite the rapid approach of the first anniversary of this pandemic crisis. I usually shop at Aldi, and whilst not always perfect generally I have found their pandemic measures appropriate and effective however with tomorrow being St Valentine's day I thought I would treat the wife to a special high tea. The local garden center cafe is doing an exquisite take out service but I balk at paying £22.50 per person for a couple of sandwiches, a slice of cake and a cream scone in a cardboard box, no matter how nice it looks and Aldi doesn't have a great range of special tidbits so I thought I would visit another, larger local supermarket. I'll not name and shame them, let's just say that I have been led to believe there are more reasons to shop there. It was very busy and I had to drive to the very edges of the massive car park to find a space. There is not a trolley to be had anywhere near the store, I had to trek halfway back to the car to find one. On arriving at the entrance there is no entry control whatsoever, no person advising it is safe, or otherwise to enter, no clever traffic light system and so shoppers are flooding in and the store is, in the words of my generation rammed. There is barely room inside to swing a cat let alone maintain a "social" distance. I'm tempted not to stay, but along with the things I want for tomorrow there are some essentials to get so I join the slow moving throng of people making their way around the store. To make things worse some bright spark brain dead moron has decided to completely rearrange the store, the freezers are now where the alcohol was, the alcohol occupies the old bakery section so people are staggering back and forth looking for things that have inexplicably moved. There is not a member of staff to be seen anywhere on the shop floor to ask, so it's one giant game of treasure hunt with people walking backwards and forwards. It's like rush hour on Oxford Street. To make things worse there are people ambling around, noses glued to their mobile phones, or standing in the middle of the aisle discussing what happened on Coronation St last night or whether the clues for The Masked Singer are too easy. Half of the check outs are closed, but not for social distancing, adjacent tills are manned, then there are a group which are not. The queues for the open check outs are halfway down the aisles, meaning those people still shopping are having to weave in and out of those queuing to pay. The queue for the self service is such that it is completely obliterating the special Valentines display so those looking to buy the over priced flowers on offer have to push through the line of people waiting for the self check out area. There are customers complaining to the check out supervisor who is trying to apologise but they are apparently very short staffed. There can be no excuse for that, we are in the middle of one of the biggest unemployment crises since WWII. We have been doing this for almost a year now and if this continues we will be doing it for another. I hear people complaining about the police state, the enforcement of lock down restrictions but sadly what I saw this morning suggests not enough is being done. Shops demonstrating such blatant disregard for public safety during these unprecedented times should be held to account, there is no excuse for such short staffing other than corporate greed. And people who choose to pay more attention to their mobile phone than the welfare of those around them are the lowest of the low, they should have those phones confiscated and crushed.

Reading the Americas Cup thread there is nothing to suggest the thread has been locked, but there is no reply option. Is this a bug?

Let's not, the quality of coverage is very poor compared to the recent Sri Lanka tour coverage by Sky. You might not like Sky but without them you would not have much of the sports coverage you have today. No broadcaster was interested in showing live overseas test matches before they came along and broadcast the 1990 tour to the West Indies. Domestic test coverage on the BBC had become what can only be described as water poor, often shared with horse racing so you saw then minutes play then it was off to the 2:40 at Kempton Park, plus the constant interruptions for regular BBC2 daytime programming which it was felt could not be rescheduled or postponed. By the end of the Beeb's coverage of test match cricket you were lucky if you actually saw a third of the days play. Sky has raised the bar when it comes to coverage of a great many sports.

I'm glad to hear that the share offer is going well. I hope t continues, sometimes these things can slow down very rapidly after the initial uptake.

1.5m? A bit steep for an old Morris.......

I saw that this morning, I was quite young though not quite as young as Alanna when my father died so i can fully understand her wanting to catch up with those things of her mum which remain, including her online posts. We bumped into each other one year, first at WRC then again at the Locks, I remember she was trying to "tick off" all of the Broads pubs. A worthwhile undertaking if ever there was one. A lovely lady. I think most of the NBF history is in tact so there will be plenty for Alanna to look at. Sadly my log in details have long been assigned to room 101.

I think you're referring to Afrormosia, often called African teak but unless the colour is heavily distorted by my monitor it looks far too red. Afrormosia is very yellow brown in colour, more like the stiles. It's grain is also quite wavy, more so than this appears. It looks like Bosse veneer to me, very popular with Scandinavian furniture makers post WWII

sadly all the mini kegs I like are out of stock, have been for some time

I like the idea of IKEA, but would have to amend it to IKEA (NICE), The Independent Kingdom of East Anglia (Not Including Cambridgeshire or Essex)

I'm struggling with the maths there .....100k deaths from 4 million positive cases would be 2.5%, which is what is being reported as a global average

OK folks, it's time to get moving on this, I've done all the maths and once I managed to find a pen which would write clearly on a Benson & Hedges packet it all went brilliantly. I have surveyed the route with a pencil and print out from Google Earth and it works out at precisely 5.2000 miles or 9152 yards. I haven't bothered looking at elevation too much because we all know that Norfolk is flat, so that will not be a problem. The first issue is to dig a ditch, 9152 yards long, 30 yards wide and 2 deep. That is just under 550k square yards of earth to move but that should be easy enough. I was watching a show on Discovery the other day "Goldrush" and Parker Schnaebel's gold crew "stripped" overburden from a cut 600 yards long, 200 wide and 30 feet deep in a week, that's 1.2 million cubic yards in just seven days using a 470 excavator, and they had to transport all of the spoil away with a rock truck, a kind of massive dumper. All we have to do is make a ditch and pile the spoil on the edges to form a flood bank. We will build a decent flood bank because we care about out neighbours, even though the plan means this new canal will not be tidal as it will incorporate a stop lock at each end. This will maintain a fixed water level under all bridges and we can check toll payments at the locks, ensuring no craft which has not paid our canal toll gains access. I have found a company in Shropshire who have a used 490 excavator for sale, which is a bit bigger than Parker's. They want £150k for it but I'm thinking if we get it on seven days approval then decide it's not for us we just give it them back. As we have less than half the ground to clear than Parker then we should be able to get it done working nights only, for obvious reasons and we need to work quietly! There is a problem with these excavators, and that is that they use huge amounts of diesel, about 100 gallons a day so if anyone has a fuel card for the Shell at the Brundall roundabout can we borrow it please? The land we are digging up will total about 75 acres, allowing 5 yard each side of the river for food banks, worth about one and a quarter million pounds which could be an issue as the current budget is the contents of my eldest son's post office money box and the three pound coins in the ashtray of the car I keep for shopping trollies. So I propose a share issue, for every meter of ground we dig the owner gets share in the company, more on that later. The next issue is the engineering, and this caused some considerable consternation for quite a few minutes but I think I see a way around it. The first major problem we hit when leaving the river Yare is the Norwich to Lowestoft railway line which we need to get under, but it is pretty low so we will need to lift it up a bit. I have looked at a document "standards for the construction of mainline railways" which quotes a maximum incline for modern high speed trains between 2.5 and 4 %, however looking at the rolling stock on this line it can hardly be considered high speed, or modern so I suggest we stick to 1% or 1:100. Bridge clearances on my new canal will be 10 foot, I think that is all we can afford unless the Brundall navy wants to have a whip round in which case we can make it more at their expense. In order to accommodate the bridge structure therefore we will need to raise the line 4 yards, which means jacking up a total length of 800 yards, 400 either side of the bridge. This shouldn't be too difficult, we can use the muck we are digging out of our canal to form the embankment but this will mean transporting it. We can't afford a rock truck I'm afraid but I do have my trailer, it's quite big at 6 x 4 feet but if anyone else has one and could lend a hand a few more would come in handy. Again i suggest this is work best undertaken at night. This would eventually lift the railway sufficiently to allow a headroom of 10 feet under the bridge, however it might cause some slight issues at Brundall Railway station which is in close proximity to the eastern end of the bridge and will therefore mean quite a climb from the platform into the carriages. I am currently watching a number of used step ladders on ebay to overcome this. Now the bridges themselves are quite a problem, they tend to be a tad expensive and as already mentioned, budget is tight but I have had a word with a mate of mine who is a Sergeant Major in the Royal Engineers. He is always complaining that they do nothing but hang around down at the Royal School in Chatham and how it's all regimental dinners and such so he suggests at one of those dinners they serve a few extra glasses of port and whilst the officers are sleeping it off he and a couple of dozen of his squaddies will slip up to Norfolk and undertake some "training exercises". They are used to working in the dark, in their line of business it can be quite advantageous not to be to be too conspicuous and he thinks that they can do one bridge a night, which takes care of the one railway and five minor roads we need to bridge over the canal within the one week timescale previously determined. Our next major hurdle is the southern bypass where sadly the fixes used thus far are not going to cut the mustard. I don’t think NCC let alone Highways England would appreciate it if we cut a trench 120 feet wide across the closest thing Norfolk has to a motorway, and try as they might I doubt that even the Royal Engineers can get us out of this one. I have determined after careful survey (well looking on the OS anyway) that the road by the radio masts at Postwick crests a hill of some fourteen feet, just what we need and right where we need it. We can tunnel underneath and not delay a single vehicle. So, I thought, TBMs, for the layman that means tunnel boring machines. There must be some lying around doing nothing. Sadly the cost of the Chiltern HS2 tunnel is estimated at £160m a mile! Now we only need two hundred meters but that still adds up to more than 20 million pounds. I am confident that we could secure the funding for our new “Dr. John Packman” tunnel from the Broads Authority tolls reserve account however at the very thought I am getting a somewhat uncomfortable, prickly kind of feeling right between my shoulder blades. Therefore once again, ingenuity must be the answer. My old mate Albert down the village has an old John Deere tractor, I know it still works as he was out and about clearing snow with it over the weekend. I plan to weld a frame to attach to the back of the tractor with a rotating disc driven by the PTO with a number of scraper blades welded in turn to the disc. We dig a hole, drop it in then simply back up to the embankment under the road and start boring. I can’t imagine there is any bedrock under there to deal with so our home made TBM will scrape away the soil and then when it reaches a certain point it will drop into a chute depositing it in front of the tractor from where our aforementioned trailer team can haul it away, perhaps to the railway which we have to prop up. We will need to line our tunnel to avoid cave ins, no corners being cut on this project. On the motorway near here they are busy taking up the armco barrier from the central reservation and replacing it with a sectional concrete wall. Miles and miles of old barrier is being trucked away presumably for recycling. What I plan to do is nip in the cab whilst the driver answers a call of nature and amend his sat nav to an appropriate point on the Southern Bypass where I will erect a sign saying “Recycling Station” and after he has unloaded them we can use them to line our tunnel with. There will be a charge to use this new waterway, initially £10 for 24 hours or £25 for seven consecutive days. Longer periods price on request. Consider the saving on the fuel spent transiting Great Yarmouth and its WIN! WIN! WIN! I know there might be one or two unforeseen circumstances which attempt to derail us but I’m sure with this display of ingenuity we can overcome them. I certainly think we are ready to launch our share issue and allow all you lucky people to join in the excitement. Shares will cost £50 each, and in line with local custom will have no cash or trade value, they will not be subject to any dividend payment and will not increase in value. Nor will they entitle the share holder to any discount or privilege. They may only be sold or transferred with the written approval of the organising committee, that’s me, by the way. I know you can’t wait to sign up, so I will post my Nigerian Bank Account details shortly, please deposit your payments of £50 per share (no limit on number of shares available!). Why not take advantage of our special offer of twenty shares for £1000? Anyone buying more than 1000 shares will receive one extra share ABSOLUTELY FREE OF CHARGE!

absolutely, priority access to all services for forum members of course.

Could I suggest a name or two for you ... Norfolk Enchants maybe? Norfolk 'n Good, Norfolk 'n Way? OK, seeing as we are entering fantasy land ..... here goes. My boatyard would be built on the Woodbastwick Road immediately south of Blofield Heath, which is not as much of a problem as it might sound because as part of my master plan I am digging the cut between the Yare immediately upstream of Brundall, running north under a new viaduct on the southern bypass then turning east towards Blofield Heath, passing to the south of the village. I'm sorry the outlook for the Blofield Business center is bleak as that's where my new river goes under the road, and the field immediately under that bridge will be my marina. So the marina will incorporate a hire basin to service around 80 hire boats, in addition around 50 private moorings and 100 residential berths. Each private mooring will have a private parking space adjacent, plus a small storage shed and electric hook up. Residential berths will also feature fresh water for each mooring and a 12' square patio area for barbecues etc. The orange block is a Londis style convenience shop with the rear providing stores and life jacket station for the hire boats. The yellow block alongside is the marina office and reception. Green lines are general access roads, light blue lines restricted access roads for private berth holders and the red lines secured access for residential berths. The pale grey block is the service shed, purple is car parking and the lime green in the north east corner is hard standing. My eighty hire boats will be 10 different classes, 8 of each from 2 berth to 8 berths and will be new builds around classic designs. Half of each class will run weekly Saturday to Saturday whilst the other half 3 / 4 / 7 nights with Monday and Friday starts. The ten styles I would choose to create modern versions of would be Hampton Safari Alpha 29, 35 and 42 center cockpit Alpha 35 and 44 highliners Aquafibre Sapphire 32 Aston Seamaster 30 Westward 38 Topcrft Alpha 32 My new waterway will be protected by a stop lock at each end and subject to a modest toll, weekly. monthly or annually. Got to keep the peasant out somehow

are you sure, I was under the impression the current lease is 2026. You are not buying either the property or even the lease, but the "business". Given it's poor recent reviews I would suggest that 75,000 is extremely optimistic. I doubt there is much of great material value to the business so you are buying the goodwill, which seems very sparse. The cost of the remaining lease is 26.5k a year making the total cost over five years in the region of £207.5k, plus salary for the owner(s) and two or three staff members. Yes, there is a holiday cottage which should net you a notable chunk of that investment, there is owners accommodation too but still the cafe would have to do very, very well.

Clearly Jenny Morgan and myself have read the prospectus as we are quoting from it but I shall say nothing more on the subject though, as clearly only certain views are acceptable. Who was it that once said "reality has no place here". I wish the locks and the community operation of it every success.

The prospectus budgets for replacement of the existing generator which is considered "past end of life", plus interior fittings a I understand the previous occupants gutted it on departure - a total of £70,000. It sounds strange to replace the generator if the plan is to connect mains power. The share offer is hoped to raise £600,000 which at £50 per share sounds like 12,000 total shares and a maximum of 1,000 shares for any one person, around 8.25% of the total stock. Assuming the stock is fully subscribed I wonder who will make the major decisions?