Vaughan

I certainly don't disagree for the sake of it : only when our opinions differ! Just as I have always done, every winter, to avoid the 'flu and other bugs. I haven't had the 'flu in donkey's years and the only time I ever catch a heavy cold is when I come back to England and get on a train! Surely these sort of common sense precautions are really nothing new. Meantime our whole way of life as we have known it, as well as the economy of whole nations, is being thrown out of the window by draconian and arbitrary regulation which, when it comes to it, is too confusing and contradictory to be understood, even by those who want to abide by it.

I thoroughly agree with this. People should not be made to feel like social pariahs when they are not breaking any laws. As someone who has been used to wearing an army gas mask for days and nights running, on NATO exercises, I find the face nappies that we are supposed to think of as protection, are pathetically inadequate. But the law says I have to wear the thing, so I do. That doesn't mean I believe in it. There is an article in yesterday's EDP where the chairman of the Broads Society is complaining that boat owners still don't know whether they can use their boats or not, and the BA don't know either. Surely this is pathetic? I understand that I must be careful in a supermarket and take precautions but what on Earth harm am I going to do to myself or anyone else on my own boat, out in the open air on Barton Broad? Give me a sensible answer to this sort of nonsense and I might be persuaded!

I have just read in the EDP of the death of Bryan Read, a man I remember well, who was chairman of the Broads Society when I was on the committee. If I could count on the fingers of my two hands, the men who did most for the Broads as we know them now, since the war, I am sure he would be one of them. Perhaps someone would be kind enough to link the article here, as I still don't know how. The family's holiday bungalow can still be seen, on the reach just upstream of the Swan corner, at Horning.

That sounds about right. We used to tell hirers that they would do about one and a half hours to the gallon. On the contrary, one of my father's MTBs, with 4 Packard Merlins, would use just over a gallon of 101 octane petrol a minute at full speed. On each engine!

The 5 cyl Nanni will easily use 7 litres per hour if you don't govern the speed. Diesel consumption goes up enormously as soon as you want to go fast. By the way, a Webasto heating system will use 2.5 litres per hour on its own! I have researched that as well, on winter delivery jobs. Use of a Webasto on cold winter days can easily double your normal fuel consumption. The average Broads hire boat "in my day" was built with a 70 gallon tank, as this was about the same capacity as a truck, and would allow the boat to do 2 weeks on hire without filling up.

A Nanni 4220 will use between 2 and 2.5 litres per hour at 6MPH on a boat the size of NYX mk.11. Believe me, I have researched it, on a lot of boats with hour meters fitted. The most economical is still the Perkins 4108. Around 1.6 its per hour at 5 MPH.

Are you sure you haven't got a fuel tank on either side, under the deck, and haven't found the other one yet?

That was one of the fun bits, as it happens! I had bought a scale model, by Oxford Finecast, of a Fordson E27N "High Major" tractor, the same as the one I used to have on my boatyard, for hauling boats out. One day it will be suitably displayed in a ploughed field somewhere on the layout. So all I had to do was drive the tractor through the Polyfilla, just before it went hard! It took longer to clean the wheels of the little tractor afterwards, than it it did to do the modelling! I think you have hit the spot, there. My sort of modelling doesn't actually depend on the railway itself. I am trying to represent a piece of central Norfolk countryside as it would have looked in 1952, with a railway running through it. It is a snapshot in time and it takes a lot of research to try and get it right. For instance, I was talking about a couple of elm trees in the hedgerow. I am modelling the days before Dutch Elm Disease ravaged and radically altered the Norfolk countryside, so I want to try and show what it was like, in those days.

I gave you a "laugh" as you have dug up several old "chestnuts" in the same post! Traditionally, the high price of diesel, compared to a roadside filling station has been excused as it also contains the cost of "consumables" such as gas and lub. oil, which are not charged separately. That is quite reasonable and as there are still very few electric cooking boats, is still valid in my view. At least on the Broads, you are charged for the actual consumption of diesel, when the tank is filled up. When you are charged for diesel by the hour, that is different! The engine uses far less fuel when ticking over in neutral charging the batteries, than it does when charging across Breydon at 8MPH, but the hourly rate to the customer is still the same! As for the fear of gas exploding; I think that may be "for marketing purposes only".

Now that we are all back in a lockdown again, perhaps it is time for an up-date! Notice that the pub now has gutters and downpipes, which make a big difference. The road surface is some kind of casting sand, given to me by a modelling neighbour, and makes a good imitation of asphalt, when sprinkled over PVA glue. The colour is toned down at the verges with brown poster paint and an airbrush. That telephone box seems to jump about a bit whenever I take a photo but I am sure it will find a permanent home one day! In the foreground will be a country triangular road junction with an old fashioned sign post in the middle. To the right, I am thinking of a small village garage with a couple of petrol pumps and some old abandoned tractors in the nettles round the back and an old army lorry, made into a breakdown truck. It may be more of a tin shed, rather than a Nissen hut, but we shall see. The hedge round the back of the paddock in the background is sphagnum moss, that I collected off a tree about 12 years ago and have had in a box, waiting for this moment! It is the same stuff florists use, for lining hanging baskets. The front of the cottage garden can be a yew hedge, like the photo; a white palisade railing the same as the platform ramp, or maybe a 4ft high flint wall with brick posts at the gateway. We shall see! I have been trying to get the effect of exposed paving stones, where vehicles passing over the crossing have worn the asphalt away. I think I am quite pleased with that, although I may adjust the colours a bit. I have also been playing with static grass, as taught to me by The Q at the model railway show in Hoveton! The field will be modelled as a small paddock, with a couple of horses peering over the fence, maybe an old grounded railway wagon as their shelter and it needs a couple of elm trees along the inside of the hedge, which I am working on at the moment. Not sure of the grass in the paddock yet, as it will be short-cropped grazed grass, so it will look different from that on the bank. Notice the bridle path, along the front of the verge. You can see tractor tracks in the mud going through the gateway and there is a bit of water lying in the ditch beside the fence. That is a couple of light coats of International Goldspar yacht varnish!

I had not heard of this but an all inclusive package has been an option for large yards in France for many years now and is taken up by at least half of customers. I must say that I have often seen customers arrive for their holiday on a boat which has cost them 2 or 3 thousand Euros in August, being rather disgruntled at having to fork out another 3 or 4 hundred for various extras when they arrive! A lot of people prefer to know exactly what their holiday will cost, even if they understand that it might be a few Quid more that way. I do think though, that it should be an option, rather than an overall booking policy. I have just looked on the NBD website and they are indeed announcing all inclusive for next year. Hoseasons, however, seem to tell a different story. I have just enquired to book Fair Viscount for a week in April next year and the quote I was given shows damage waiver and fuel deposit as extras. There is a little window that advises me to book soon as pricing policies may change. Perhaps that is what it means! I was also interested to see that there appears to be a great deal of availability on their website, for next Spring. That is not what we have been led to believe by the press. I was also very amused to see all the photos of the older Faircraft boats, in Hoseasons website, with Blakes emblems on the bows! They can sack the "continuity girl" for that one!!

I agree with all you suggest, Grendel, provided that doesn't mean I am obliged to spend the rest of my days appearing in public with a nappy on my face. I am afraid I find that very difficult to live with, from a human interaction point of view. I am not a psychologist but I suspect that these coverings have removed a great deal of the trust that we should have in each other, as fellow citizens. The mask makes me feel like some sort of leper and I suspect I am not alone in that. As to catching the 'flu, we have surely always known that if you are elderly or medically vulnerable to it, then you must take certain precautions. We all know to avoid trains and aircraft and most especially and far the worst of all, the waiting room of a doctor's surgery! They are simply factories for the catching of whatever is "going around" and if they can be improved in future, that will be a big step forward! My daughter, in the meantime, thinks she is at far greater risk of catching the virus from her children at school, than she is from her work in A&E. As for boating, as I said back before the first lockdown, if my daughter, in her profession, thinks it is perfectly safe to take her kids down the river for a day out, then I am happy to believe her!

As far as I am concerned, if there is a law (that I recognise as legal) then I will abide by it, always provided that I understand it! A couple of days ago I asked the question here : can my daughter go out for the day on our boat? Despite all the discussion I still don't think we know the answer to that. So quite obviously, the law is not clear and precise enough for people to follow properly. We are in the same sort of lockdown here as in England and we are abiding by the rules and staying at home. That doesn't mean I am convinced by the reasons for it! Does a lockdown make any real difference? I don't know but I suspect the statistics that we are offered to justify shutting down whole countries. For instance, what has happened to the 'flu, all of a sudden? Flu is a coronavirus, transmitted in the same way, so one would expect that with all these Covid precautions, there will be a lot less 'flu this year. But where are the figures? How many people have still died of the 'flu this year? And why don't we know? The 'flu killed 28,000 people in the winter of 2015 but did we shut the country down, and all go scuttling about with disposable nappies on our faces? Average 'flu deaths are said to be 7000 every winter. Over a five month period, that is 325 per week! So where have they all gone this year? Or have they, as I suspect, been lumped in among the "covid deaths" and are just distorting the figures? Those who wish to take extra precautions for their own reasons have nothing to stop them making that choice. Although someone's still got to be out there running the country, somehow, in their absence. Some people are in professions and dedications which don't give them the luxury to hide away from it. Meantime those who wish to carry on living as normal a life as possible should not be criticised for doing so within the regulations as they stand. If the "stay at home and save lives" camp think they are wrong to do this, then it is perhaps the law that is wrong, not the people who are trying to interpret it.

When you say washed away, I assume you are not talking about boat wash, but the effect of high winds on the open water?

It's all right John - from the views I have seen expressed elsewhere on the forum today, I think I am perceptive enough to know when I am just trying to kick a rice pudding up a hill!

Sorry - tried to link something but failed!

I am not in denial - by no means - and this is exactly what I greatly fear for the future. I wonder if the Norfolk Broads will turn out to be the same place that we have come to love, because we complacently thought it would always be the same? Either we fight for it, or we lose it.

Excuse me but I was quoting the supposed death rate, according to the "science", among the over 80s. These figures vary greatly of course, according to which sort of "expert" you wish to listen to next. My mother died in a care home, 20 years ago, when she caught the flu that was going around that winter. She died because she was already suffering from a long term heart condition and her own constitution was not strong enough to recover from the virus. She was also 89 years old at the time. Her death certificate did not say that she "died of the flu". She also had the comfort of all of her closest family at her bedside, holding her hand as she died. That included my ex wife, the mother of her grandchild. Something else that is now forbidden by these panic regulations that purport to protect us but also forbid us to lead our lives and even end our lives, in a way that we should have thought right and proper.

If that is your Eutopia I wonder if you have considered who is going to finance it, in the years to come? There are those who have often criticised our capitalist society but it has its benefits! Less long haul travel means the death of the airlines and all the related businesses that depend on them for parts, maintenance, supply, logistics, catering, airports and all that. Millions of jobs. Who will pay my daughter's pension when she retires, if the government can't afford to pay it, because not enough people have work, in the "office based" jobs that you decry? Even my own pension may be at risk in the next few years, for all I know. Those people who wanted to live a more healthy life style according to green issues were not stopped from doing so if they wished, pre COVID. There was no government dictat that prevented them.

CC, I thoroughly agree with you, but perhaps I should quote the rest of MM's option 3/ : See people die who wouldn't otherwise have done so. That includes those whose treatment for other ailments such as cancer, heart disease, liver and kidneys, have had their treatment put into abeyance in specialised hospitals such as Addenbrookes. I am not an expert but I am very objective. I see things as they are, in front of my face. My great concern is, what is going to be the end of all this, and what will be left, of what we like to call humanised society? We can't just all scuttle off down our own little rabbit holes saying "stay at home and save lives". There are too many other things about our lives, and our way of life, that we are destroying in the process. If we are not very careful, we may never live our lives again, in the way that we used to.

I am not obsessed with the law but in a law abiding society the law must be seen as above reproach. That way, it can be followed by all concerned, without doubt and without risk of civil unrest.

Option 1/. How do you make a vague law? That is the road to anarchy. Option 2/. That seems to be the status quo, whether we like it or not. Option 3/. My daughter, as a matron in charge of 4 wards in A&E, does not see the NHS in a state of collapse at this time.

All the same, the law is supposed to be the law. If the law is not clear, or is ambiguous and contradictory in its wording, then the law is an ass.

So a straight question please : From what I am reading here it seems that my daughter can travel from home at Potter Heigham to Stalham where our boat is moored and where the boatyard is still open for business. It also seems that if we were a national park, she could go out for the day in it. But all of a sudden, the Broads is not a national park! Have I got that right? By the way, Potter to Stalham is a much shorter distance than she drives to work every day, in an A&E hospital in Gorleston!

I think I know what you mean Fred, and having watched the service at the Cenotaph, yesterday, I wonder how the veterans feel? Being made to stay away because, statistically, 1% of them might die, at their age, if they actually caught the virus, out there in the open air on Whitehall. Given that only a very small proportion, if any, would actually have caught it, that brings the real risk down to about 0.01% or even less. So only 25 representatives were allowed to parade and they weren't even allowed to lay wreaths, for some totally obscure reason. That is only 0.25% of those who usually parade. By comparison, the American Forces planners for the Normandy Landings estimated that 13% of troops would be drowned and a further 25% would be casualties on the first day ashore. British estimates were 13% acceptable casualties out of 70,000 troops landing. Mercifully, the actual British figure for the first day was only 4.4%. That is the sort of "rate of attrition" that the veterans faced when they were in combat and that is what they parade to remember on this Sunday. I wonder, if they had actually been asked if they wanted to attend, at a 0.01% attrition rate, at their age, how many would have refused? They didn't refuse, when their country needed them.