Vaughan

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.

Here's another, for those who recognise it : O Trinity of love and power; our brethren shield in danger's hour: From rock and tempest, fire and foe; protect them whereso'ere they go. And evermore shall rise to Thee, glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

According to the papers today, they could lose something like £30 million in cash donations this year.

I don't think they have collected in public at all this year, Ian. I don't think they were allowed to. I have sent a cheque to our local branch here in France, which seems like a large amount, but it is the same as what I would have put in the tin during their monthly book swap meets, which have been cancelled ever since February. Another side effect of the lock-downs, I am afraid.

O Eternal Lord God, who alone spreadest out the heavens and ruleth the raging of the seas; Who hast compassed the waters with bounds, until day and night shall come to an end; Be pleased to receive unto thy most gracious and merciful protection, the persons of us thy servants, and the fleet in which we serve. The Naval prayer.

Funny that. Brundall Gardens was where the Coypu was first introduced to the Broads. They were released from a Nutrea farm there, which went out of business during the War. Another big mistake, that was!

Maybe you have never had to run a fleet of a hundred hire boats. By the way, that hour includes changing the oil and the oil filter. You have had the engine running so as to make sure the batteries keep charged while you are emptying and draining the domestic water. So while the engine is warm, change the oil. Old sump oil is acidic and will eat away at the crankshaft journals if you leave it in for the winter. Soft furnishings and curtains will come to no harm if you have left plenty of VENTILATION. Leave all hopper windows open; open all doors; half open all drawers and cupboard doors and let plenty of air flow through the boat. Mattresses can be stood up sideways to get air on both sides of them. You can run a bit of antifreeze through the shower drain pump while you are doing the raw water system. Same goes for the toilets. Leave all water taps half open and lay the shower heads down on the shower tray to drain. By the way, if your boat is stored ashore, make sure you open the weed filter valves again once you are hauled out. If not, there is still river water in there, which might freeze and shatter the valve castings. Then when the boat is put back in next spring, you will find you have expensive problems!

My intent is to stay in bed and have another cup of coffee, on a rather blustery Saturday morning. On Monday I shall ring the boatyard and they will winterise the boat for me. If it costs an hour's labour, so be it. I wonder if those in marinas have considered asking a travelling mechanic to do it? There are several on the Broads.

Thanks for that - brings back many happy memories! In our family we trained gun dogs using the words "thank you" when they retrieved a bird and gave it into your hand. We had a Yellow Lab who would carry an egg or a tomato without breaking them. My mother used to keep chickens in the woods on the island and when I went to get the eggs, the dog would insist on carrying one all the way back. You had to have your hand ready to catch it though, for as soon as you said thank you, she dropped it on the floor!

The yard where I moor was open for maintenance all through the last lockdown and I assume will be this time as well. I had intended to ask them to winterise at the end of November but may do it earlier now, as my daughter can't use the boat anymore. In my experience, a bit of frost on the grass is no problem. The temperature has to be well below freezing for several days and nights running before it will do damage in the boat. Boats stored ashore will be more vulnerable to frost damage.

This is what Matron used to tell us in Prep School. In all the years since, I don't think the "science" or the statistics, have had any effect whatever on my eyesight!

Hear, hear!

Oh well, here we still are, 2 days later and no end in sight. The Americans do like to get their money's worth out of these events! The most astounding thing for me came when he announced his "victory" from the White House, with the band playing "Hail to the Chief" and then walked off again to "Semper Fidelis", which is the regimental march of the U.S.Marine Corps! Whatever else you may think of him, he has to have credit for "brass neck"!

Thank you very much Chris, and I note this, from the last paragraph : It's sometimes easy to forget that the countryside we know today has been shaped by game management. Not only does it best protect and maintain our hedgerows and woodland but the wildlife that depends on it too. I rest my case!

And "pregnant Chads"! Remember them, from a previous US election that ended up in court? It's 6 AM over there, and here we go again! At least it will be nice to have something amusingly distracting to watch on the TV news for the rest of the day, rather than all the gloom and doom in Europe!

I am told that was what the old lady actually said!

Thanks very much for that and I have had a read of it this morning. Not all of it I admit, as it goes on for miles! It seems to me that there is nothing really new here that has not already been in force for years and the Game Bird Report says that most of the fears expressed are based on "weak" evidence. It seems to be something to do with disturbance to the soil caused by game birds dunging and foraging, but admits this is mainly in the rearing pens themselves! So I get the distinct impression that Chris Packham has just jumped on this particular band wagon for his own self-aggrandisement. As to soil disturbance by dunging and foraging, having lived on Thorpe island among pheasants, foxes and badgers which all live there, I would blame the badgers ten times more than the pheasants! But then, we mustn't restrict the badgers, must we?

Sorry to wander off your thread Peter but I had a good friend on the Thames whose company did the studio lighting for Z Cars and he used to tell some stories about the problems of doing a live sit-com. One time, they set up a scene in a street of terraced houses, for Barlow to arrive and interview a suspect. He was to knock on the door, the suspect would answer and the interview would follow. The scene starts; a Z Car draws up; Barlow gets out of the back, walks through the front gate and knocks on the wrong house, where an old lady comes to the door and tells him to bugger off! They had no choice but to carry on filming while Barlow apologised profusely, went round to the right house and the scene was put out live as it stood!

Brian Blessed was "Fancy" Smith, if I remember? A great programme in its day. You never see any re-runs of it as all the programmes went out live, using outside broadcast cameras. Long before our digital age!

I assume that was a Freudian slip?

While you're on the site, I consider him to be quixotic and iconoclastic. Among one or two other things . . .

As the OP, perhaps I could remind us that I was concerned about cruelty to the Norfolk countryside, rather than the animals! My point is that the "green and pleasant land" that we enjoy around us is maintained in that condition because it is used for hunting and shooting as well as growing arable crops. We are losing enough of our farmland to housing, as it is! I also didn't mention that the maintenance of all those woods, spinneys, copses, hedges and field headlands gives a haven for an abundance of all sorts of other wildlife and plant life. Whether you like it or not, it is as beautiful as it is, because of hunting and especially game shooting. I grew up going out on shoots with my father, as a beater and no, they are not all toffs, by any means. They are local country people who enjoy a good day out in the fields together. Quite a lot of them are boatbuilders! Could I also mention that, unlike coarse fishermen, they eat what they catch. Talking of eating, game shooting is already under serious threat from hygiene regulations. You can't just sell the day's "bag" to the butcher any more. It is not accepted unless it is properly processed and refrigerated within a very short time of killing and its source has to be documented in detail. This is why you will so rarely see pheasant or partridge on a restaurant menu, as the farmer can't sell them any more. In the old days, the "guns" on a syndicate shoot would be given a brace of birds each to take home. The rest of the bag was for the farmer to sell. Not any more. I also did a fair bit of hunting as a boy, and I was "blooded" with the Dunston Harriers when I was 10 years old. Hunting is a bit more of a country gentry's "pursuit", as you normally don't catch anything! The fox is too clever and the old brown hare is far too fast and agile! It does have its big effect on the countryside though, as the land has to be maintained specially, for hunting across it. On a shoot, hare is game, and most farmers allow foxes to be shot when they are seen. Fox hunting doesn't actually keep down foxes, in reality. As I see it, if you love our English countryside as much as I do, you have to appreciate why it is the way it is and why it has to be managed. Rather like the Broads, in fact!

So do I but what I prefer even more is the traditional Broads tube filter which is simply an extension of the hull fitting and extends up above the waterline, so you have no need to close the valve, or even stop the engine, to clean the filter. You will also have no problem with air locks, since there is nowhere for the air to get in! The system is "hirer proof" since if you drop the screw cap in the bilges, it doesn't matter! Cambridge Cabby's photo is the Vetus type filter which is designed with a transparent cap so that you can check it for weed just by looking in it. But to enable this, it has to be high up in the bilge, so that you can look in it! This means the pump has to lift the raw water up there, before it goes to the engine. This also means that a small mistake in putting the cap back on and screwing it down will let air in, and the pump will run dry. The little butterfly nut is separate and is very easy to lose in the bilges. The Vetus type filter should always have plenty of water pump grease smeared onto the rubber lid gasket to avoid air leaks. it is also important to make sure you have the lid exactly placed centrally in its seating, before screwing down the fixing nut. These Vetus filters are not "hirer proof" and you will not find many of them fitted in hire boats.

All of this depends on how you view it. The marsh harrier is basically African, as I understand it. The peregrine falcon came from America, where it is called the duck falcon, I believe. I was referring to the grey, or English partridge although the red (French) partridge is also prolific in Norfolk. My point, of course, is that it is rather silly for the RSPB to say we should not release pheasants because they are not native to this country. They would not exist naturally in the wild here anyway, if they were not reared for shooting. So do we not want to see them in our countryside anymore? Is "natural England" now to be for some species, but not others?

I see in this morning's papers that Chris Packham has persuaded DEFRA (ahead of an enquiry) to restrict by licence, the release of game birds - notably pheasants - on English farmland. Especially if the land is close to an SSSI, although I cannot for the life of me see why an SSSI has anything to do with this. I just want to speak up for those of us who understand that our English countryside is only as beautiful as it is, because it is managed that way! If it were not for "country pursuits" such as game shooting and yes, fox hunting, it would look very different. Farmers only maintain their hedgerows, copses, spinneys and woodland because they can gain income (another "crop" if you like) from from the management of syndicate game shooting. If not, I am sure they would be glad to dig all that up, so that driverless GPS tractors can plough open fields of thousands of acres each without obstacle. Is that what we want to see here? It has happened in northern France, in what is known as "the plains of Reims" and in the US, they call it Prairie Farming. Is that what he wants to see, or is his celebrity TV career more important than thinking through the alternatives? He seems to have got the RSPB on board, because they feel that we should not be releasing a non native species into the countryside. So what about the English partridge or the black grouse, which would be threatened native species if they were not reared for shooting? On the other hand, what about heavily protected predatory raptors such as the peregrine falcon or the marsh harrier, which are not native to this country? Come to that, neither is the yellow Labrador gundog! I will leave the Eurasian otter out of this argument, for the moment! Any countryman looking at this will guess that this is a farm which also manages game shooting. The field headland in front of the long spinney has been left alone so that game birds can come out from the woods to feed. Pheasant and partridge don't take off and fly unless they have to. If frightened, they prefer to run off back to the woods through thick cover. Strips of kale are often grown on field edges, to give them cover. During a shoot, this would be the area for the beaters to "put them up" so that they fly over the guns on the downwind side of the field. The gamekeeper will always know the best place to position the guns! In the last photo there is a small copse in the middle of the field and I suppose this may be a release pen, where young pheasants are released, from the rearing pens which would be in the woodland nearby. If not, why hasn't the farmer just cut it down and ploughed it all up, to make more money out of the barley field? These photos were taken just off Sharp Street in Catfield, a short walk from the How Hill moorings. So next time you are there, go and have a lovely country walk and form your own opinion. Imagine what that land would look like if it were just one flat, open, thousand acre beet field. And don't forget the mallard duck! A lot of the marshes on the Broads were also developed for wild fowling in the old days. Hence the name "Decoy". An example is the so called island mooring on Malthouse Broad, where our members love to walk their dogs. All of that private land around there was originally managed as a duck flight, extending over almost 50 acres. When ecological pressure groups and TV celebrities start to impinge on the way our countryside has been managed over the centuries, they should be careful what they wish for.