Vaughan

From Blakes catalogue of 1939. The boat description is well worth a read!

Here's one for Polly!

Please don't think I disagree with you. I am just pointing out that this may not be the only thing we will have to worry about in future.

From Blakes catalogue of 1939. The carburettor had a float chamber on top with a little pin that stuck up and you tickled this up and down until the chamber overflowed, before starting. So once you had neat petrol flowing down the side of the engine into the tray underneath, you then pressed the starter. Can you imagine that, in the bilges of a yacht? No wonder we have the BSS nowadays!

I have great respect for what Jay and others are saying and of course the public only have to show a bit of common sense in this crisis. I have mentioned elsewhere that my daughter is a sister in ICU at the James Paget hospital. Like Marshman, however, I am also badly worried about where this will take our country in the future, especially regarding a lack of respect or confidence in overbearing authority. We should all remember that our system of government (respected all over the World) is a constitutional monarchy and not a banana republic. "Boris" is not Idi Amin and our system will never (should never) let him become one. The police wear the Queen's uniform and have her crown in their cap badge. It is not there to look pretty. The public, traditionally, have not respected "the person" but the uniform. Unfortunately in recent years this respect has become eroded, mostly by the police themselves mis-interpreting their actual authority. At this critical time, unprecedented even in time of World War, the police must uphold the Law and it is up to Government to lay down the Law. But if the Law is unclear, or open to too much interpretation then the police will appear more and more like Wyatt Earp or Judge Dredd, instead of servants of The Crown. Like Marshman, I fear that this is also something from which the country may take a long time to recover.

I don't remember it in our days, but it wouldn't surprise me! Those little petrol engines were horrendously dangerous. One of my nephews showed me in his garden shed last year, where he is actually restoring the Stuart Turner engine that came from the Three of Hearts. How he acquired it, I don't know!

Excuse me, but I have a simple question : Why is it being left to the Police, to tell us what to do? Why are we being given "police" guidelines? I was always taught, as a Special Constable, that the Police (as Queen's Officers) are there to uphold the Law and not to try and interpret it for themselves. So please tell me : has anyone passed a Law recently, that says I can't sit on a park bench? Guidelines (not Law) tell us that the elderly (and I shudder to think, that means me) should take exercise to keep up our resistance to illness. So does that now mean that I have to run all the way there and back without stopping to draw breath? The Police cannot be respected by the public unless they have clear Government legislation to enforce.

Don't let the buggers grind you down!

Fascinating!

Well, well! A warm welcome to the forum from me to Tearose and to David, her custodian! She first appears on Hearts booking charts in 1949 and was first hired out on the 25th June. I believe this photo was taken in that year. When my parents bought her she was called "Jane" and I seem to remember David and I worked out that she had been built by E.C.Smith, in Wroxham? Yachts never let as well as cruisers and she would normally do around 19 weeks. Which nowadays, I suppose, would be thought of as a good season! In 1958, she did 27 weeks! In this photo you get a view of the "greenhouse" on the cabin top! In the original photo, the hirers had the topping lift up far too tight, so it was airbrushed out before it went into Blakes brochure. Notice the clinker built pram dinghy, which were always hired out with yachts in those days. When did I last sail her? It would have been about 1970, when I joined the Army. When did I first sail her? I suppose you could say she taught me how to sail. Father made me responsible for the two yachts whenever I was home from school and I think I was 13 when I gave my first trial run to her customers. In fact, over all the years, I only have one trade qualification. I am a "time served" painter and yacht rigger. I am very much looking forward to seeing her again, hopefully in October and I am sorry we missed our meeting last year. I still have a box stowed in our camper van, with a present for her. A little bit of her old equipment, which I hope you might enjoy!

Thank you for that, but I can't help help thinking this is what I have been doing for a few years on this forum? I have always "chipped in" with a few anecdotes of life here in the Midi and comparisons between boat hiring here and in Norfolk, where I have felt they might be of interest. Little did I realise that there must have been members who were just muttering "bloody Frogs" under their breath, all the while. I also know that I am on social media, where innate bigotry and latent racism seem to be the norm, even though this one used to be called the Friendly Forum. So I will keep France to myself in future. I seem to appreciate it - and know it - rather better than some others. The small comment I made on the other thread was not to say France is better than England : it was just to try and point up areas where the approach to the virus may be different in the two countries, based on my own experience of living here during the lockdown and which I had hoped, might be of interest.

I have been getting together a selection of some of the many photos of places I have been to on the French canals and rivers in the last 25 years, with the idea of posting them for the interest of members while we are stuck at home. In view of the blinkered attitudes to the French, displayed by several members on another, serious thread I now don't know how they would be received, so I am glad I didn't. I wouldn't want them to invite similar comments. I am afraid this has left me with no taste for continuing stories about the old days at Jenners either, for the time being. Please excuse me. I am making this comment here, as at least it is my own thread.

Well, I certainly put my foot down a Gopher hole with that one, didn't I? I had hoped that some up to date info on what is happening in the country right next door to us, would be of interest and even of help. Instead I find myself in a minefield. A lesson quickly learned! I shall keep myself - and the French - away from this thread in future.

Or maybe in the months to come we will all find ourselves sitting in our living rooms doing our exercise - as well as our only social interaction - on Peloton rowing machines?

Oh well, I was only passing on what I thought might be up to date information. I did say I was only comparing with what I saw on TV. Of course I was! I should have left opinion to experts. Lord knows, there are enough of those to choose from!

Of course, but his date of 11 May seemed decisive. During the next 4 weeks they plan to ensure that anyone with symptoms gets tested and that hospitals will be able to admit those with the actual illness. The virus is still worst in the Paris area and in north east France but it seems it is very much under control in other areas. We have already been in lockdown for a week longer than UK and I have to say that the response from the French public has been very much better than that of the British, that I have seen on TV. They have obeyed the regulations and this may have made a big difference. I never thought I'd say that about the French!

In France, Macron has just given a speech and the total lockdown will continue until 11 May. After that they plan to re-open schools and colleges gradually, followed by as much manufacturing industry as possible. There is no immediate plan to open bars and restaurants and any kind of public event with crowds will have to wait until at least the end of July. He seemed very confident that the virus is being controlled and I thought he gave a very good speech. He did say that frontiers will remain closed to non-European countries. I take it that means the UK!

Actually I missed going to the hairdressers over a month ago before we were locked down and I think it is now longer than it has ever been in my life. "Am I 'urting you, young man?" "No, Sarn't Major" "Well I bleedin well ought to be I'm STANDIN ON YER 'AIR!"

Who are you calling old coots? That's drerogative, that is!

It's worth having a look at the history section, now that we have some time on our hands. There are all sorts of good things hidden away in here! I said yesterday that I would tell some stories about what the operation at Jenners was like and I see that I have told the history of it in the first page of this thread, so it stops me repeating myself - for once! The first two pages have a lot of other good stories of those days, so I hope you enjoy them, even if you had read them earlier. Notice that "thread drift" is nothing new! I don't seem to have told the stories of how the yard actually ran, and the things that went wrong, so I will tell a few now! Before I start I wish to say that I never tell Porky Pies on this forum. There are enough stories of the Broads to tell, without having to invent them! So best to start at the beginning . . . . David Millbank bought Hearts in 1966 and first took it over in 1967, when he was also buying the hire fleets of a lot of yards in Wroxham and elsewhere, so in the autumn I was given the job of getting my friends together and delivering the boats to Thorpe, which amounted to being given free Broads holidays, every weekend! On the Saturday we would do all the logistics of leaving cars in the right places and getting the boats prepared and running, usually about 10 boats at time. By the time we got all assembled, we got as far as Acle Bridge on the first night, often getting there in the full dark. And the next morning across Breydon early, followed by a pub crawl up the Yare! It was the 60s, we were all young, about 18 or 19 and we had our girlfriends with us. On cabin cruisers. It reminds me of Peter Sellers : "Now tell me headmaster, how do you segregate the sexes?" "Well if you must know, I go round with a crowbar and I prise them apart!" Actually, I have friends from those weekends, who went on to be married, and are still married now. I remember one time when we just got to Coldham Hall before closing time at 1400, with 7 boats, but there was only one mooring space left on the quay. So without a word or a signal between us, we formed line astern, turned round into the tide and moored alongside one by one in a long "trot", like wartime MTBs mooring in Gosport. The boat at the outer end of the trot was the River Inspector's launch. Jack Hunt had a "nose" for these occasions and had turned up to make sure we were behaving ourselves. Which meant accepting our offers for him to join us for a drink in the pub! As he was moored on the end of the trot, we couldn't leave the pub before he did, and Harry Last didn't close on Sunday afternoons! We did about 4 weekends that year, and another 5 the following autumn, as David bought more boats. I have the very happiest memories of those weekends. Perhaps that's enough of a story for now and I haven't even got to the running of the boatyard yet! I will tell a few more after lunch. Hope you are enjoying your day!

I am glad you sound as though you're OK, Tim!

That was true as well! Their yard was Jenner Brothers, on Bungalow lane. It sometimes worked the other way though. I gather they used to get a lot of angry letters from solicitors chasing Jenners' overdue accounts!

I must admit that French "café" conversation should not include the Royal Navy. At not just because of Nelson!

And look what happened to him!