Vaughan

Now you're going back!

I see we are in Speaker's Corner, for this thread. Then I say bugger the Law. Lets concentrate on saving the Broads that we love even if, Heaven forfend, our decisions don't conform to the tablets that Moses brought down from the Mountain. I seem to remember they didn't have any sub clauses!

Do you have an opinion on Brexit, while you're at it?

I must have gone to bed last night before all these "sub clauses" started getting bandied about. You know, we are only going to help the BA (and therefore the Broads) get through this crisis by thinking out of the box. Do we really, seriously, want to see the BA lose all of its river toll revenue in one "fell swoop"? Surely not! I regard the river toll on my boat as my investment in the maintenance of the Broads. To maintain my boat, I pay a mooring to the boatyard. To maintain The Broads, I pay my river toll. It is as simple as that, in my mind. Hire boats, once they can start to be hired again, will also pay river tolls again. For Goodness' sake, lets get real about this!

Hopefully the convenience stores on the corner of Station Rd are still open. They are always a great place to shop, even until 10PM!

I agree, and why else, would brokerage boatyards need trade plates?

I don't follow that. If the insurers did not have a list of the boats in the fleet, by name and number, then the "sister ship clause" could not apply in the event of a claim. Of course they are individually insured.

I did notice this quote : Our financial mechanism means that we are not allowed to divert our DEFRA funding to navigation. I hope that works In reverse? Are they suggesting that revenue from river tolls has never been used for other than the navigation? Just asking . . . .

And a very nice photo of the"caves" of the chateau de Ventenac, Near Argens!

Water Rail. Come on, keep up!

By the way, this is why the bells of Thorpe church are now rung electrically by clappers, as the tower is not felt strong enough to ring them by rope and wheel. Which means that certain bell-ringers have an unfortunate habit of playing tunes on them! Campanology, it is not!

The boat on quay is the Ace of Hearts and alongside her, the Five or the Six. Behind in the basin is the Ten, or maybe the Queen. The photo is before the old church spire was demolished (1954?) It had been weakened by bomb damage in the War, probably when Hearts boat sheds were bombed. It is also before the posts with hanging baskets were installed along the back of the Green, for the Festival of Britain in 1952. Notice that the quay on the Green was made of railway sleepers and was partly just an earth bank, with osier bushes. I preferred it that way! The bit of quay further along was a staithe (yes, there were two) for the use of the coal merchants, in what is now the Buck car park. You can just about make out the petrol pumps there, as the Buck was also a filling station.

That is what the French would call a "barraque"! I believe the photo was taken at Argeliers, on the Canal du Midi? Or maybe Argens? It is one of those that moves about a bit.

These are "uncharted waters" that we are sailing in, so we must be objective in finding the best way out of them. Vasco de Gama, or "Henry the Navigator" would probably have told us that the best way, is the way the wind blows. Or as my father would have said - "Whatever you are going to do - do it to leeward!"

Ask Peachments in Brundall, as they make bespoke dashboards. If they are open, of course! Looks as though the engine was running smoothly, anyway!

I think what you say is very important. We should remember that a holiday is a luxury but certainly not a necessity. You have, however, decided you can afford it, budgeted for it and paid for it. Wanting the money back now, because you have other more important things to spend it on, may be very understandable but not realistic, in my view. You have a business contract with the boatyard, to provide you with a holiday. The voucher system will still provide you with that holiday. Provided you give the business the flexibility now, so that they will still be in business when you are ready for your holiday. If you had bought and paid for a washing machine, just before the crisis, you would't be expecting them to take it back, because you now need the money. That may sound simplistic but I don't feel that there is very much difference.

Me too. He taught me a lot of what I know about engineering.

Just like my father. He was an excellent game shot but he never shot clays to "get his eye in" as he felt it was not the same thing. A clay comes out of the trap at high speed and then slows down, but a partridge takes off out of the sugar beet and then accelerates rapidly!

So instead of lead shot in your roast pheasant Sunday lunch, you now get rust?

Ah, that may be possible. I can't imagine old John Lane turning them away. So long as they bought a Blakes lapel badge from his kiosk, of course!

I don't remember that part?

Blakes owned the lease on the Maltsters' Quay and the whole of Malthouse Broad, ever since the end of the 40s. That is why it was never closed off to navigation, as the landowner had done to Ranworth Inner Broad. So we have them to thank for that. They also leased and ran Yarmouth Yacht Station, for many years.

Oh no!! I can't believe it. Not the "Leaping Lifebelt" again! When will they learn, that they they are being watched?

There are no hills in Norfolk. Didn't you know that? They say there is no Great Estuary either . . . .

This is embossed plastic sheet, in A4 size. It is sold for modelling cobblestones, in 4mm scale. You can also buy brickwork, in the same material. You can see by the price that I bought it several years ago. It is now over £5 a sheet! A little bit of trickery, with what they call "dry brushing" in enamel paint, and you arrive at a fair representation of Norfolk knapped flint. I think I'm quite pleased with that. It may be slightly too dark, but once I have made a farm cottage out of it, with brick surrounds to the windows and corners ; a Norfolk pantile roof and some climbing roses around the doorway, I don't think it will look too bad. Or I may go the whole hog and build the "Railway Tavern" out of it!