thingamybob

Yes my friend, you do need some serious help. When you look at what you have on the Broads, basically you have some parts of the river with loads of expensive property on the waterfront around Horning and Wroxham and a bit on the Ant just South West of Barton Broad. Personally anything South of Acle is long and boring, just hours of looking at grazing land punctuated by the odd cow on the flood defences. Great? Yawnmouth is nothing to write home about and I think the local authority have a cheek to ask for mooring fees to stay there to spend your money in the scruffy dump. The pubs are not much better and very expensive, using the excuse that "they have to make the money to see them over the winter" I wish I could have put my feet up over the winter and lived off what I earned over the summer. The only saving graces are Hickling Broad, Barton Broad and the River Bure above Wrecksham. What the shiny brocures do not tell you that unless you are moored up at places such as Horning, Stalham, Ranworth, or Ludham Bridge before 5.00 pm in the high season you had better have some booze and food on the boat, you will not get moored. Basically I only go there for a bit of fishing and the eels are a damned nuisance, it is only a place to float my (own) boat and no more. There are much better places in this country to float my boat and I go there much more than I go on the broads. I was told a short time ago to "get a life" by a most uninformed member of this "friendly forum". Oh yes, I have a life but the vast majority of it is somewhere else, if I was permanently on the broads then I would be so bored that the boat would be up for sale very quickly. Go and try the Warwickshire Avon, The River Severn, The River Thames,The River Wey, The Shropshire Union Canal, The Llagollen Canal, The Leeds and Liverpool Canal, The Caldon Canal and the Caledonian Canal. Then you will need serious help!

The exact size of that wire is covered in the BSS regs. I think for the battery to fuse box it might be 5 mm but I could stand corrected, both wires, positive and negative should be that size. The positive cable should go to a main fuse and then, main switch which should be capable of handling the total current expected. Personally I used car starter motor cable which I believe conforms. All circuits, preferably through a distribution box, should be attached to the out side of the main switch with exceptions such as bilge pumps and alarm systems which should be attached to the inward side of the main switch. All such circuits should be protected by their own fuse and they should not be connected direct to the battery by thin wires. Only the thick cable should be connected direct to the battery. Anyway, download the regs and they will put you right.

Quite right too, I have been solo cruising on my own boat for years. I have had a number of crews but all bar one have been useless. The only one that was any good went and got himself hooked and married. After a while you get to enjoying the freedom that solo cruising gives and I no longer want a crew on board even if there was a useful one to be had.

Mary Berry is reported to be investigating as she is the country's expert on the subject.

I think that's right.

Aha, found them!

Concorde is truly a beautiful plane. I often used to see her when cruising around Windsor and downstream on the Thames. You cannot mistake the roar of those engines as she tips up after take off and climbs to her operational height. I went over the prototype at Duxford a few weeks ago and as you said, there is not much room inside. I would love to have flown on her. I have a few pictures which I need to sort out which I will put on the thread later.

Maplins do a good one too. Just make sure that you have at least 11.5 volts in your battery otherwise it all goes pear shaped. The charger comes with multi plugs for whichever computer you are using and automatically senses what voltage the computer needs. I stand to be corrected but I think it is a nice piece of kit.

If you can put out a couple of "spring" lines, these for the uninitiated are ropes that go the other way from the deck cleats or other points. Google the term and you will see what I mean. make sure you have plenty of fenders down on the bank side. what is more, a few drops of what you fancy does help. Have a good break. Thingy.

There must be something FAWLTY in your communication with your wife. Sorry.

Yep, you probably do, but I don't do contracts. I go PAYG. Sometimes I do not even use the three gigabytes. I could probably get away with one gigabyte for ten quid. Per lump it is slightly more expensive as is my PAYG mobile phone but there is no contract. That is why you see bods glued to their flipping phone almost 24 hours a day talking c**p just to use up their allowance. Incidentally, I have also given my BT line the boot and only use my mobile now. I realised that I am out more than in so why pay for a land line when I am not there to use it? I am not into endless inconsequential chat. I just pass a message, that is enough. I actually go to visit my friends and family and talk face to face. Strange am I not?

Yes Andrew, the factory is quite a landmark on the flat fields surrounding the factory and once more it provides valuable work for the people of the area. Hopefully the factory will stay as the raw material, sugar beet, is bulky and costly to transport. That said, British Sugar could rationalise everything and concentrate production at their other factory in Bury st Edmunds. The factory actually processes sugar beet which grows profusely in Norfolk and provides a British grown source of sugar which helps somewhat with our balance of payments and saves us importing cane sourced sugar. I always buy British beet sugar.

I use a "Three" network mi fi on my boat. Most pubs provide a connection too but I usually want a connection in the morning and late evening when I am on the boat. It costs me £15 per month for three gigabytes which is quite ample for me as I don't stream videos etc. Forget the blurb about all the wonderful connections you get using BT, it rarely happens on the Broads.

I tried to find out the full story by googling but newspaper websites screw my computer up for some reason. However, there is an article on the Daily Mail website which may throw some light on where production is going to. Perhaps somebody with a better computer could access the website and provide some information There are some interesting pictures on the website too. but as usual, my computer got screwed. Why do newspaper websites do that?

From what I have read the mint is of a strain peculiar to Colmans. I wonder if there are some bits growing wild along the roadsides in Brundall. I would love a root as I love mint sauce.

It is a great shame and an end of an historic era. It must be very sad news for the employees of the company.

Ah ha! I have found my resident spider. I have just started on my Winter project and am ridding my sitting room of the misguided décor (flipping crappy rough plaster rubbish on my chimney breast and walls either side which looked like something you would get in a tarted pub). The previous owner of my house was obviously somewhat misguided and possibly demented! I just got half way down one of the alcoves and nearly squashed my resident spider into the wet plaster. The blighter had obviously come to inspect my work in his house. As I am better at getting plastered than plastering I suspect he was not impressed. Polly filler is a wonderful product for a crappy plasterer such as myself!

Perhaps Wildfuzz could lend you his cat.

That's no problem, it would only make him jealous. or her, happy.

Don't forget to chuck a few flies in to keep it well fed.

As long as they don't throw wild parties and get legless that's ok.

My friendly house spider seems to have deserted me, I have not seen him/her for a couple of weeks now. However there are loads of them in my garden. There are enormous webs strung everywhere. They are really industrious little creatures, I wish the people I used to work with (lazy b*****s) had the same work ethic.

If it is any consolation, I really do not have much time for the BSS. In my opinion, whilst it is a good idea that certain things need to be done properly, a boat with a BSS in the charge of an idiot is much more dangerous than one without a BSS in the charge of a sensible person. You can have a BSS but as I saw a couple of years ago a boat had a cockpit full of spare petrol cans and the whole boat stunk of petrol. You can have a BSS and still carry spare gas cylinders outside a vented gas box and the list goes on. I know that the above instances are not allowed under BSS but they happen, I have seen it with my own eyes and smelt it too! Also, Camping Gaz lanterns can leak gas into bilges, I have seen this too. A Camping Gaz cartrige can take down a house, what will it do to a boat if it leaked?

I just wish I had a big enough workshop to get her under cover. I could get a lot of satisfaction in restoring her.