Breydon

I had a run in with Talk Talk a few years ago when I closed my account with them. They wrote to me saying there was seventy five pence credit on my account and to phone them to claim it. As usual with these sort of things I was put on an endless queue playing rubbishy music. I hung up the phone and just wrote off the seventy five pence as it would cost me more to reclaim. A couple of weeks later I received a letter saying that I should pay them the outstanding debt on my account otherwise they would send the bailiffs in. I wrote to the address on the letter head of the letter and Talk Talk returned it saying I had sent it to the wrong address. I phoned them again and after half an hour listening to horrendous music I got through to somebody that appeared to have his brain in gear. I explained the problem and he profusely apologised and said a cheque would soon be in the post. I firmly told him to sort out his office and that if I received any more threatening letters they would be hearing from my solicitor. A cheque promptly appeared through my letter box. Ever since then when I walk through a local shopping centre and am accosted by Talk Talk salespersons I proclaim in a very loud voice so that everybody hears exactly what I think of Talk Talk and what they can do with their product. A few weeks after my problem Talk Talk were on one of these consumer programs on the television trying to explain the reasons for their appalling customer service. Obviously they had upset a lot of other people too.

It must have happened before, some time this August. Just downstream of Thurne Mouth there was quite a lot of sea weed (bladder wrack) in the water. I spoke to some fishermen at St Bennets and they said the fishing was poor there, I suppose the fish had moved upstream.

That is the ploy I use for single handed mooring. Once you throw a loop over the mooring post and secure it on the boat you have everything under control and can sort out the rest of your ropes at your leisure. However if you try this make sure the bows are facing the current and the engine is running, in forward gear and balancing the boat against the current. Doing this, with a little knack you can actually make the boat go sideways. The fact that riding posts are being installed will make this technique much easier.

If you can get under the bridge there are excellent BA moorings above the railway bridge and below the railway bridge there are stern on moorings. What is more, they are free moorings too. All the moorings are for both private and hire craft.

Thanks for the replies.

Typical Beccles! I used to stop there when the swimming pool moorings were free of charge and spent some money in the town in the pubs and shops. Now I make sure I have plenty of food on the boat, bash through to the Locks pub and back on the next receding tide without stopping in Beccles. I am not at all happy about their "free mooring" bit below the bye pass bridge at all it is too small and rubbish. Beccles loss, not mine, I used to spend around £50 at least on every visit in the shops and pubs.

I have just been asked this evening to give a hand shifting a sailing boat from the Thames Estuary to a marina on the tidal Medway below Allington Lock. The marina insist that he pays a licence fee for the river. The boat has been moored there before, has not ever been through Allington Lock, does not have a BSS certificate and has never had one. My friend has no intention of using the boat above Allington Lock. No doubt there are a few very knowledgeable members of this forum who know these sort of things ad can provide an answer. Apart from temporary licences I believe that yearly licence applications need to go straight to the EA and need a BSS certificate too so. How can a boatyard be selling "licences" for a year? I have always believed that the lower tidal Medway does not need a licence.

ChrisB, you are a man after my own heart. Wot! How cannot anybody like a nice plate of jellied eels? Whichever way I will relish them. By the way ChrisB, smoked eel is a real delicacy, I love 'em whichever way they are served. Mouth watering now, lucky I have bought some mussels this afternoon at the local market to turn into moule mariniere. Lovely with some nice seedy wholemeal bread.

I hope it was still fresh. Delicious either stewed or jellied!

I remember years ago in the stone age I hired a little steel boat from a company in Leicester. I am not complaining as it was quite a nice little boat at a reasonable price for what I got and it had one of the first Honda four stroke outboard motors fitted to push it along. There were no frills, just a basic little boat for a basic price. As I was a keen camping and fishing bod and used to roughing it, the boat did me fine. I single handed took it around the Leicester/Shroppie ring. In the last few days of my holiday I was having my supper and I noticed water coming up through the floorboards. Oops! I pumped it out and next morning the water had returned. I pumped it out again and chugged to the nearest boatyard a few miles along the canal. The boatyard told me there was a welder nearby who could probably fix it so I phoned my home boatyard and told them of the problem. The very nice boatyard owner arrived and happily told me that it had happened before apparently the crusty old previous hirer was most displeased as the boat had completely sunk on him! Well, it was not what he paid for and the boatyard did not supply him with a wetsuit and snorkel just in case when he took the boat out! (my words not his) It had happened before too! The problem was that he and his boatyard staff built their small fleet themselves and the stern of the boat had a right angle seam with no reinforcement angle behind it and being bashed about in the locks the seam had cracked thus letting in water. So! the owner borrowed a scaffold plank from the boatyard and with me sitting on it and levering the stern if the little boat out of the water he happily whacked a load of Plastic Padding into the crack. Well, Plastic Padding is great stuff and what a bodge! The boat did not leak for the last few days of my holiday. I made sure that I did not whack that bit of the stern on my way back. I did not make much of it when I got back to the boatyard, I was in my late twenties and just put it down to a life experience as the rest of my holiday was perfect and I was and still am a rough and ready sort of person. The boatyard owner who as you may realise was a bit of a lad to say the least told me he will whack a load more Plastic Padding around the damage from the inside as the boat was due to go out again that afternoon. I still look back on that experience and chuckle, especially as I told the very nice boatyard owner that I was thinking about buying a boat. He phoned me up about a year later and said the boat was for sale. I politely declined for some reason.

It sounds like the battery was knackered, there is no way that you would need 8 hours cruising to keep it charged. On most Broads boats they recommend about two hours to keep the batteries charged. As to the steering, yes, at times you do get a bit of vibration especially if there is something around the prop. At sharp bends you need to slow right down and then put the tiller down in the right direction and open the throttle to turn the boat. As to the rest of the faults the boatyard owners should be ashamed of themselves for putting a boat out in that condition, it sounds disgusting. Possibly, if you paid by credit card you may be able to go to them and get some compensation. With regards to hitting things on the bottom, the water levels are a bit down due to the drought this and preceding years, so this is inevitable considering canals are considered a rubbish dump by some people. Unfortunately the Canal and River Trust (CaRT) do not have so much of the taxpayers money to maintain the canals as they used to. The money they had when they were British Waterways Board was wasted in employing people and not giving them work to do. I have seen this with my own eyes when a dredger crew spent days on end not dredging, making loads of tea and sarnies and disappearing around the pub! That is why there is so much rubbish in the canals and CaRT can't afford much dredging now. I fear that in the next ten years we are going to see the canals going to rack and ruin due to lack of funding. It is no good CaRT going to the government cap in hand for funds as there are much more important things to spend the taxpayer's hard earned money on.

It is rumoured that Noah had one that is now currently relevant.

Thanks for your reply ChrisB but at one time I never saw a jackdaw or very rarely. One that I do remember when I was a child and one of my neighbours used to feed one and it was very tame despite that it was free to fly. Obviously he called it Jackie and it always came back to visit him. He used to clap his hands and it would call to him.

Further to my post regarding jackdaws I thought I might recount a couple of experiences a few days apart when I moored at White Slea near Hickling. Just before dusk there was a whooshing noise behind me as I was sitting there having a dabble with my fishing rod. Hundreds of starlings in a long line swooped at around 12ft above the river and began a murmuration in the field opposite. I only saw a small piece of the murmuration as the trees obscured it and the starlings were quite low but it was interesting as I had never seen one in real life before. Has anybody experienced this at this spot and is it a regular occurrence?

Has anybody noticed lately that the Jackdaw population in most parts of the country has proliferated? A few years ago it was also the case with Magpies. Hopefully we have a naturalist (or even a naturist ) on the forum who could explain this phenomenon.

Sounds about par for the course with BA. Mind you, you could congratulate them for using up the old stock before issuing the new stuff. I just have a look online if I need to know anything about the tides. Simples! You can pick up the Broadsheet all over the Broads and amongst all the rehashed stories (are they still doing the story about the lion in the reeds at Hickling Broad ?) there are the current tide tables.

Santander and Cheltenham and Gloucester B/S are also in the same category. They both failed to send me the final balances of the accounts for weeks thus delaying the execution of the wills and then lost the death certificates for months. The certificates were finally returned after much correspondence without any explanation or apology. Incidentally, Santander lost a friend's life savings which were in a bond. It took months for him to regain his savings. I told him to take his money elsware and they talked him into taking out a tracker ISA. The ISA lost quite a bit of money but it was on a rapidly rising stock market, heaven knows where the money went. He withdrew the money that was left, closed the account and bought some Government bonds.

Having executed the two wills of my parents I have found the best thing to do immediately after a death is to get enough sealed copies of the death certificate. I know this costs money but saves a lot of grief. Send the copies of the death certificates by "Royal Mail Special Delivery" to all financial institutions the person has dealt with with covering letters saying the person has died and to freeze the account until you or an executor has the appropriate documents to close any accounts and release any money. Make sure you make it clear that you want the certificates returned promptly. I know it seems a bit crude doing this directly after a person's death but it nips occurrences as Poppy describes from happening. If you continue to get problems I have found that writing to the chairperson of the bank with copies of all correspondence with the institution. don't mess around on the telephone, get written evidence. Also tell the offending organisation that you have written to the chairperson and send them a copy of that letter. It really does work wonders. I believe that MNBA is owned by Lloyds Bank so write to Antonio Horta-Osorio who is the chairman. I have had dealings with him and he really does get things moving, heads roll and bums get kicked!

MM, as always you such a helpful person.

Best of luck finding the place if you can mate. Really I cannot be bothered about the place to even attempt to find it again. I usually moor up upstream of the railway bridge and the Kings Head is the nearest pub. By the way, I do enjoy live music too such as decent folk music and trad jazz and a very small part of American country music.

You have an uncanny sense of my feelings for the place gancanny. Yep, I much prefer The Kings Head. There may be better pubs elsware but the menu is quite good and especially for us old codgers with the small plates of food. The beer is usually ok too and at a reasonable price considering where the pub is situated.

I was in Wroxham a couple of years ago and the only way I got to that place is that some staff in a boatyard let me through a gate. It is very difficult to find on land and in my experience when I finally got there rather disappointing, the beer was rubbish and the service was take it or leave it attitude. I tried to get there a few weeks ago to give the place a second chance but failed. I really will not bother in future. Apparently they accept a small number of hire boats at their moorings and do not want private boats which I have. Also, if you moor there and they have a band in the pub which can range from acceptable to downright c**p you are stuck for the night until heavens knows what time listening to what the band want to play! There are better places to go in Wroxham! Go there!

It is strange that "the Dog" at Ludham Bridge in Johnson Street is not mentioned too much on this forum. There are many excellent moorings both sides of the river but never too much chat on here about the pub. I have eaten there on occasion and the food has been excellent and the publican keeps some excellent local beers along with the usual fizz and spirits etc. if anybody wants it and the prices are quite competitive too.

I have spoken to this really lovely gentleman on several occasions. I really do hope he is ok, he just loved being out all Summer on his little boat. He and his dog always stayed in the Barton Broad area mooring at the various staiths in that vicinity.

I switched to "So Energy" in the "Big London Switch" and they refuse to fit smart meters until the mess the government made is sorted out. My previous suppliers tried to bully me into having a smart meter fitted by only letting me renew my contract at the same rate if I had a smart meter fitted. Personally I do not want one as I am quite capable of monitoring my own usage, turning off lights when not needed, not watching rubbish on the television and turning it off when rubbish is on. If I go out I turn everything off. Radiators in unused rooms are turned off. My energy bills are around £30 per month for both gas and electric together. The house is fitted with modern double glazing with K Glass and the walls are insulated and I have about 18ins of insulation in the loft. That! is the way to save money, not a smart meter. Also my meters are easy to get at and I always dutifully sent my supply companies a monthly reading. There is a very dark place the government can shove their meters.