Retirement with No Problem

I am not sure whether these images will cause upset from those that get upset at pictures they don’t like.  Les of NB Valerie blogged about a dead muntjac deer seen in the canal, with a pic. I mean it happens, this is what our lives are about, what we see, what is around us, what we blog about, what happens around us is real.. but he withdrew the pic because of readers comments.

Well here are my pics of something that happened recently near me.. and I did blog briefly about it last week.. but in the eerie mist of this morning..

Thistle, the narrowboat that was ablaze at Honey Street in January as reported by the Gazette and Herald, Wiltshire’s local rag, has now been salvaged, and is at Devizes.  The shell of a 60ft narrowboat, not 45ft as reported.. such the intensity of the fire that the metal was badly distorted especially towards the front.  There was nobody aboard at the time, and it’s a good job too, the inside was totally devastated…

It’s scarey really to think what can happen so fast.. this did upset us all, but it also caused us to check on our fire extinguishers and talk about what ifs, and to make sure we just think about what more precautions we could take to stop this happening to us.  Well it has been 11 months now since we stopped smoking, .. (wow! ), so a discarded ciggy won’t happen on No Problem, but a report into this fire by the fire service did throw up an interesting fact… Don’t keep non-safety matches aboard, because of vibrations!!..

In fact they listed one or two items in their report worth checking out….

Every year, more than 300 small boats are involved in a fire which in turn result in a number of deaths and injuries. By taking some simple precautions, you can ensure you don’t become another statistic.

• Fit a smoke alarm.
• Ensure furnishings and foam insulation are fire retardant.
• Wiring looms should be run through a conduit to avoid chafing.
• Battery boxes should be contained and vented.
• Only store safety matches – vibration could set off non-safety matches.
• Have at least one fire extinguisher which should be located near the cabin exit.

Thistle is now out of the water ready to be inspected by salvage experts and insurance assessors and the like, but I doubt she will be able to be re-built unfortunately.