I Can Now Reveal  A universal truth about life on the canals is that wherever and whenever two or more boaters gather together one of the first topics of conversation is inevitably the toilet. It starts with which type you have — pumpout, cassette, portapotti, and then goes on to individual merits and demerits. Each one has its aficionados and few people seem ready to switch once they have given their allegiance.   The trouble is it’s virtually impossible to verify other boaters’ claims for their loos because you almost never get to use them. One of the golden rules of life on the Cut is that when you are visiting someone else’s boat you never ask to use the toilet, except in extremis. You hold on, excuse yourself and hare back to your own boat or, if you are out in the countryside at night, make for the nearest hedge. Boaters understand the importance of this vital piece of etiquette — sooner or late someone has to empty that toilet and you try not to hasten the “sooner” if you can help it.   It’s like offering to remove your shoes before you clamber inside another boat even in the driest of weather and on the cleanest section of towpath or BW mooring. (In wet weather you don’t even offer, or course, you just take them off.) And taking one polite step back in the process you don’t even put a foot aboard another boat unless you are invited.   There are limits to the openness with which most boaters will approach the toilet issue, however. They will cheerfully discuss how many days, weeks or months you manage before you can empty the different systems, will readily advise on the best makes of toilet blue to disinfect your cassettes and when informing you about the various facilities available on each canal will point out where Elsan facilities can be found that are NOT mentioned in Nicholsons. But some topics seem just too embarrassing — like how to prolong the useful life of a cassette.  I mean, every man afloat learns early on that a hedge at night is perfectly acceptable if all you want is a pee, but it was nine months into our first year before another boater told us about “bucket and chuck’it.”   Even in our inexperience we have learned to adapt ourselves to our special environment. Liz noticed that our eye-level grill was always warm, heated by the flu from the gas fridge below, and very quickly our smaller underclothes and socks were draped inside for airing. We swiftly learned that you throw away at your peril. A couple of days later you find you could have used whatever it was that was so much in your way.   The DO’s and DON’T’s of canal life are quickly learned and if you are slow to observe them for yourself there are plenty of older hands ready to point them out, usually with tact, reticence and apology for the intrusion. But they still point them out. You DON’T operate lock paddles for other boats unless their owners say its okay. You DO accept that you can’t always return a favour done you by a passing boater but pass it on by helping someone else in trouble.   But there are some shadowy areas that I’ve realised can be decidedly risky. You take a chance, for instance, when you openly admire another boat. He might smile with delight but you could be trapped for an hour by an owner determined to detail every last problem he had with the builder and every recent problem he’s had with the engine, the electrics or the paint job. You can never be sure when you offer to take a rope for a steersman struggling to bring his craft into a mooring spot that he won’t interpret your helpfulness as an implied criticism of his abilities. And you always tread carefully when you offer or agree to meet up with another boater to negotiate some difficult locks or swing bridges. Any suggestion that you — or he — is picking up a tow would be deeply embarrassing.   As for guessing whether an angler will smile and return your happy “Good morning” or keep his head fixedly low and his eyes averted I’ve given up trying. But Liz invariably says “Good morning.”   The one thing I am sure about is that there are still many uncertainties out there along those canals we haven’t yet explored. And I can’t wait to discover them.                                                                                                   Michael Holloway