infill including Dear Deirdre Appy Campers! Download these smartphone apps for WRGies from the Navvies App Store... Kit-tris: Realistic Canal Camps catering kit packing game. Don’t forget the toaster... Insta-grapple: Share photos of your finds from the depths on Cleanups. #shoppingtrolley #bike Snorify: enter the number of volunteers on your camp and the name of the village hall / scout hut / sports pavilion you’re staying in, and it comes up with a sleeping plan to cram them all in without anyone’s foot being in anyone’s ear. Pay to upgrade to SnorifyPro, and it even separates the snorers and non-snorers. FireFix: point your device at your bonfire and it’ll tell you what to do next. Put more wood on, less leaves, big log, fold it in, start toasting marshmallows, remove Tim Lewis from the vicinity… Cindr: Dating app for folks whose favourite perfume is Odour bonfire, and who definitely sleep together on a first date. VänBer: Summon the nearest red van - special “urgent call” feature for when you’ve been accidentally left on site alone with your (it now turns out) crazy Cindr date. Brick Crush: Mind numbing repetitive time wasting game Skrape: allows volunteers who are brick cleaning on remote sites to connect. Live streaming will prove who indeed has the shittiest and biggest pile of bricks HungryHall: takes a simple recipe and turns it into a mind-blowingly complex catering operation to provide every combination of meat eater, vegetarian, vegan, non spicy, gluten free, and just plain I-don’t-eat-couscous-on-Tuesdays bloodyminded. Plus an add-on for multi-site camps that gets the right sarnies to the right site at lunchtime without taking them on a tour of half of Gloucestershire.
BarPump: Plug in the dimensions of your air bed and who you nicked the footpump from and it’ll calculate whether you’ll get it pumped up and make it to the pub for last orders TripeAdviser: lets you star rate people’s Navvies camp reports for quality of in-jokes, smutty double entendres and bad puns. With the inevitable one-star rating from one random outlier who hasn’t been on a dig since 1972 but doesn’t see why those of us who have should enjoy reading or writing about it... RealAleQuick: order your pint via hands free as you leave home to be waiting for you on the bar as you arrive. SnoreNav: companion to Snorify - find your way back to your own bed after a midnight toast orgy/ bathroom trip/song session. In-app purchases include light switch location, and noisy door proximity warnings. Angle-Grindr: hook up with like-minded people on nearby canal restoration worksites with notquite-compatible power tools, and swap attachments that don’t fit either of them... Scaff-Me: From a photo of worksite it calculates number of scaffold poles, clips etc, designs your scaffolding, and orders almost all of it (except the one important bit that you can’t manage without, and don’t realise is missing until Sunday morning when nowhere’s open) from local hire company. Grin-dr: Photo-app automatically corrects the grumpy pub faces of Alan Lines’ photos to look cheerful... Thermarest-5k: Fitness app - train yourself to optimise your timing of leaving your bed to minimise amount of breakfast queuing but avoid being left with the last cold egg. WRG Weather: Special feature to enable accurate timing of tea breaks and concrete pours. Messenger link in to accommodation crew for alerting need for ice pops or hot soup as appropriate. Pint-Rest: Share photos of WRGies falling asleep over their beer
Dear Deirdre Every time I go on a dig my nails keep splitting, flaking and breaking off in a way that’s really painful. Is there any way to stop my nails getting broken every time I go on a dig? - MT, Newmarket
Deirdre replies A few years ago I discovered that if you get a gel hardener put on your nails by a professional, they’ll be tough enough to survive a dig unbroken. You need to go to a nail salon so they can cure it under a UV light. I don’t know what they use but I think it’s the same thing they use to coat nuclear submarines. While you’re there ask them to paint over it with a brown varnish, that way the dirt won’t show under your nails.
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