Category: General

O’Mara’s Epiphany

We had sailed from Holyhead with a ‘scratch’ crew as, having just returned from a deep-sea job, most of the regular crew were on leave. Even though I was one of the crew on leave, I was summoned to make up the deck crew, others more sensible than me having taken their leave and gone on holiday – far away from Holyhead. Not that I minded back then. I was single – and bored.

The job we had been given was to connect up to a coaster drifting without power in the Western Approaches. It was a ‘contract pull’ – that is, arrangements had been made between the coaster’s owner and our outfit on a fixed fee basis. We’d get a towing bonus out of it – which was pennies when compared to a decent tow deep-sea but it also meant that for those of us on leave, we’d get a ‘double banker’. The outfit would have to pay us double for forfeiting our leave. Continue reading “O’Mara’s Epiphany”

Happy Talk

For those of you who, like me joined MyT late 2008 or after, you’ll have missed John Mackie’s holiday blogs the first time they were posted. 

So treat yourselves. Click on the link to his blog, and if you don’t soon find yourself chuckling, seek medical attention. Think Bill Bryson, but with a depracating Scottish (or should that be Scots?) tone and fine comic writing.

Anyone coming past Das Boot last night or tonight would have seen me laughing until I cried. I must have looked a bit like the mad woman in Jane Eyre . With shorter hair. And funkier pyjamas. Oh and I haven’t set fire to anything.

Then come back here and tell me I’m right.

Wild Rovers

The Dubliners last night at Cheltenham Town Hall;  well, what can I say?

Cheltenham Town Hall is always a tricky venue. People with dosh tend to get the best seats at the front but they aren’t always the most enthusiastic, so the moderate spenders who are devotees are often found in the centre/back of the hall.

There was applause when the guys walked on stage but not the wild adulation of long-time fans.  It was warm but normal kind of applause.

Banjo Barney McKenna took a while getting to his seat. He is stout with an unruly grey beard, a generous corporation and owlish steel-framed specs perched on the end of his nose beneath a dark peaked hat. I was terrified he would fall over and break a hip. Continue reading “Wild Rovers”

Six Word Summaries

The last post of short short stories reminded me of the idea of Six Word Summaries. Once asked to write a full story in six words, legend has it that novelist Ernest Hemingway responded: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
“Not Quite What I Was Planning,” is a collection of six-word memoirs by famous and not-so-famous writers, artists and musicians.
I like: Fifteen years since last professional haircut, David Eggers.
(found at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18768430)
What would your six word memoir be?

I also found the idea of six word synopsis as a review of a film.
http://www.criticaloversight.com/category/sixword/
Forget the Delorean, time travel’s genetic (review of ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife)

What film would you review in six words?

I Hate Dogs

There I’ve said it. Christina will tear me to pieces and all the dog lovers will ostracise me for ever.

A minute or so down the road there’s a little wood, with a creek and a bridge that leads to a narrow path between two houses. Overnight the spiders have usually been busy spinning their webs across the path from tree to tree. One of the houses has a dog, which always barks as I pass. But it’s OK, because there are two fences between me and it.

At the end of the path I turn left and stroll down a road with the wood on one side, through a park and along the other side of the wood until I reach the house with THE DOG. I know it’s got a dog, there’s a huge notice proclaiming “BEWARE – DANGEROUS DOG”.

Continue reading “I Hate Dogs”

“Her eyes they shone like diamonds…..

I thought her the queen of the land

And her  hair,  it hung over her shoulder

Tied up with a black velvet band.”

A must-sing chorus, which is precisely what I’ll be doing tonight when the Dubliners come to Cheltenham Town Hall.

Looking forward to it hugely,  even though they will be without beardy Ronnie Drew with the voice that put me in mind of sandpapering gravel, Luke Kelly and Ciaran Bourke who were all very much in evidence last time I saw them.  Now sadly deceased, RIP guys.

Fortunately the others are still going strong.  I like it that musicians go on and on doing their stuff.  The music only dies when they do.

I expect there to be widespread joining in. I certainly will be. Just the thought makes me burst into terrible cod-Irish accented song.

It made me wonder if there’s some unwritten rule about when it’s correct to sing along with the artist when you’ve paid for tickets to a concert? Continue reading ““Her eyes they shone like diamonds…..”

The Mary Hopkin effect

The year is 1978. The music of the time was dross – with the exception of Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ which, when I played it on the packing crate sized portable ‘compact’  stereo in my cabin, was guaranteed to get one of the music critics comparing it to a female cat in rutting season. I would turn the volume down, consoling myself with the fact that some folk just didn’t have taste. After all, how much Frank Sinatra or worse still Elvis could a man listen to without going nuts?

We had sailed free running from Holyhead to Hamburg to pick up a barge loaded with small tugs, cranes and other wreck clearance equipment for passage to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where Harms – a German salvage contractor – had been hired by the Saudi’s for wreck removal in the port. We’d been sub-contracted as their own tugs were engaged on other jobs, mostly in the then fledgling but expanding offshore game. Continue reading “The Mary Hopkin effect”

For Claire

Claire, I found this on the TES community forum. Does it help?

“value added” is a term used to judge how good a school is doing compared to other schools with the same kind of intake. e.g. the local grammar school might get a higher percentage of A*-C grades but it is probably more selective in the kind of students it accepts than the local state funded comp. Value Added takes into consideration not only a child’s ability, but also their postcode, whether they are male or female (girls are expected to get higher grades than boys!), their ethnic origin, when their birthday is (students with September birthdays are expected to get higher grades than those with summer birthdays. Have a look at your bottom set students most of them will have June , July or August birthdays!). Each of these criteria is given a number (it’s a bit like handicapping in horse racing) and is added to the points already given for each GCSE, or equivalent, grade. The total number given to each student is based on their best eight GCSE grades, so if they don’t take eight GCSE exams you are pretty much on to a loser straight away. This of course is the reason why your SLT want all the children to study BTEC and GNVQ courses as they can achieve 4 equivalent GCSE A grades in the time it takes them to do some work and achieve one C in MFL. Any clearer?


Do we Care?

Sometimes it is worth stopping to think how much more real things become when one knows, loves and cares about individual people caught up in some of the situations we are discussing on various internet sites.

I remember my anguish over the conflict in former Yugoslavia; we have friends who live there. We were close to their children and they have visited us often. In all the confusion of this war the lack of communication from this family was hard to bear. Continue reading “Do we Care?”