Boadicea's Chariot

I’m submitting this in two parts, mainly because it is a pretty long one but also because two bites will probably be easier to swallow.

I did some time on a Dive Support Vessel for a year or so. It was a welcome break from anchor-handling which – if you know about it – can be pretty exhausting as well as seriously dangerous work. In the winter North Sea it is also no joke – especially when you have four out of eight rig anchors to do as well as a hook up to tow the rig itself – and once you have started the job, you can’t finish, no matter how bad the weather gets in the meantime.

She usually worked in the North Sea – straying over to Denmark now and again – but when a long-term charter came to an end, she landed a four-month charter out of  Messina, Sicily, mapping the route for an underwater cable from  Messina to the mainland. Back then, it was a very rare experience to leave the North Sea on a job so the opportunity to do a little ‘foreign’ run was well received aboard. Continue reading “The Quick and The Dead. Part One”

An article in today’s Telegraph on the BA strike reports that if striking cabin crew miss one day of work they can lose up to two weeks pay. That looks, on first glance to be a little OTT, not to say dis-proportionately punitive on the part of management. Read on, however, and it becomes clear that: it’s not quite that simple

I’ve noticed that there is some confusion regarding the ‘correct’ spelling of words like ‘recognize/recognise’ and ‘organize/organise’. Some people seem to think that ‘ize’ is an Americanism, and ‘ise’ should be used on this side of the Atlantic.

In fact, while ‘ize’ is invariably used in the USA, both alternatives are acceptable in the UK and Ireland. The dictionaries vary in which they favour – Chambers prefers ‘ise’ while Oxford dictionaries prefer ‘ize’ – but all accept the validity of both. The Times traditionally used ‘ize’ but changed to ‘ise’ around 20 years ago. Some publishers insist on one or the other as their ‘house style’; others accept either provided it is used consistently.

Note that there are exceptions: for example, ‘advertise’ is always the correct spelling. If in doubt, consult a dictionary. Personally I always use ‘ize’ spellings, mainly because H. W. Fowler, author of Modern English Usage, prefers them – he justifies this in terms of the Greek roots of the words.

To complicate matters, ‘analyse’ is the correct spelling here, and ‘analyze’ in the USA.

One of my best friends is doing his PhD in Cambridge now. Continue reading “Phrases”

The prediction has just been announced from Oldmovie Towers in the past few minutes, so if you move quickly into the realms of companies listed on the stock market who make small sofas, you could make a killing.

Now as a rule I do not spend an inordinate amount of time pondering the success or otherwise of companies who make small sofas but about an hour ago I had what could only be described as a ‘Eureka’ moment and, making sure that this blog would not cause the futures market in small sofas to be totally skewed in a rush to buy from WordPress investors, I have been blistering the lines to various brokers who specialise in buying shares in small sofa manufacturing conglomerates, so I’m ok. Now I think it only fair to divulge what has caused this mild but significant panic in the small sofa share market. And here it is Continue reading “Predicted Upsurge in Small Sofa Sales”

On a supply ship I sailed on out of Aberdeen, we had a 6’5″. handlebar moustached cook who spoke with a lisp, always went ashore in a white tee-shirt and skin-tight leather trousers – and was known aboard as ‘Queenie’. He looked a bit like a super camp Freddy Mercury – although his moustache was far more flamboyant than that worn by Freddy. Oh and it was his idea to be called ‘Queenie’.

Cooks are a sort of housewife cum mother and in some, the feminine element comes to the fore. The nature of the job – the fussing, the meal  planning, attention to detail for an important on board function involving shore side staff, the general stewarding – leaves its mark on a man. No cook I ever sailed with did not possess a bit of femininity about him.

In his case, definitely more.

He was an excellent cook too. He’d served his time on the big passenger ships of Cunard before settling down to smaller ships as he got older. When he joined us, he was in his late 40’s – but the culinary skills he had learned aboard the ‘big ships’ had only got better with time.

Nothing was ever too much trouble for him to do for ‘his boys’. He would give each member of the crew a ‘choice meal’ during the month’s trip when he would cook whatever the individual wanted. As in my case,  Beef Wellington which was duly made and served – and as good as any restaurant ashore. He had a pride in his work – and it showed. Continue reading “Hidden depths”

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Good Evening the answers are garden flowers, wild flowers or shrubs:

1. Bite of a mythical beast is this one’s common name (11)

2. Rose of Sharon by another name to lift your spirits (2 5 4)

3. Sounds a bit like a writer on a stalk (9)

4. We follow reptile (6)

5. Ticker’s rest (10)

6. Smart feline (9).