My math teacher always said "If ye calibrate, ye'll go blind !!"

AND -- While you're up on the Monkey Island, Sir William, perhaps you'd better check the balls on the compass -- I wouldn't put it past E-S to have flogged them for scrap and replaced them with painted crystal balls he picked up in Istanbul. :supercool: :supercool:

I have just checked. Tom. they are still the painted basketballs we put there when we sold them last year. The sneaky fellow has attached them to a model Dalek! He's sold the whole compass.

That's OK I'll just get a bog plunger and we can swing the Dalek. I take it there is a BoT approved Dalek adjuster hereabouts.

I did wonder why the Inmarsat dome was making lovey-dovey noises and why the stub mast looked a bit scorched.

E X T E R M I N A T E...... The last time I saw those balls they were rolling down the deck followed by a very worried monkey looking for a brazing kit.

Tomorrow we should get the hook up and slowly sneak our way to the Best place to drop our - Diplomat- off. Anyone got a plan?

We have now loaded enough canaries to take us through a bad session of Brussel Sprouts, baked beans and cabbage.

Yes FJ. Theres a small cove just beyond that headland. we are rendezvous there at 02:00hrs,1 mile offshore, NO Lights! a RIB will come alongside and take her off. We then depart heading offshore till out of sight and then proceed at 25 knots to wherever Tom says the agent wants us.

No light? That's an easy one for Tmac. You usually don't have to ask. Only problem is the bloody AC will go off too.

This ship is starting to sound like a ship I once served on where it was the Old Man's last trip, and the stress was obviously getting to him. Overhead him talking to himself in the wheelhouse one night saying "nobody listens to me anymore!"

So, I'm wondering whether anyone is paying attention aboard here???? I don't know where this female diplomat came from that we are surreptitiously dropping off in the Canaries, but we still have our Russian spy that we have contracted to take to St. Petersburg. (Then pick up a load of sugar beets for Silvertown, and some under the counter top quality vodka for the East End pubs.

Oh! Well!! IO suppose if I can't beat you-- join you. :pint: :pint: :pint:

Tom's right guys. We SHOULD listen carefully to him. Remember that HE is in charge and has the Satphone link with the Agent.
And besides....Its his round up in the pool bar tonight.

You know me sooooooooo well :big_tongue: never heard of feckin candles or opening the portlight ? :yawn:

Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance...

If I'd wanted to read by candle light I'd have installed a cabin altar (high church of course, candles but no graven image). If I open the port I can't tell if the smell of hot soot and paraffin is coming from an enclosure blazing away below or you have just made one of your usual hot starts.

Well, that's good bye to our first canary.

If he cooks like he engineerifies that hot canary tart'll be hot black bird (some, won't be complaining at that of course).

Roast canary is ok, but don't you find that the feathers get stuck in your throat?

I must be weird, but that reminded me of the old public convenience sign -- "Please don't throw your cigarette butts in the urinals -- it makes them wet, and soggy, and hard to light!"

:curtain_call:

Birds should be plucked. Before or after they've done cooking depends on the bird.

Sings (one happy injuneer)
" I'm not a Pheasant plucker I'm a Pheasant pluckers son and I'm only plucking feathers until the Pheasant plucker comes"

Why the surprised looks?... Injuneers are always happy when screwing things :jester:

Up...…..:supercool:

These are safety canaries, not eating canaries. After the rigours they are presented with you wouldn't want to eat them.

I thought they looked rather anaemic, difficult to tell apart from the bread sauce. I wonder what the pit-pony-pie will plate up like.

The Fricasseed chimney child will be disappointing, they are quite uncommon now and we only get the odd imported one.

We have one safely ensconced in the boiler uptake, we let him out of the flue on occasion but he keeps eating all the potatoes :eat_arrow:

The chimney children seem much more rotund these days, I can no longer manage to eat a whole one :very_sad:

The leftovers are delish served as cold-cuts with the legendary beetroot & onion salad. A member of our current crew makes a killer Piccalilli from lightly pickled vegetables, silverskin onions, toenail clippings and smeg. A mighty meal indeed.

As you know we get to come out of the funnel quite often (and even wearing blues it is difficult to get clean again) I don't believe I have had to squeeze passed a broiling chimney child. I am sure such a miduptake Farrago would cause the furnace high pressure alarm to go off.

I have managed to make very tasty pickled Brussel sprouts - they are now an absolute must for making piccalilli.

If it's Irish then I think it might try and make a break for it tomorrow. We are lifting some of the potatoes grown from rebel seed. Fingers crossed that they meet the lady's expectations. I don't think the drive is up to a convoy of lorries importing bogsoil for next year!

Probably time to leave the Canaries -- leaving port tomorrow party in the PAX lounge this evening. :pint:

Full English preparatory leaving breakfast to morrow morning.

Ready for some duty free shopping in Casablanca?? A couple of days there shouldn't hurt ?? :)

If your spuds are green-- Eat them.

There is nothing wrong with the green. It is just that usually the green develops along with the alkaloid poison that you are trying to get me to take. The green is chlorophyll, if that were to be poisonous then I wish you a salad, cabbage and cress sandwich.

Those little 'tomato fruits', that can grow above ground on a potato plant would go into one of those too.

Good god, it must be catching, I am talking bogfruiticulture with a Hibernian.

On passage to Bogardville we are going to have a treat. Mr V is cooking pork chops and his homemade champ, a treat indeed. Fill your boots cause it'll be bloody cous-cous for the next week. With stew full of apricots, mammy made jam from apricots for the WI Fete.

Sad to say I had never heard of champ until you specified it. How many more words do you have for bloody potato? I can't help picturing a potato dish sourced from the champing of overeager horseflesh engaged in Peruvian spit fermentation.

Happy to cook you a chop but not for me - bones stop in the galley (or at the nearest to the plate, the carving dish).

(Come Autumn I do some mean apple sauce too - it freezes OK).

The use of the term "bones" leads me to wonder why we have (not to my knowledge) ever had a ship's doctor aboard either the GD I, or GD II. We've had some wonderful, understanding nurses in our employ, but no doctors. Perhaps we should advertise for a volunteer??

Wow, the word sure got out in a hurry -- a couple of applicants have already e-mailed their CV.

Who would we feed them?

I have been assured on more than one occasion that I look like a pox doctor's clerk. Using the Internet as a source of all knowledge, we can stagger from crisis to crisis as usual I hope. The proposed candidates can be accomodated in ES's one time cabin.

Good grief!!...I just cam past the Galley and theres a huge cauldron in there. Didnt think we had anything that big aboard here. Someone planning to make soup?

A 7-Up salesman was driving his station wagon through the African jungle, when it broke down. The vehicle was immediately surrounded by dark coloured men wearing loin cloths and carrying spears. They forced him out of the car and carried him and all of his samples into a nearby clearing where there was a big pot of boiling water. They stripped him of all his clothes, cut off his "thing", put him in the pot to cook, and drank all of his samples.

Do you know why they cut off his "thing"???

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They were saving it, because "things" go better with Coke. :)

:applause::pint:

Dear Cutoffhisthingiejoke,

My husband and I would like to wish you many happy returns however, for the sake of my Lady-in-Waiting who now has RSI taking down my greetings to you, I hope my next duty is to direct my personal representative to your belated graveside.

EIIR (& Phil)

Don't need one on board now Tom, with t'internet available we can find this;

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...-medical-guide

I used to have my Dad's copy, dating from 1940 or thereabouts. I seem to remember that for every condition untreatable with what was available in the First Aid cabinet the reader was advised to go to the Radio Officer and request that he send for assistance over the ether. That would work on GDII, we have several Radio Officers on board. They can usually be found in the close vicinity of the PAX Lounge.:pint:

Is one insinuating that our Mr Varley is an Alkifrolic? you could of course be correct if you are hinting at anything other than Vintage port which I am assured he drinks purely for medicinal purposes.
As for the rest of us ... well err ummmm....whose round is it?

The luminiferous aether, or the stuff one used to smell just before one found a tooth missing? True, the vintage stuff I use medicinally. The rest of the time I abuse the Tawny.

(The dedicated alcoholic drinks cheap port and expensive brandy - the wedding party is back from Celebrity Silhouette, they hedged their bets and clubbed together to get me a bottle of LBV. Kind.)