I will put on the Tawny in the smoke room with Havana's but Breakfast (Ulster fry is not a luncheon dish?) must, surely, be in the saloon - camping out in one room is too Chav/hoi polloi for me. Nowhere near pretentious enough.

Don't worry about me and the darkie, E-S. I have just the jockey for that sort of horse. Perhaps camel if horse is haram but I don't think it is. This dietary thing and race: Is there anything you Micks across there in Hibernia don't eat out of superstition? I know it couldn't be the potato but Fridays, I hear, can be a bit restricted.

(Ulster fry is not a luncheon dish?) What a load of twaddle. The Ulster Fry, or Ulster Grill, is the original 24 hour breakfast. Throw in a poke of chips and you have a mixed grill.
The meat free Fridays is a thing of the past, I for one thought it a small gesture towards a bit of self denial and no harm, but now our pretentious middle class love fish on Friday but it is Halibut or John Dory. We in Ulster have our share of Millennial's as well as the mainland.

Next you will be telling me one can have smoked haddock at lunchtime too? These Millennials have a lot to answer for by the sound of it.

Smoked haddock -- that's the course between the assorted cereal and the bacon, egg and accompaniments. Those were the days when the occifers got the same grub as the passengers. :)

The ships I sailed on were a bit like the GD, the only passenger carried was Marconi Sahib. It was not unusual for him to take 5 months to receive my Pay-Off telegram. Unbelievable.

Jealousy will get you nowhere E-S. We got good leave as well.

Tom's got it right. Smoked haddock (here poached in chilli milk) is a breakfast dish like the bacon 'n eggs to order. Breakfast cannot be all day otherwise one could never sit down to lunch or dinner (sod Maugham).

Dartskipper, or Farmer John, whoever is on watch -- please put the right turn signal on (one short blast on the horn) as we are going to turn right into the mouth of the Seine. All bridge crew report to the wheelhouse for pre-docking libations. Clean glasses will be supplied. :pint:

Think I will come up top too Tom. Not watched a good docking for a while. I'll bring a bottle of Four Bells as wheelhouse admission fee.

Four Bells is a bit timid, lets attack a jeroboam of Ricard with Absinth chasers. Shots as the Cadets call them.

The cadets are calling the shots? So that's why there's never anything left in the hotpress!

Although it has been a decent Summer there has still only been two days on which a Ricard tasted right (imagining one to be having it on sea trials off La Rochelle). I'll have to keep the bottle from frost until next year otherwise it will develop little white flakes (or perhaps it does that anyway for Christm…… Phew. Just stopped myself in time).

TOOT

I think I will stick to the Four Bells, nasty drinks of aniseed remind me of the liquorice water of my youth. A murky brown liquid bespeckled with crumbs.

Just to make sure of the right turn, I'll stand on the bridge wing and hang my shirt over the side on the end of a broom stick.

The only things in our hotpress are clean sheets, clean towels and clean underwear. Cannot imagine any cadet showing interest in such. However should the under garments be soiled there could be a riot. I blame the internet.

I'm not coming up from the pit, Squeek has made a big pot of Champ and that'll do fine for me.... you lot can keep all yon fancy muck Lord V is partial to, I never did like frogs legs and snails in garlic anyhoo.... makes you fart and your breath stink. :p

Hard to bate champ with Abernethy Butter and if starving a pork chop on top.
The Hon David has a challenging palate ruined by snails, slugs and other unmentionables slathered in garlic and sour kraut. WTF are these arty chokes he is always demanding? The poor cook is driven demented and is now reciting The Life of Brian backwards to entertain himself and terrorise the galley boy.
As Willie Drennan says, "Champ, champ, gie us mer champ; it's your only man when it's kauld and damp".

Anybody on the wheel?

Ah.. that'll be me then. Hard a Starboard it is FJ. Do they still drive on the right over here? Don't want to cause any accidents.

It sounds more that they have all been on the pop.

My Froggie SiL eschews snails. I can argue with her only that she serves from cold plates and reserves parsnips for feeding the horses (which has resulted this year in her being thrown from one. And serve her right!) I have, however teased her since I first met her as having been expelled from France for her cooking (grossly unfair but it does bring the colour to her cheeks).

Now, artichokes, the Jerusalem kind. They really do turn a one pot simmered gammon meal into a fartfest.

That smell is not me farting or halitosising - it is coming from that oddly stained rag that is simmering on the Starboard steaming lantern. Luckily the miasma rising from is such that we still seem to be complying with colregs (but probably not marpol).

heh heh. Just like swinging into the river dart DS.

Man on the Wheel????

How terribly last century. You'll want Royals and Top'gallant sails next.

Use the ECDIS, fantastic bit of touch screen kit that Young V wired up recently. Input course, set WP's, set contour alarms, set ROT and feed Fido the Alsatian and it's all hands to the Smokeroom. Yee Ha.

We have picked up le pilote chap - he's very happy with his one litre sippy cup filled with our latest acquisition from Porto -- does require we wear hard hats thought and we'll have to duck a bit with all the bridges we'll have to go under.

Another round on the bridge? As I think it was Gilbert Harding said "I don't mind if I do." :pint:

I am not sure I have got all the bugs out of that Electronic Contraption Dictating Insane Seafaring. There are still crumbs appearing under the CPU and I am sure there were two biscuits on my saucer when I put it down. Better stick to using it to play 'Golden Shot' and do the left-hand-down-a-bit bit on manual.

I've said it too, and I say it again now.

That shirt was clean when I put it on a week ago.

And you change your knickers every week whether you need to or not.

And certainly after the annual bath.

I always remember the foggy night when, although I couldn't see the bus, I could see the conductor walking ahead with a flaming torch made out of rolled up newspaper guiding the bus. Unseen on the other side of the road, we could hear this voice yelling "Left 'and daan, 'arry, LEFT 'AND DAAN !!! Followed by a crashing noise of a car hitting a stone wall. :(

a poor old lady soaked to the skin.
I turned into a lay-by.

Not your finest hour, Billyboy.
If she presses charges you'll end up tossing off into a test tube for the Old Bill.

If I was you I'd lie low for a couple of weeks and not go ashore in Rouen.
Lay-Bye indeed.

Old Bill
 

I suppose being 77 years of age you cauld say "I am the OLD BILL":jester:

77, I'll tell the Agent in Rouen to deliver an iron lung to the gangway. Tmac can bring a cylinder of oxygen or the other stuff up from the pit and we'll give you a bloody good MOT.

Excuse moi, but I is Chief Injuneer....YOU bring up the cylinder :bad_mad: bloody cheek :big_tongue:

Vis a vis hygiene, I have a fool proof method of assessing under crackers. I throw them against the bulkhead and if they stick I get a fresh pair otherwise they will do for another week or so:big_tongue:

I think I also picked up that old lady, took ages to find the correct wrinkle :wink:

I think I also picked up that old lady, took ages to find the correct wrinkle

Senses my dear T, senses.

You only used one sense, touch. Billy will use two, common and smell. Smell being the stronger.

Neither of you will use sight, and that is common sense.

As for the bottle of oxygen, just give me the nod and I will detail Pip and Squeek to get it up to Billyboy's stateroom.

I don't like the smell of fish :balloon:

I spent a year in Hull in about 1965. Never been back, though it's only a short distance.

There's only two things...……………...

brings to mind something the late commodore Briggs once said "as confused as 17 blind Lesbians on a Tuna boat"

Ah we miss the Commodore. What a turn of phrase.

I miss John too. Had a great time with him when he came to visit us here in the Philippines, He was a real gent with an awesome sense of humour. RIP Commodore.

Strange bloke with a striped shirt on a bike loaded with Onions on the Quay. Somebody order some?
Wow check out the chick with the big glasses and mini skirt! Smoking Gauloise fags and a bottle of Vin Rouge in her other hand.

Thank goodness for your post BB. I was beginning to worry.
Where are we? Are we there yet?
I thought that we had sunk and that no one had told me.
Will the big glasses hold a can of Coke?
Mini skirt - yes. Fags - no, thank you.
Getting fussy in my old age - that's probably why I have no success. :jester::wave:

Bloody jig-saws are keeping me in my cabin and I am quickly going blind. My old shipmate Baron V of Mona is spending most of his Free Time having existential discussions with a scouser poet. No not Roger mc Gough, the other one.
There is cobwebs in the Saloon and sagebrush blowing thro the Smokeroom. Jig saws are better than the Sally Ann at keeping you oiff the booze.

Jigsaws are merely another way of going blind.

I have been making a few jigsaws from some of my photos.

https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play&pid=3837dcb04656

It is most disconcerting and demoralising when complete strangers can do one's own jigsaws in less than 10 minutes when it takes me anything from 40 to 50 minutes. :yawn: