Technology is it? bah humbug.... If I can't fix it with a good wallop from my 7llb shifter then it is of no feckin' use or interest to me.

I have observed Varley on many occasions engrossed in his spitzen und sparken gubbins. Suffice to say I tend to leave him to it, he seems happy enough especially when his eyes light up :chuckle:

I am reminded of one of those imponderables..
Why is it that metallic vapour deposition never seems to be the same colour as the metal from which you supposed it to originate?

(that being the material on the inside of the little winnder)

I'm sure you and Mike, when the pain in his ar$e subsided, talked knowledgably about the latent heat of vapourisation. Mike probably left and joined Kuwait Shipping where he could do little damage.

That would be an instruction to go forth and multiply, would it?

An ever present mystery. Why is what comes out only one colour when what goes in has a much wider spectrum.

I am not built in the Scandinavian (NEBB) style. Don't press my button until you see one bright as well as two eyes dark.

(Mike was soon Second and a popular one too, unlike the T/A)

A popular Second Engineer is an oxymoron, and an unpopular one is a right bastard.

Never a truer word spoken :yawn:

Trust me I have met more than enough of them to last me a lifetime :mad:

All things are relative despite comparisons being odious. You must also remember that all Chiefs were at one time or another Seconds (unless used to fighting with bow and arrow) and it is very difficult to claim legitimacy once your birth certificate has been so roundly condemned as a forgery. Even Harpic was a decent chap except for his habit of locking the Chief out of fort knox and having paint blisteringly obnoxious and frequent farts.

When I was Second, the worst 6 months of my life, no one; No One; ever got into Fort Knox. No exceptions. The Master was given a cursory peek during weekly rounds.
When I was Chief I would no more have looked into Fort Knox than I would have looked into the Seconds underwear drawer.
Sacrosanctity will be preserved.

So the fort-knox thing comes with the job (Harpic would even collect tools the Chief was using and lock them up) but you don't mention flatulence in that sixmonth. Is there something you are keeping from us?

Why in the name of all that is holy was the Chief using tools.
The only tool I used was a Montblanc, a bit like Seamus Heaney.

He needed something to attach a wire to things that weren't working ("Come, you will help me with this hydraulic pump", "But it has no wires attached to it Chief",.........,"Satisfied now? Cop hold of your end"!

I had no idea the French had done 'un homage Rushmore' to Irish men of letters. But then, thinking of Wolfe Tone, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Partisan French bastards.

Partisan and quite ungrateful. They never really forgave the Americans for liberating them in 1944. An oul brass statue of a tart in New York harbour was all the thanks they got.
But a good white Bordeaux is still nice.

I can recall an incident between President De Gaulle and President Eisenhower when De Gaulle insisted his intention was to remove all foreign soldiers from French soil. Eisenhower quietly asked " does that include all those buried there who fought to make France free"

I don't how true this is, if at all but it sure sounds right to me.

Like the veteran visiting France. he was scolded for not having his passport ready. he said I didnt have to show it last time I came. No bloody Frenchmen around to show it to.

Does that mean we're bound for frogland? I suppose we could stock up on smelly cheese and cop a look at the bust of Sheamus Heaney they have carved into a mountain (with a pen, so E-S asks us to believe).

(Don't let the Chief Plastico take on any of their beer. It is quite repellant even if not effective against Krauts).

Bollix Mr V, Bollix (Excuse my French) Kronenbourg 1664 is more than acceptable and their wine can be purchased in all good merchants.
I believe there is a clause in the Geneva Convention which forbids people with beards from eating smelly or runny cheese. And washing it down with real ale.
After a good luncheon I often enjoy a Dairylea Triangle, yum.

Philest.....Phillie....Psylis... Amateur, nothing like a good mouthful of a Stinking Bishop :shock: fair makes the eyes water and the teeth curl up and all washed down with a foaming pint of the black stuff (can we say that now in these politically correct times?):confused:

Ooh, I we go to La Belly France, can we stop at Marseilles for a good old Boiledbaseball?

Gosh a booze cruise, used to love a good booze cruise, as opposed to a boozy cruise which tends to cost more.

Mention of the French beer brings it all back, sometimes literally.

Ah yes, the true Brits loading cases and cases of the stuff on the hypermarket trolley and trundling it back to the ship. Usually getting the trolley wheels stuck in the crane tracks, at which point the French beer does what it does best - washes down the French quay.

passed a stationary coach in the roadside one day, foam everywhere, thought there had been a fire. turns out the floor of his boot gave up under the weight of all the beer he had in it. Boulogne that was about a mile from the hypermarket.

What a noble act to try and infiltrate good British Ale to Les hypermarches de Boulogne. But why use a French bus, presumably bottom rotted due to previous cargoes leaking their own (or more properly Alsatian) bottled emetico-quayswab.

Any mention of Dairylea in relation to cheese on SH should condemn the mentioner to watch Triangle episodes until he comes to his senses.

(And as for boiled bass soup put that one further down than best Alsatian quayswab. If it must be Marseilles then let it be Ricard!)

Ricard gets my vote.
If I want a bowl of soup I'll have good N.I. shin beef broth not a bowl of fish eyes and guts. And smelling like the ladies in Dubarrys bar.

had some strange experiences on Pernod in France. soon learned not to drink water the following morning.

Perhaps why the 'aperitif de pays' is un petit pastis de Ricard. Mind you it is a place full of French people so even the teetotal have strange experiences. When still age-barred from normal beverages Ma never let us drink anything but Evian and had the chambermaids (again when age-barred from detailing them otherwise) douse the rooms with 'flit' before we went up the petite colline de bois.

I will have to see if the ladies of enemy occupied Hibernia can emulate your soup with beef bones. In the days when the butcher delivered the bones with the joint I did try several times to make something appetising in the way of soup, but entirely without success.

Ham stock is the only thing I bother with now and have a decent pea and ham on the go now (I am waiting to hear if it meets with Hibernian approval, the gammon which was its making certainly did - entirely baked, with roast-a-bag instead of boiling).

(Turkey the same as beef. Ma could turn out a decent soup after Christmas had wrung all else out of the bird but my attempts were woeful so I no longer bother. My curry of Yule, however, is very fine indeed and lasts until well in to January).

Ending up with flavoursome stock is usually a hit and miss affair with everything other than ham leftovers. A good pea and ham or lentil and ham soup is a delight and a meal in itself and if more mothers cooked it their children would be better nourished and have less sniffles and flu's.
Hogmanay Curry is pushing the salmonella envelope a wee bit and I, if I may, suggest a smaller turkey , a big hen or a festive invitation to Aunt Marjorie and Uncle Sammy, whose appetite is legendary.

In 1966 was on a in ship Genoa. Don't think they had seen Brits for quite a while and they made us very welcome with lots of Martini which, not being very sophisticated, we tried to drink like beer. Any slight sophistication soon turned to extreme intoxication :mad:

More Burn's than Hogmanay.

(I'm glad it's not just me with other stocks. I did not hear a verdict on the soup yet although M'Lady was round looking for mustard seed last evening being in the middle of curry making. There is a hint that she will entertain with it. My hint was more one of a plea not to be left out!)

Uncle Bruv was the one. Always a good trencherman he would keep the family waiting until seconds or thirds had been meticulously chewed with false teeth. On one of his last he whipped through the meal faster than any of us. My brother, never backward in the forwarding department, asked him how come. In a voice clearly affected by missing the denture (he had had them all out at 21 as was the fashion) "After many years I've found I can eat much better with just my gums".

Genoa and Martini? We seem to be navigating closer and closer to the Irish visitors, Creme de Menthe and il Papa on a shouldered chair. Doesn't that show on the ECDIS as a joke to be avoided on account of it being an ancient monument?

Yawn been busy in my little hobby workshop in Number 2 hold. Whats been happening up here Steward?
Who's driving?
Some bloke who dont the date keeps shouting May day on 2182. Now he's changed it to Pan Pan....must be a cook then eh!

Well things must be getting better. When he gets to "securité" just make sure its not something we might bump-into, not notice because the little boy has gone to put his finger in a dyke or scrape along the top of.

You haven't filched a soldering iron for your workshop have you? I have one you can borrow but the missing one was 21st birthday present.

No, Not guilty Mr Varley. No solderin down there. Just a hot glue gun and of course a little wood glue plus Gold paint.

A soldering iron as a 21st birthday present, how terribly sad. Presents should be silly and frivolous, no one wants socks, underwear or as Lady Bracknell would exclaim, " A Soldering Iron".

Last soldering I did about 100 years ago used inherited, from my great grandfather, 'dumb' (copper) irons heated with a blow lamp.
I loved the old blow lamp but it scared the hell out of the YMs and the kids. :jester:

The little 21st birthday box of miscellany from Brother and his then (Pa: Don't know why he married the bitch) wife included a torch, a book on elementary sea signalling and a Titanic era BOT Instruction poster for donning a cork lifejacket (that is different from a Cork lifejacket one supposes).

Only the best Kapok in our LJ's. Same-Same HMS Ulysses.

I don't think I knew that. I read that it was employed in vinyl envelopes to keep the water out.

Ma was horrified that I preferred a school kapok pillow instead of the eiderdown she provided (less keen on the similarly filled mattresses though).

(Note mustachios of same vintage)

I'm told on good authority that a 21st is now an 18th and could become a 15th. Something about voting and dying for your country. I sometimes wish I was 15 again.

If any of us were young again would you be more worried about your future or your lack of a future?

If I was young again I wouldn't give a toss about the future. Here I am after 50 years of bloody hard work........ and loosing faith in our politicians, our Medics, our Religious and our System. I may apply to join the atheists or the agnostics, like some, but I don't know the difference.
As one of my Ukrainian Masters would say, "Life is sh1te".

Come on! Summer is barely out and your SAD jab has worn off already?

We agnostics are the club to join however I think it is the only club to which almost everyone belongs, paid up or not.

I presently give no credence to any 'System' except science despite no popular understanding (any understanding) of the first stirring in the primordial soup. That given all that follows is clear and requires no superstition. Therefore I am an atheist you say? Well I certainly am at the moment but, were I to be of sound and ebriate mind, and a heavenly/satanic/elephant-shaped/etc. representative appear before me I would probably tend towards the deity(ies) for which they were lobbying. I think that makes me a well cemented-in temporarily atheist agnostic.

I knew one old bat, visiting her in care until she almost made 102, who would have told a supercharged gold encrusted vision of the Archangel Gabriel that he should not perform conjuring tricks on old ladies and get himself a proper job.

On one occasion when our heroes were observing a world only be the glow of re lights from the alarm tableau Alan Sharpe , chief, put and arm round my shoulder (in an entirely amicable and almost acceptable fashion) with "Davie*, my boy, life is just a bowl of shi-ite".

(*. I know. Anathema, as is touching Mrs V's little boy, but one's chief is one's chief).