Stout man Varley, no Humbug when you are in charge of the vitals.
A Merry Christmas to one and all.

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you.
Steward!. get some chairs into my suite.
Tannoy: Click! attention all remaining crew. Tots up! in my suite 10:00 hours.
Steward! you know what everyone likes so make sure there are ample stocks available in my suite.

Let nothing us dismay!

(Bloody oven, It's taken until now for the gammon to make a safe temperature. It delayed bed time by a whole bottle).

Aw thats too bad Mr Varley.
Maybe another bottle would make you feel better.

Top Tip Varley: only use M&S Cauliflower Cheese.

Very best wishes to all the crew...... Happy Christmas to all.

Im off to sort Faversham out.....the breakfast champagne had barely been chilled!!!!....... almost ruined the Xmas Atmos.

:(

Someone said he is to be found on top of the Christmas tree.....
......for some reason.

:)

God bless us every one :flowers:

A very Merry Christmas to all of you crew type persons, your friendship brings a tear (almost) to this oul injuneers eye :smoking: or maybe its just a smut from all the tube blowing going on. :jester:

..... definitely smut.

:)

Theres more smut in Tmax's cabin than carbon particles, so Mr V told me.

Spare Faversham a thought he probably thought you would need a post banquet naga, brimstone and fundador pick-me up. The fizz would have been ready for smokoe.

No major problems - should have measured the turkey twice so's not to have had to do a bit fettling to get it in for-real.

Cats finished the legs (warmed under the grill) - the 19 year-old won't see next year's I'm afraid although he did make an attempt to ambush the smoked salmon - in body language if not the actual table-leap.

Only hiccough was instead of switching the electric blanket 'up' one before the guests arrived I found out, when the festives were done and I was teeth-brushed and all ready for beddie-bise, that I must have switched it off instead. Lucky the anaesthetics were still circulating.

(If Faversham is really in need of correction you could send him round to help Higgins with the f... washing f... up. That would give me time for coffee and a browse of Tmac's bookshelf. I see he has a bowdlerised version of Being a Ghost Story of Christmas - a sickening story of a fine upstanding man that catches religion which destroys his good business sense and in which we find a damaged tyke, nurtured disreputably to breeding age, and with a sickening "God bless us all, everyone" catch phrase. I hope to find the sequel, "Scrooge and Marley rejoin the FT 100").

Or Scrooge and Marley, (can be shortend to S&M for you and T), could join the ERG or start watching Farage every evening.

No need. I never let it get rusty, Rusty.

Dockers done well. we are finished. they have started flooding the Dock already. we are scheduled to moor at Alfred Docks. we will take on fuel, spares and stores. Still awaiting news from the agent.

Should I start raising steam yet or will we be going nuclear?

Are all these new solar panels down here in the engine room associated with my redundancy somehow?

Should I be worried? I am too old to learn about electrickery now!

Solar panels down in the engine room.
Are you sure that’s what they are?
Maybe they work using some of Stephen Hawking’s dark energy.

Hold your fire lads. we will move ship using the electric motors. Its only about 300 meters to our berth.

Happy New year to you all
 

I am told by the Berthing master we can stay there for 7 days. (I think the case of Caroni 90 played in out favour.)

I thought originally that they were a secret, albeit collaborative project, undertaken jointly by Tmac and ES but I now believe that they are probably to power the electric motors to which BB refers (above).

Only trouble that I foresee is that the solar panels are currently located in that part of the GD's anatomy 'where the sun don't shine'!

FWE. ok ok whos the clown did this?
 

Someone got a new Pental pen for Christmas!

Rest easy my old horny handed son of the outback, we will always need a bright youngfella with a deep knowledge of enthalpy, entropy and saturated steam to be in charge of the Burco Boiler.
As regards electrickery we work on the assumption that if Lord Lax don't know the formula Reeds Basic Electrotechnology will save the day.
Yes indeed it is no secret that the location of the solar panels is less than optimal but Tmax is treating it as a piece of basic research and by a process of elimination we will end up on the Monkey. Hope these bloody panels are sturdy yokes.

No time to respond to your teasing now E-S - didn't you see? I have got to splice enough 3 core to make it 300 M down the quay (actually a bit more as Maxwell et al dictate that the plug will come out before the catenary approaches flat).

(I am minded of my first trip on the GTVs. All were expected to be sufficiently grown up to change their own lamps and plugs - including for container reefers. Of course they were not. I was caught by the Chief (John Benn) fixing container cables outside the control room. "If you're stupid enough to do that for them at least have them deliver them to your workshop!". The same man, when co-opting me to help him with the hydraulic starter pumps, responded to my "But there's nothing electrical on this" by tightening a bolt-head down on a length of scrap wiring with a "Satisfied now?". Those fun days are gone for ever. No surprise then, to me, that it's difficult to get our youngsters to go to sea).

Nostalgia is in the name!

Thank you ES for your usual wise counsel. I have now added enthalpy and entropy to the ever longer list of things that I know nothing about.

I suppose that I could learn to make tea using a Burko boiler (if it is what I think it is?) I never advanced beyond boiling a billy but OH&S (whatever it is called today wherever) now prohibits 'swinging the billy over one's head'. Will the solar panels run a microwave or should I just continue to hang the billy on the end of the pricker?

Overall, I am reassured and will stick to coal and my faithful shovel. Have you noticed that two solar panels are cracked already .......... probably a job lot from some un-named country.

Aside from the foregoing stupidity, we are now an hour and a bit into 2023 here in Oz so, again, best wishes to all for the New Year. May the GD and the Crazy Gang sail on in good health albeit fired with stupidity.

thats darn clever that is....fixing ultra violet tubes above the solar panels to keep them charged.

Hey cut outs, that tanker driver has parked up for the weekend. when its dark transfer his load of Diesel into our tanks. after which we will slip away quietly before anyone notices.

Electric motors on. Slow ahead both. steer for the middle soon as we clear the docks. In around 30 minutes we start the main engines and sprint away at 25 knots.
Lay off a course for Milford Haven. we will anchor there till its dark then make for the channel islands.

I did suggest it be unwise to let all and sundry do their own lamping up. Those tubes are for the water steriliser (why we have one is a thing over which to puzzle). The broken bits are not the lecky tubi but the quartz tubi into which the leck tubi normally is inserted. This is intended to make lecky tubi waterproofi - only does so if you achieve the impossible by not breaking one or both when tightening the glands.

Lord Lax is at the trifle sponges again. Too much sherry Mildred.

Behind what pub, near Eton, can one have a quick shag and get a good spanking? Some of our scholars ought to tell us.

......its called the "Taliban Target".

You cant miss it.

A trifle more to port....steady as she goes....Stop...slow astern. Let go anchor!
Nice sunrise this morning. we will swing round the pick till dark then then take off for guernsy.

I hear the order for more port. How that warms the heart!

(I have never had a Sherry Mildred, anything like an Eton Miss?)

BillyBoy another Island where they believe in Kissing Cousins. Call me old fashioned but this sort of jiggery-pokery causes droop, for God's sake take us to a manly island with BO and draught Guinness.

The undersea cable limits our independence WRT both speed and voltage droops. As to the vulgar concept to which you allude, it is rumoured that redundancy born of consanguineous whimsy has ensured fewer than a handful rely on only one for the cutting of coital mustard. Much as the polydactyl is unconcerned over a single underperforming digit when called upon to signal by rude gesture.

lay off a course for "Ringaskiddy" we can get our draught Guinness tank topped up there. The bloke who lost that tanker of Diesel will be expecting us to head south. We sail at sundown again.

Has anyone got any news of what happend at the launch at crap Cavaneral?

forgot to light the boiler maybe.

BB the local sh1t handler will be pushing two local stout brews on you, Murphy's and Beamish. Both fine drinks but as Mrs May says, Guinness means Guinness.

Non of them a match for Mackeson. But, please, no loading-on-top at least not using any of the port or Bushy's tanks.

Tried Murphys, not bad. Never tried a beamish as yet. However they all hit the right spot for me. Used to like a Watnerys Cream Label in my mad impetuous youth.

Ah the 70's. Watney's Red Barrel and Whitbread Big Head Trophy Bitter, the pint that thinks it's a quart.
And Hull Brewery Bitter.

Whitbread Tankard - subject to much Spoonerism.