Quoits Anyone ?

The centre of any passenger ship society has to be the dinner table.

Over the years, the starched formality of crisp white "bum-freezered" officer uniforms has softened to a formal informality.

It has now been downgraded from Formality Level 10 to a 6.

If this was an American ship, I'm sure that it would be portrayed in colours as security levels are in the U.S.A

It could be downgraded from a red to a more subtle, orange.

The thing with "passy" ships is that you are marooned on a table with strangers for the entire voyage.

It really is a test of social survival.

Considering that dinner lasts for anything up to 2 hours, as courses come and go, thats a big chunk of anyones life.

On the first night out from the U.K, you get the initial surprise.

You either arrive at your allocated table in the dining room to find a solitary, empty chair, surrounded by a circle of expectant faces or, if you get in first, you choose your seat and have the faces arrive around you.

As I was eating with the passengers, my table was a complete surprise. The chair next to me, was removed by the waiter.

A middle aged lady and her husband arrived. She was wheelchair bound and unable to speak or cut her own food up.

They were accompanied by another couple from a different part of the U.K, who all meet up once a year to cruise together. They originally met on another ship and now maintain the tradition.

The lady in a wheelchair has a machine to help her communicate. She types in what she wants to say and the machine speaks the sentence for her. Unfortunately, nobody can hear her over the din of inane smalltalk, the clattering of knives and forks and the sound of dentures chomping.

"Looks can be deceiving".

I'm ashamed to say that I'm fallible and often forget to obey that well-worn idiom.

Another one is "to err is human".

As I write this, we have been at sea for 5 days and I've discovered a very special lady and her devoted husband.

Stricken by a severe stroke, a perfectly able and intelligent woman is now constrained by her own body of short circuits.

I've heard it said that people only see the wheelchair and not the person in it. How very true.

Their seemingly normal looking companions have proven to be initially pleasant, but internally flawed. Increasingly so, as the voyage deepens.

Some ten hours of dinner talk later, the seething bed of psychological baggage is starting to rise from the depths of the beautiful couple. Obsessions about looks, money, status, all rise to the top.

The wit and bravery of the lady without a voice and her down to earth and hard working husband totally eclipse the beauties, like shining beacons on a sea of white linen.

Her humour which is shown on her LCD display for my eyes only, is rapier-like and keeps me calm and composed, in the social battlefield of lunge and riposte.

Ah well, its early days. 

     

Bangers in Chlorine Sauce

At sea again !

The photograph below shows the Jubilee Sailing Trust ship Tenacious at anchor off the Isle of Wight. She flys the signal flags RY which requests other vessels to minimise their wake.

Not surprising considering that the ship is equipped to carry a number of wheelchair users.  

I'm on another passenger ship, bound for Turkey.

Only this time, they made the serious mistake of letting me loose on 1800 fare-paying Brits.

That's like letting a fox loose in a chicken coop. Only chaos can ensue.

As we steam eastwards, 24 miles off the Algerian coast, the Brits play as only the Brits can.

It's still school holidays, so the normal geriatric complement of passengers and walking wounded is generously sprinkled with younger people and families.

Midlands and Black Country accents seem to be the most prevalent. 

I don't know if that's because they are numerically superior or just the most noticeable.

Looking down on the outdoor pool, out on the sun deck, the water is sloshing from end to end as the ships pitches into the easterly force 5.

Any stationary swimmer is moved two feet one way and then, two feet the other, just by the surface effect on the mass of water.

I've always wondered; are swimmers still swimmers when they stand stationary in the pool ?

Isn't floater a more accurate description ?

Probably, this is where the verb "to bathe" comes from.

Notices request that people shower before entering the pool.

In countries like Germany and Scandinavia, this is a way of life.

In the UK, Brits take no notice and just get in, after sweating it out in the noonday sun and liberally anointing themselves in factor 30.

A coconut oil slick adorns the surface of the pool.

The passengers stand, frying and sizzling, like bangers in a 30ft chlorine-filled frying pan, as the Mediterranean sun barbecues them golden brown.

Their ship-induced sloshing movement reminds me of the movement of the empty coke can, assorted bladderwrack seaweed and ripped Tesco's carrier bag that you always seem to see bobbing around the corner of any tidal harbour, the length and breadth of the U.K.  

Blogs - A Plague of Frogs

Blogs have been very topical recently, with quite a few boaters starting them.

I don't know whether its something to do with the disappointing weather or whether its the latest internet phenomenon, as Facebook and Twitter have been.

Some people do it as a form of therapy, some do it to be entertaining and lets be honest, some do it to make money from the Google adverts, which then offsets their boating costs.

I have always made a point of openly listing other boaters blogs on my blogroll, over there to the bottom left of this, but I refuse to promote those that have the dreaded Google ads.

I was approached by one well known blogger, asking why I had neglected to include theirs, when there were so many others included. I had to respectfully point out and explain my dislike of Google ads, which was taken well, as it happens.

Have you ever noticed how the G.adverts adapt to the subject being discussed ??

If you write about solar power, adverts will appear, advertising solar panels, etc - spooky.

 
I've just found a new blog in the ether, in the shape of NB Gemma Joy.

For some reason, John, her owner, has elected to do it in the form of a website.

The only problem with this is that the automated feeds and readers which can be used to alert you to a new post on the blog, don't recognise the format.

In many respects, thats why its better to use Google Blogspot or Wordpress.

I've added Gemma Joy to my blogroll, but it just sits lifeless and unloved at the bottom, together with Wiccan Warrior.

Food for thought if you are considering starting one !!!

Silly Waiter

We were invited to a wedding at Down Hall in West Essex.

I'm sure the name itself means nothing to you, but if I say it's the place where the terminally ill Jade Goody got married a few months ago, you may recall hearing about it before.

Whatever your views on Jade Goody and I have my own, Down Hall is a beautiful country house set in a 10 acre estate near Hatfield Heath.

Many people belittle Essex and it is the butt of many jokes. However, Essex is a very large county, stretching from the Thames up to Felixstowe on the east coast. Many think of Essex as the stereotypical Essex boy and girl, Darren and Trace, with the estuarial accent, Ford car with furry dice and who do their shopping at Lakeside, near the Dartford tunnel.

I always remember working with a "Trace" some years ago, who when asked where she was going on holiday, replied "I'm going Cancun".

Essex has many faces. It is not just the flat, featureless, industrial landscape that you see near the Thames. The border with Hertfordshire is very hilly and North Essex has farmland, market towns, open country and local accents quite similar to the Suffolk accent.

Down Hall is a very pretty venue and although not far from Stansted Airport, is surrounded by picture postcard villages, parish cricket teams and pretty pubs and churches (the two always go hand in hand).

The wedding was a lavish affair.

Every feature and move had been planned to perfection. More like a military manoeuvre than a wedding. The knack with weddings is to make them look relaxed, carefree and flowing, whilst underneath the surface, there is a metronome dictating every move.

The marriage itself was a registry office "do" in one of the beautiful drawing rooms, which had been licensed for the ceremony.

After the civil service, guests funnelled out on to the lawn for drinks.

As we passed through the hall, there was a crash and commotion. One of the waiters had dropped a tray of drinks and was being helped, hobbling, by two of the ushers, out into the garden.

The waiter, who was a "Bobby Ball" lookalike was obviously in pain and was making a great deal of noise. When he got out on to the regal, covered porchway, the ushers released him and he went over again, down the steps.

Was he drunk on duty or just a mental patient who had escaped ?

The Master of Ceremonies (MC), resplendent in his red jacket, tried to collate people for the photographs in the grounds. The silly waiter re-appeared and started running up and down like a human sheepdog, shuffling and berating people. He picked on the pretty tattooed blonde girl, making comments about her dark roots and Essex girls, he picked on the old man with the lamb-chop whiskers and Meerschaum pipe, confusing the smell of Kentucky Gold tobacco with Kentucky Fried Chicken. The MC was clearly irritated with the shouting and interfering of this irritating little waiter. As the photographer started organising his subjects in to order - tall people at the back, children at the front !   the silly waiter suggested that it might be better if the ugly people stayed at the back, shouting the mantra of "if you can't see the camera, you won't be in the photo - might be a good thing for some of you".

The guests' faces started to relax. What started out as a rogue waiter about to ruin the brides special day, became a prank set-up, designed to amuse the guests.

The silly waiter went on to appear between each course of the meal, blackened and charred after cooking the main course, covered in cream after preparing the dessert, dragging pre-arranged targets up to carry out silly Men in Black and dance routines, much to the delight of the bridge and groom, who got their revenge on those friends who took advantage at their respective stag and hen nights.

Mark Howard was the silly waiter. In reality, a professional actor who has worked for many famous people, as well as receiving accolades from the great, late Jeremy Beadle, who employed him for his daughters wedding.

The question is, would you dare to let the Silly Waiter do his stuff at your daughters wedding ?

It certainly needs a degree of trust, but the Silly Waiter pulled it off superbly and the guests were suitably warmed-up when it came to the dancing in the evening. I've never seen so many people on a dancefloor at a wedding !!! 

http://www.sillywaiter.com/index.htm

 

Hot Towels Sir ?

There are two types of canal boating; soft boating and camping on water.

Personally speaking, my days of sleeping on camp beds and wearing fleeces indoors are far behind me.

Sometimes, I see people cruise by in sailaway narrowboats. The inside of the boat is just one corridor, with a plywood floor, no partition bulkheads and a Black and Decker Workmate for a table.

I appreciate that people need time to fit out their sailaways and often the temptation for a cruise on a sunny day is too much. However, I'm talking about that small band of hardened souls who are continuously cruising whilst barn-camping inside. You know who you are !!

Power to their elbow - I'm too old, soft and southern for such boating.

I like my creature comforts and one of my top priorities, especially in the damp of, well, every month except possibly August and September, is the hot towel.

I absolutely abhor reaching for a damp towel when I get out of the shower.

Willawaw has a large calorifier (the boaty term for a water immersion tank). This can be heated by the engine coolant, the Eberspacher diesel heater or an electric immersion heater when we are on shore mains.

Our interior boat heating is by radiator and these are heated by the Eberspacher. We also have an independent solid fuel stove, which burns coal or logs.

We have just finished our refit in drydock and the boat is looking pretty good. She was getting a bit tired and she now has a nice new paint job, new fenders, all her woodwork varnished or painted and so on.

The canals get a bit manic for us during the school holidays, so we tend to do repairs in the summer and start cruising in earnest just as the kids are going back to school. September and October are some of the best boating months, in our humble opinion.

Anyhow, I digress yet again.

Now, sorry to talk about those colder, damp, autumnal evenings in the middle of your summer holidays, but you have to think ahead on boats and it's not really that far away.

When we cruise in the darker, colder months, it can get quite chilly inside the boat during the day and we have to run our Eberspacher or solid fuel stove at the same time as the main diesel engine.

The former provides the heat and the latter is driving the boat forward. This is a bit wasteful, as it burns two lots of fuel, but it is necessary to stop the boat cooling down inside.   

However, this week I was given an idea by another boater.

In essence, what he was advocating, was a modification to the pump within the Eberspacher heater.

When we are cruising, the water in our calorifier gets heated by the engine and the heat will naturally transfer from the engine coil in the calorifier through the calorifier itself into the second dedicated coil for the switched off diesel heater.

As the radiators are connected to this second coil, if we could pump the water round, with the heater still OFF, we would effectively get hot radiators from the conducted engine heat, even though there is no direct connection between the two circuits.

This means there would be no need to use extra fuel for heating when cruising in the cold weather.

Whilst I applaud the notion, I'm not keen on modifying the internal pump circuitry in my Eber, BUT it would be easy to fit a second 12V pump into the pipe circuit !!

With this is mind, I plan to fit a new pump in parallel to the Eberspacher, together with some one-way check valves in the HEP plastic piping, so that the pumping pressure of the Eber when thats running can't short circuit through the stationary new pump and miss the radiators out completely.

I have ordered the HEP parts and a Jabsco 59520-0000 ecocirc pump. The pump is designed for hot water use and has a brushless motor with a magnetic drive, so it should run forever and as it has no seals, it shouldn't leak this side of doomsday.

I have also found a 12V supply on my alternator controller which will automatically run the pump only when the engine is running.

This is necessary because if you have the pump manually switched and you forget to turn it off when you stop cruising for the day, all the heat from the radiators will flow back in the reverse direction and keep the engine warm when it gets switched off, which is  counter-productive.

Anyway, bottom line is that it gives us warm rads whilst winter cruising, without burning extra diesel and just as importantly, it means that I can have just the towel rail on whilst summer cruising.

So, thanks to a bright idea from a fellow boater, I can now pat myself on the back for being eco-friendly and use a fluffy, hot towel to do it !!
 

Sleeping With Strangers

It occurs to me that I waste quite a lot of my life sleeping with strangers.

I have always had the ability to sleep anywhere.

The mere motion of a plane, train or automobile, sends me instantly into a deep slumber.

However, my tendency to fly with budget airlines often tends to leave me sitting in a very uncomfortable, upright position.

My Turkish flight had me sitting in the emergency escape aisle, which is always good for legroom, but the seat didn't recline at ALL.

As soon as the plane starts speeding down the runway, I'm off into the land of nod.

V1, V2, Rotate - the nose lifts off the tarmac and the aluminium monster is suddenly airborne at 200 mph and climbing.

I'm pushing zzzzzz's, but its no problem at all, because the "nose-up" attitude of the plane means that my head is forced back into the seat, sticking me to it as if by magnetism.

However, when the plane levels out, the problems start.

The cranial magnetism disappears and my head falls forwards, causing me to wake myself up with a jerk.

I subconcsiously bring my head back to vertical and doze off again.

Some inmeasurable time later, my head goes forward again and I jerk awake, once more.

"Nodding dog" syndrome is no laughing matter and steps should really be taken to prevent this dangerous condition on all airlines.

Normally, mostly strangers get to sleep with me, so I never find out what they think, as they observe the secrecy of the cabin, but on the few occasions when I travel with company, they tell me that its very amusing to watch me try to nod my head off.

The sheer oppulent luxury of aircraft seating is so appealing, the owner of this Cork hotel decided to fill his restaurant with it.

Minutes before the photo was taken, the child in the picture was enjoying eating from the lowered seat tray that you can see on the middle seat back.

I wanted him to have the full airline experience, readying him for all those Easy-nair flights that he will take in the future, so I sat in the middle seat and reclined it fully and quickly while he was eating, causing him to ingest his bread roll.

He can now tell his parents that he has been through the induction course to be a seasoned traveller.

Its very hard to be a stranger in Ireland.

Irish jokes are legendary and the Irish are always portrayed as being thick.

In my experience, they are quite the opposite.

I have always found them to be very good negotiators.

They have a very lateral train of logic and this is often interpreted as being slow on the uptake.

In my opinion, they just approach a situation from a different direction and this flair for the lateral enables them to think up all kinds of variables when haggling over prices and terms.

This means that I have to think very carefully when trying to initiate a negotiation. The approach is very different from the norm.

For example, when we in the UK ask for directions, we typically stop the car, wind down the window and shout "excuse me, can you tell me the way to XYZ".

This doesn't work well in Ireland.

They always start such proceedings with verbal foreplay.

For example, "ah thats a fine display of roses you have there. I'm just on my way to visit my aunt/cousin/favourite donkey. Have you lived here long ?".

It's also essential to leave your car in the middle of the road, unbuckle your seatbelt, get out and walk across to the person concerned.

The conversation then rambles on until you can get it round to "I was wondering if you can give me some directions".

Of course, even this approach isn't guaranteed.

I once stopped and asked somebody in Ireland if they were from around here (another rather direct English way of asking for directions).

"No", they said "I don't live around here".

"Oh", I said, disappointed. "So where are you from ?" (another fallback attempt at opening conversation).

"Over there", they said, pointing to a group of buildings about half a mile away.

I once stayed in a lovely place called the Candlelight Inn at Dunmore East, near Waterford, with a group of ships captains.

On the morning of my departure, I was having a rather fine Irish breakfast with the Captains, when the owner of the hotel suggested that I let the hotel courtesy bus take me to Waterford Airport for my morning flight home.

I thanked him for his hospitality and finished my breakfast.

I collected my bag from the room, checked out and went outside to locate the courtesy bus.

There was no bus, only an ancient Morris Traveller with a little old lady wearing a chauffeurs hat,  sat in the driving seat. 

"Excuse me", I said. "Can you tell where the courtesy bus stops ?"

"Ah, ye'll be wanting me" she said "are ye for the airport ?"

Surprised, I nodded, but accepted - this was Ireland after all and nothing should be allowed to faze you.

I said my goodbyes to all at the hotel, jumped in the back seat of the Morris and we were off.

Waterford Airport is 4.5 miles from Dunmore East, as the crow flies.

About an hour later, we were back at the hotel.

"Forget something, did ye ?" said the proprietor to me.

"No", I replied "your courtesy bus couldn't find the airport and I've missed my flight".

She was obviously not from round there. 

Cats and Seagulls

The canals are far away.

A rather surreal evening sitting on the foreshore, having dinner in Turkey.

The cats fight the seagulls for scraps of fish from the table and the shipyards are in the distance.