Archive for August, 2006

Wasps and Jehovas

wasp

After rain and more rain I have finally managed between the showers of rain to put two of three coats of paint on the gable end of the house. The colour caused a mild controversy as I was the one to pick the colour “Antique White” which is not quite white but is near enough in a creamy non-white sort of way. Anyway all concerned are satisfied with the results so far, one coat to go….

The wasps are in full swing and my tally of kills is in 3 figures, while up at the top of a ladder painting I had to make several timed swings with my brush in a batting motion that any Chinese table tennis player would have been proud of to remove inquisitive and aggressive bastard wasps. The swinging of arms or legs is generally not encouraged as a clever activity when one is twenty feet (just over 6 metres for the SI readers) up in the air on a ladder at a steep angle, so I had to develop a wrist action and hold steely nerves in order to bat wasp heads at close range, anyway I have another days painting and flying stings to get through before I say my method is perfected.

With the persistence of a Jehovah witness the neighbours child comes to the door on a several times a day basis wanting to play with the kids, mealtimes, early in the morning late at night, the persistence is inexorable like the passage of time as the mole (God rest his soul) used to say, he said plenty other stuff but thats another days blogging. She was even able to report on which visitors had come to us late one evening long after our kids had gone to sleep, maybe she wants to move in.

Less than a week to go before I join my ship again, just in time to miss the climax of the Swedish election campaign, a low key affair where the politicians do a good job of convincing people that they are telling the truth about how great the place will be as long as they get elected only for everybody to be surprised and dismayed when they realise that not much really changes and election promises are as good as chocolate kettles.

One party called the Moderates, which is the right wing party so they are far from moderate has promised plenty and done more u-turns than a confused taxi driver and have gone into an alliance with 3 other right wing parties big surprise, they have said everything to win votes including free beer, ok they didn’t say that but I won’t be surprised if they do. The current government the social democrats have said they need more time to get things right, we all need more time…….I will be voting anyway tomorrow at one of the early voting stations, because if you don’t vote you can’t complain.

Back from Denmark

It rained for the first two days of our trip to Denmark, but then it got better and on the Friday the last day it was the best weather of the summer, or so it felt as we were heading for the ferry.

If you are going to buy beer don’t buy it at the nearest supermarket to the ferry, shop with big windows syndrome, they are so overpriced it is unbelievable, buy it at an out of town outlet it will save at least 33%. Don’t ask me how I know this information, my wallet is still smarting is all I will say.

Tuborg

Tuborg delivery, an event comparable to the Guinness delivery in Ireland, Carslberg is not as noticeable as one might think, they own Tuborg though so why bother.

The Danes are well geared up for tourists and families with small children, all the restaurants have a decent playground full of Germans, every second car on the road in from Germany, every third from Sweden and a few Dutch and Faroe Islanders thrown in. Every so often one meets a native looking restless, there is a rule in Denmark that states, each time you see a Swedish car you must overtake them at all costs, not being aware of this rule at first I had the ball hitch scratched once or twice by grilles of Danish cars, I didn’t slow down on purpose to piss them off honest.

Dogs

Danish dog transport.

We visited plenty tourist attractions the North Sea Museum being one, an aquarium dedicated to North Sea fish life being the main pull, a tank containing over 4 million liters of water was the central piece, the glass was 10 inches thick, in the picture a diver who hopped in with a bag of fish food he had a microphone and did a Darth Vader commentary on feeding fish in Danish. Nice.

Diver

We hopped over to Skagen on the last day of our trip and found all the Swedish tourists, a German wedding and a few Danes selling clothes and stuff. I found a fantastic antique shop selling lots of brass artifacts from ships and the like, there was a tasteful cloak hanger made of the lower legs of a deer, which I didn’t buy and bottle openers made of “ecological” wood and steel and shaped like a bell end, a big hit no doubt. The proprietor was a spit of the Ukranian President and had either been poisoned with dioxins or had kept in the pink with cigs and drink for the past 50 years, his voice had a nicotine clang but seemed to be a decent skin, I bought some old brass photo frames, great quality.

Still raining here, have to cut the grass another day I suppose.

Long Grass

Rain in Denmark

The forecast is gloomy with widespread rain, so it’s time to head for Denmark. We will take the tent but I think that we won’t be using it much. Some would choose to stay home in front of the telly when the weather looks like its going to be shite, but oh no not the Swedes we will get wet and be damned. Besides going to Denmark means I can put off painting the house for another week…..

weather

Who believes all these weather forecasts anyway?

More after Denmark, cheers Tim

Heathrow panic

I just missed the airport scare in Heathrow by 24 hours, it is bad enough without any terror threat so I am not envious of the people who had to put up with the extra security. It is quite surreal watching the whole thing on the telly and on the web when you have recently passed by police with big machine guns. I remember being in Changi airport in Singapore after the 11th of September the army and police were patrolling also armed to the teeth with guns that were bigger than themselves, I couldn’t help thinking that guns are no good against suicide bombers especially automatic machine guns that spray out a shit load of bullets, all you have is a bloodbath and a load of dead passengers. What you want is a sniper or several snipers positioned around the place and a load of cameras and a control room with people who know who they are looking for, easy really and you don’t scare the living shite out of people with all these heavily armed police.

Another thing that any traveler familiar with European airport security is that if you don’t look like a terrorist you are generally going to have an easy time at security. Anyone who looks like they come from any Arab or Asian country usually gets a pretty hard time especially Frankfurt even if you speak German it doesn’t matter if you look Asian you are going to have problems. So when are the security guards going to cop on? The drug/arms smugglers are in first class and they look like wealthy europeans, and they never get any hassle. So the other day in Heathrow you had hordes of the willing with their plastic bags with tickets and wallets, do you think that any terrorist was going to chance his luck? not likely.

Homeward bound……..

4 weeks have passed and its time to go home again, I got the word this morning that I would be leaving from London, of course we have not actually tied up yet we are still at anchor. All things going to plan the Sunk pilot will board this afternoon and we will proceed up the London River.

This blog lark is a great way to massage the ego and by jaysus there are many egos out there, I am merely a minnow in the stream of blogging that is going on out there. If you put the word blog into Google you get 2,710,000,000 hits three times as many as the word sex which has 898,000,000. Blogging is 3 times more popular than sex, thats a fact in internet land anyway.

I hope to see some of you soon and the rest as soon as I can. The reports will be less in the forthcoming 4 week but I will throw in a few. All the best for now and thanks for reading.

Cheers Tim

Glock wearing German Police

Another visit from 50

The ship having finally berthed in Hamburg Tankschiffshafen or miles away from anything interesting was visited by the local plod. They had some questions (see prior posts to confirm my suspicion of the aforementioned)to ask, they had Glock pistols in holsters and had black leather gloves on, they also had uniforms in case anyone thinks they only had pistols and gloves. One was from the same mold as Jean-Claude Van Damme the other was from the same mold as Inspector Frost aka David Jason and they both had similar ages to their respective actors. They were courteous and shook hands, as is the tradition, there is plenty hand shaking in this game. Policeman2 had obviously just splashed on half a bottle of Brut aftershave prior to his leaving the police launch (see above) and when he took off his black leather glove the air was filled with the scent of aftershave which he then transferred to my hand in a good Attila the Hun style death grip handshake, maybe I exaggerate on the grip but the unwanted aftershave doft still lingers above the petrol fumes.

After all our visits from the Police, do they not have anything better to be doing? I mean we are hardly crime suspects and we get plenty of police time, what do the crims get? Away with it, probably.

After that note of Zen, I sign off for today. Auf Wiedersehen.

Elbe Pilot out of the bluegreen

The Pilot SWATH crosses our wake

The VHF crackled to life today before smoko (coffee break), we were advised to start engines, pick up hook and proceed immediately to the pilot station for inward passage to Hamburg.

So after all the silence and waiting it’s action time again in true merchant navy fashion, longer periods of calm followed by short bursts of frenetic near panic activity. You get used to it. The pilot asked the same questions as the coastguard did yesterday that we had previously answered on our arrival 3 days ago…….it is a bit like an interrogation albeit a very slow one , I wonder what would happen if any of the answers were different from the previous times, probably nothing but then again in this day and age you never know. I have a feeling we will be questioned further on arrival at Hamburg this evening.

Time for arrival preparations, more later. Tim

Near Helgoland at the mouth of the Elbe

Coastguard vessel circles us menacingly making sure we behave

The Teutonic efficiency that we normally expect on a visit to Germany has been lacking, silence on the VHF radio from German Bight Traffic, silence from Cuxhaven-Elbe Pilots, speculation on the e-mail about a possible berth on Saturday, well we have to wait it out at anchor. The only action is from a Coastguard launch who has asked us a lot of questions aggressively on the VHF radio in bad English “VOT VOS ZE LAST PORT OF KAWL” etc. the answers to which we have already given to them via our agent on our arrival 2 days ago, I guess some things never change in Germany. I would get the boys to do a spot of painting but its raining, Murphys laws of time management and weather, when there is plenty of time for painting it will rain, be too windy or there will be no paint left. Plenty other jobs to do but they don’t have the same visual impact as a new coat of paint.

We are at anchor near the island of Helgoland (click on the name in grey to go to Wikipedias entry), a name on the dial of the old Radiogram and famous for nudist beaches before most people knew about nudism or why one would want to get sand up your arse anyway. It has been Danish, British and German in the past 300 years,we are a few miles away anyway, probably the closest I will get to it unless I decide to take a holiday there and get naked with lots of elderly Jormans. It is not under the rule of the EU, popular as a tax free haven.

Still listening to Jeff Buckley superb sound. Also have a Rory Gallagher disc lined up in the machine “Wheels Within Wheels” from 2003 another who has unfortunately left this life , but the record still spins.

More later, Tim

Amsterdam to Hamburg

Cruise ship Silver Whisper passing at Amsterdam

Rubin Phoenix delivers coal from South Africa for German Power stations, 160,000 tons…and there is one of these ships coming every few days.

The loading master was called De Boer and had big meaty hands that swallowed up mine when he shook it on his arrival on the bridge, good English spoken and professional attitude all round. I heard later from the crew that he was telling them about his bisexual girlfriend as they connected the loading arm. I suppose I should not be surprised it is Holland after all. The pilot on the way in was very talkative, I suspected he had taken some of the old moroccan woodbines, my suspicion being strengthened by his appetite for the chocolate cake we offered along with coffee, again all perfectly normal in Holland. Our agent one Mr. De Jong, no relation of Dr. de Jong of the strong cod liver oil fame, was unable to co-ordinate our supplies so we are now out of washing powder, which has led to use of other soapy substances not designed for use in industrial washing machines, suffice to say foam was seen coming from the laundry door after fairy liquid was used in one of the machines.
I am listening to Jeff Buckley’s album “Grace”, amazing song voice I was brought to tears listening to his version of the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah”, he died back in 1997, his father was a Tim Buckley who had roots in Cork. I feel some affinity for them probably due to the fact that my grandmother was a Buckley from Cork, there must be some connection along the way. His voice reaches inside deep and probes the soul, moving music.
Hamburg next up, we arrive on the 2nd of August at the Elbe pilot station. The piss and efficiency will be at full throttle tomorrow, best get some rest while I can.
More later, cheers Tim

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