Its just gone 5 in the morning when I wake up, no alarm, no telephone call, no strange noises……but I am awake, my inbuilt oil intuition tells me -somethings up!
On with the combats and a t-shirt, and regulation flip flops I don’t even look in the mirror I am beginning to be in a bad mood, when I get to the control room the duty officer tells me that he was just about to call and that we have 15 minutes to go before changeover. I position myself in front of a screen, the duty officer is humming to the tune of “when I wake up in the morning love, and the sunlight hurts my eyes” my eyes hurt, the sun is making an appearance on the horizon, my ears hurt because he is humming out of tune, and it’s an annoying hum, not just your normal throaty hum, this one has nasal sounds and lip sounds for percussion and I have no choice but to ask him -can you call the terminal and ask them how many cubes to go? Too early for a confrontation about humming, side track him to the shore radio hopefully he will forget about his tuneless noise. It works. The shore tell us one hour to go…….then they stop after 5 minutes, all normal procedure in Riga. A quick changeover and its time for breakfast, egg toastie and a cup of tea, the day has improved immensely.
At the breakfast table some of the crew are giggling and pointing at each other, some of them have been ashore the previous night. Economics is of course the subject, not gold prices or oil futures, but the most ancient of exchanges, prostitutes. Riga has an abundance apparently according to what I hear, and due to the laws of supply and demand well it doesn’t take a financier to work it out, result happy filipino crew today.
Next week they will be looking for a confessional and if unlucky a doctor.
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