Tims Times

One of the large electronic stores is opening its doors today for the so called “middle days sales”. The middle days are between Christmas and New Year, some people work, and some stores start their sales. The sales have started on the 27th normally, but in recent years they have opened on the 26th, but the 25th takes the biscuit and grand prize for capitalist initiative. Now don’t get too excited,  in Sweden Chritmas celebrations happen on Christmas eve, Santy comes about 4:10 pm (just after the Donald Duck Christmas special which starts at 3:00 pm) and everybody gets their presents. But the question is do they know it’s Chritmas time at all? (ever heard that one before?)

The whole point of Christmas is of course getting shed loads of presents right? and what about Jesus Christ oh yes he was born about 2000 years ago and was the start point for  a world religion called christianity which became less interesting in the latter part of the 1900’s due to lack of interest and paedophile priests. Some shadows of the former world religion exist and lots of people still pay lip service, but do they all really believe? Well that question is hard to answer, people only show up to mass because they always have done and to see what the neighbours are wearing. God in his infinite wisdom moves in mysterious ways I mean Rev. Ian Paisley is one big mystery but back to the point. Is He (GOD) going into retirement and going to allow Money to take over his position completely, judging by the crowd at church yesterday I would say He’s just running on idle (or having to spend more time on being Allah as the swing in popularity goes east I mean he has to be one God for all), crowd is a bad word to describe the congregation. Now there maybe a few differences from childhood for example I live in Sweden not Ireland and the church was Lutheran not Catholic, that aside the crowds at church when I were a lad was like all Ireland Day at Croke Park they had to put loud speakers out in the car park to cater for the throngs that could not get in. This crowd was more like Irish speaking Ulster Unionist appreciation society meeting in Tralee i.e. not very large. The priest did his best but he was boring and the sermon was supposed to enligten the children about the mystery of Christmas but he was more interested in trying to dum it down talking about wise men in the camel parking area, no good for the story but a few lips moved outwards in a gesture near the beginning of a smile. The church emptied in about 2 minutes and off home we went to our grub.

So under our yuletide meal which we washed down with ecological wine from Argentina probably some pal of Galtieri owns the vineyard (more tangents) we pondered on the meaning of Christmas and then after Donald Duck I helped to perpetuate the myth of Santy by disappearing and reappearing dressed as the big fat guy with the red clothes except that I could not find the red suit only the hat and beard so I donned my orange rain  gear and green boots and said that there had been fierce rain at the north pole (topical climate question global warmimg and all). The kids looked at me with suspicious eyes until the parcels started flowing from Santys bag.

Rev. Ian would have been delighted with me Orange santy clothes and service at the protestant church…it’s a conspiracy. Happy Chritmas.(soon time for the sale)

Taken from the The Times of London December 13, 2006

Captain Kenneth Cummins March 3, 1900 - December 10, 2006, aged 106 Merchant Navy skipper who saw service in both world wars and later advised the Home Office on marine disasters Kenneth Cummins was the last seafarer to have taken part in both world wars. Born in March 1900 in Richmond, Surrey, the son of a Merchant Navy officer, he applied to join the P&O shipping company as a cadet at 15 and was accepted for training in HMS Worcester. He joined the armed merchant cruiser Morea in 1917 and served in her on convoy duty from England to Freetown, Sierra Leone.

He had a particularly horrific experience when he found the sea covered with the floating corpses of nurses drowned after the Canadian hospital ship Llandovery Castle had been torpedoed off Ireland. “Their aprons had dried in the sun and were blown up by the wind like little sails. I was sick over the side with the shock.� As P&O had paid for his training, Cummins continued with the company after the war, serving on board the Khyber, trading to the Far East. From 1921 to 1946 he served in mail, passenger and cargo vessels, trading to South Africa, Australia, China, India, Japan and the West Indies.

During the Second World War he was chief officer of the former passenger liner Viceroy of India when she was torpedoed by a U-boat off the North African coast during the Allied “Torch� landings in November 1942. Luckily, this occurred after the crowded mass of troops had been landed. The ship then took four hours to sink, allowing nearly all the crew to be rescued.

Next, when chief officer of the French liner Île de France — which had been commandeered by the British — he made a number of transatlantic passages at high speed. These were undertaken outside the convoy system, the ship carrying some 10,000 American troops to Europe on each trip. Cummins recalled that a bad fire on board while the liner was berthed in New York was expertly dealt with by firefighters under the direct control of the mayor of the city.

In 1946 he was promoted to command the company’s vessel Maloja, which was engaged in repatriating troops. After this he commanded the Liberty ship Sam Ettrick, recalling that when he picked up this American-built mass-produced ship at Middlesbrough, she had no ballast on board and no instructions as to how much was required. He therefore had to make his own calculations. When he ran into a violent storm on the way to pick up sugar at Barbados, he kept the ship’s head to sea, thus minimising roll, and was glad he had got his sums about right.

Later he was captain of the Devanha trading to Australia, Somali to the Far East and the vessels Singapore and Socotra to northern Europe. His last ship was the Stratheden, and he retired in 1960. Cummins was known widely as a strict but fair disciplinarian, sometimes described as a “crusty old bachelor� by his younger shipmates. He married Rosemary Byers, whom he met in Australia, in 1955 and became, it is reported, a more human figure under her influence and with the arrival of four children. He was admitted as a Younger Brother of Trinity House in 1947 and at his death was, unsurprisingly, the senior Younger Brother. In retirement from seafaring, he worked for the Home Office for ten years as a nautical assessor on the Wreck Commission, bringing his vast experience to the analysis of marine disasters. From 1962 to 1974 he was the chairman of the Marlborough Rural District Council planning committee.

He is survived by his wife and by their two sons and two daughters.

Captain Kenneth Cummins, merchant ship captain, was born on March 3, 1900. He died on December 10, 2006, aged 106

The joys of being home are temporarily suspended as I attend a Medical Care Course, which is like a glorified First aid course, the object of which is to make sure we can put on plasters correctly and so forth on our fellow crew members. Today we even got to stick needles into each other, real needles with salt solution my partner stuck me correctly in the muscle of the thigh and all went nicely. I then stuck him in the leg bone and he lifted off the bed, on my second attempt it went ok. God bless his pain tolerance. The rubber gloves we had were bright purple, lots of male nurses with big moustaches and a bunch of hairy sailors, in any other country it would have been camp with a capital C. We jointly (chickened) opted out of the trying to give each other an intra-venous drip, based on my performance and that there was a dummy arm with veins and blood which worked every time and didn’t squeal like a stuck pig. Tomorrow we will be learning stitching methods on a dummy. The course leader said that statistically speaking we would have two patients a year onboard, I’ve never had any injection cases only headaches and minor cuts and bruises, just as well. He also said that ” simply speaking the skin is a complex organ “, you wouldn’t read about it!
To position myself at the medical facility each day I have a 100 mile round trip. I am so glad that it is only a short term venture into the rat race, winter in Sweden and commuting equals misery. Sitting behind a long haul truck spraying up water and grit into the windscreen is not fun ever, even in a Volvo with heated seats. Rory Gallagher as a travelling companion eased the journey, I had “Irish Tour” from 1974 on the CD player this morning, mighty stuff.