Tims Times

Have lost contact with the muse recently and got entangled in the Wire. All 5 series seen now, and I feel like Jimmy Mc Nulty after a wake at Kavanagh’s bar. Still it’s a great show.

Anyway back to blogging. I heard one about a cadet who thought he was very clever playing pranks on the spanners, a deck cadet needless to say who got great pleasure one day leaning over the skylight to the engine room and tapping a chipping hammer off the coaming to the rhythm of the engine. The engineers thought that one of the pistons had a knock and a general panic ensued with spanners running around like headless chickens trying to find the source of the knocking sound on the main engine. The cadet nearly lost the run of himself with laughter and dropped the chipping hammer into the engine room, nearly braining the first engineer. Well on a ship, you can hide but you can’t run, and you can’t hide for too long. He got away lightly with a few digs and a severe warning on pain of death if he ever wanted to pull a stunt like that again.

This could have ended the tale, but one of the engineers wanted some proper retribution. No better night than when the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see past midships, and everyman and his dog was on the bridge keeping lookout and stretching ears to hear the sound of a fog horn. The old man was pacing up and down nervously as he had a bit of a nerve problem and was jumpy at the best of times, the radars were manned and the ship was on reduced speed in the English channel. Suddenly there was the sound of a fog horn on the port side, all hand on the bridge went into action mode, but with binoculars pressed hard against eye sockets and nothing on the scope, it was a mystery. Then all of a sudden the fog horn was heard again but this time on the starboard side,all hell breaks loose in the wheelhouse, the old man nearly shit himself with fear.

Then the second engineer walks onto the bridge with a clarinet in hand, grinning broadly. He said I think this belongs to the deck cadet and walked off.

Be nice to the spanners or they can make life nasty.