I’m the one in the lovely orange suit, the deck cadet is in blue, he is the computer expert and it’d his fault I got into wordpress, however he was not the one complaining about the wireless internet. Anyway, we are rigging the gangway in anticipation of a visit from a couple of service engineers, and they do arrive by chopper and can be seen below. The engine started to act the bollix so we had to stop, and seeing as how the Baltic was frozen solid it was just a matter of turning the engine off and the ship parks itself. So two chaps from Rolls-Royce came to fix our problem, and they did it in no time and we up and running again. Of course Rolls-Royce make all sorts of stuff from jet engines to deck winches and luxury cars, but that division is small in the grand RR scheme of things.
I once sailed with an engineer who had worked as an apprentice with RR in Scotland, he was making a tool on the lathe and the metal was glowing white hot, when a tiny bit flew off and hit his overalls square in the groin area and burned through like a hot knife in butter, he told us that he felt a sudden extreme pain in his penis as the metal had burned all the way to the skin and left a pinhole scar at the top of the “helmet” area. He was going to show us the scar but we took his word, he was too eager to whip out the evidence so to speak for it to be a make belief story and who would make that kind of stuff up. His wife left him, and he needed consolation so he came to Cork and went on the hit and miss, I met him one night in a pub on the Coal Quay, Dennehy’s Pub to be precise, he went off to the jacks after a while and there was a fierce commotion, he had gone into the ladies, I immediately thought he wanted to show off the scar tissue, but the reason was more simple, Dennehy’s has the toilet names as gaeilge so he figures Fir was F for female and Mná was M for male, wrong. Innocent mistake for a Jock to make I suppose.
You know you are getting old when the pilot is younger than you at Rotterdam, until now I have been spared but the next generation of pilots young and with full heads of hair are appearing on the scene. Since cadetship the pilot at each port was a fixture, a constant, respected, knowledgeable, now it’s a bunch of young lads…..I suppose I am just showing my age, they are just as good young as old.
I still have to pass the psychological barrier of 40 so I am still doing OK. I did a story the other day about how the Swedes advertise beer which was all very amusing. A 77 year old pensioner was not so amused when he was asked to show his ID card called “legitimation” when he was buying a few cans of lite beer, it turns out he was the chairman of his local pensioners organisation and the whole thing was brought to the national TV news and current affairs programmes. The store (ICA) where he was going to buy the lite beer had created a new rule where you show your ID to stop underage drinkers, how they reason that a 77 year old should have to show ID is beyond me. It was claimed that it stops people selling beer to underage drinkers? How? I wouldn’t mind but the Swedish state controls the sale of alcohol, you can only buy real beer and liquor from the state run “System Bolaget” unless you go to Denmark or Germany and buy it for half the price. You have to be 20 to buy alcohol from one of these state run shops, you have to be 18 to buy from a bar, you have to be 18 to vote. So you can vote at 18 and drink in a bar but not buy from the state run liquor store……..I know I don’t get it either, and you can import as much as you want on the net. So lite beer sellers are pissing against the wind of opinion and pissing people off as far as I can see.
The 77 year old refused to show his ID, and went to the next store and was served lite beer without discussion(another ICA).
According to the internet research I had done, the price of Guinness was about €4.20 a pint in Dublin with local variations.
Armed with this info and having the fortune of paying off (leaving) the ship in Dublin I decided to show my fellow off signers a few pubs and compare the prices as an excuse to drink in more than one establishment.
On leaving our hotel (Jury’s Inn on the Quay very nice which seemed to be staffed completely by non-Irish, there were a few lads in suits looking extremely not busy who could have been Irish though.) we proceeded in the rain towards an lár but had to take a treo eile because it started bucketing down with rain, our nearest refuge was “The Flowing Tide” on Lower Abbey Street, price of Guinness €4.10 quality very good, atmosphere good, we had the one there and headed for O’Connell Street, I spied an old pub that I had not been in for years “The Sackville Lounge” and it was our next spot for a pint, 4 Euros for top quality Guinness and friendly atmosphere we stayed for 2!
Then we headed over the Ha’penny Bridge to Crown Alley and Temple Bar, the price of beer jumped by over a Euro just by being on the other side of the Liffey, and the quality was poor in comparison to our first two stops. The barman laughed at me when I complained about the price difference, saying something along the lines of “drink in the other pub then…” arrogant bastard I thought, he was Irish. The pub was full of tourists and I even started a conversation with a Danish couple in my mixture of Swedish and Danish, who seemed to understand what I was saying, I suppose the Scandinavian language is no stranger to Dublin pubs. Still though Flannerys of the Temple Bar €5.25 for a pint of Guinness is too much when it is poured badly and you get lip form the barman into the deal, just what the customers want.
Back in Jury’s Inn the pints were €4.25 after a taxi tour back from town with a Polish driver and a radio show about how black taxi drivers are being victimized and or sexually harassing female passengers, some listening, New Ireland old problems.
Advice to tourists, Dublin is more than Temple Bar, have a look around, you could save a fortune.
Subtitle, back in business again!
Visited the brewery of Carlsberg while on a visit to Copenhagen the other week. The beer bottle collection was interesting, there were rows and rows and even more rows of beer bottles, truly a sight to behold! just under 17,000 bottles of beer, a world record, they had a certificate from Guinness on the wall which I naturally found amusing.
There are these giant elephant sculptures carved in stone with what appears to be a swatika on the side, but the elephants were in place long before the Nazi’s stole the symbol. It was on their beer label before also, but has been discontinued for obvious reasons.
All the traipsing around the brewery was thirsty work, so we got stuck into a few beers in the brewery bar after the tour. You got two complimentary beers with the entry ticket, there were some discussions from certain members of the group that several entry tickets be bought and then go directly to the bar, the people at Carlsberg may look innocent, but it was not the first time that stunt was attempted. The beer tasted good none the less.
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