Wedding Of The Lamb And The Milk Barons

I've been absolutely inundated with emails requesting photos from the wedding I was at exactly one month ago. This wedding, you will recall, was between Lamb and the UK's premier milk baron family. I did take a camera with me and even took a few photos, which were invariably all rubbish; fortunately, there was a professional present, and fairly recently all the wedding photos were put online. The website didn't permit the saving of these images to file, because they are "copyright" of the photographer, or some baloney, but by pressing the Print Screen button I have bypassed all this.

There were hundreds of photos to choose from, mostly of the married couple, but I have carefully selected the cream of crop (i.e. photos with me, plus someone with tartan trousers). Thank the Lord none of the photos of people dancing featured me, especially during the latter stages.

After the church, we all went to the wedding reception hall, pictured here, which also happened to be the bride's family home. This was only revealed to me some time after. First I was a little surprised, which was then replaced by a deep, searing jealousy - why can't I marry a milk baron?

This is another view of their home. It's almost as nice as my Market Street flat.

Here's a photo of the rutting wedding "stags". Listen to us roar! They wouldn't allow me to take centre stage, instead getting the groom to stand there. That's why I'm the only one not smiling.

Here's everyone at the wedding. How many people do you recognise?

Check out the guy in the tartan trousers. He's the guy in the red box (which I drew in myself - it wasn't in the original shot). Only a very rich man or my grandfather can get away with wearing tartan trousers like these, and he's certainly not my grandfather.

Unbeknownst to myself, the photographer chose to take a sly, arty photo of me, pondering some thoughts over a champagne. But I think I look a little odd in this picture.

Later on at the wedding, I found this giant cat. Look at it!

(in other news: I get free from this rig on Wednesday - confirmed.)

Meltdown

Well, from extrapolation of what meagre facts I've gained, it seems like The Scallion suffered some kind of paranoid meltdown. Hence being flung on the first chopper home. Up until 5.40am of the morning of his unscheduled departure, I (and the rest of us) had no idea. But lots of little events seem to converge in The Scallion's mind, all leading to conspiracy conclusions. Against who? Me? Talisker? Baracus? The rest of the rig? I'm not too sure about this yet - perhaps it was the world in general.

Where was his missing tally book? That seems to have been one detail. As it happens, we discovered that at the back of a drawer the other day. Where had his well-test notes disappeared to for two days? Why was there some mysterious files on his memory stick? Industrial sabotage, surely. Added to that were the people "laughing". One time, so the story was retold to me, The Scallion, not the tallest of chaps, left the galley and noticed some people laughing. Immediately, his ears pricked up. It turned out his tracksuit bottoms, bought new, still had the "small" sticker all the way down the leg. And then, on the drill floor, he got "cupped".

"Cupping" is the rather amusing practice (when it happens to someone else) of having a grease-dipped cup stuck onto your hardhat. Because it's so lightweight, it's not noticeable, except to all the sniggering roughnecks on the drillfloor. And so I was down on the pipe deck when someone nudged me and said "Is he one of yours?" The Scallion was heading down the rig floor stairway towards me, oblivious to the cups either side of his hardhat, looking rather like horns. Above the V-door on the drill floor, the roughnecks and others had gathered, gesturing to me to "Shh..." So with a straight face, I worked for five minutes with The Scallion on some equipment, before quietly taking him back to our unit where the prank was detected. He didn't look too happy about it.

So all this, and (I quote someone more in the know than me) "a lot, lot more" seemed to send The poor Scallion into meltdown. And really, I can't imagine he can ever go offshore again. Seriously. This had been just about one of the most leisurely jobs I've been on. The team out here are great, both Talisker and Baracus are extremely friendly and helpful, and even I have my moments. The rig is comfortable, and the rig crew are just your usual bunch of guys, and there's none of the brash hostility seen on some rigs (especially the ones with deep south Americans). If he can't cope with this, how's he going to deal with the intensity of Equatorial Guinea, or being chucked out to Brazil for months, or the mania of Nigeria or... anywhere really, except maybe Trinidad.

I'm not sure if there'll be any follow up to this when I return to base, but I don't think management are looking to accuse anyone. The main consequence for me is that there's now no chance of me getting offshore tomorrow, because we've only three men here now, and apparently there's no-one available to replace me. Yes, yes, that's not exactly a big surprise. I doubt in my lifetime my company will have enough employees. Of course, as The Scallion will testify, it's a tough old job, especially when everyone's against you...

His is not the only meltdown though. The entire rig test seems to have dissolved into disaster. I woke this morning expecting everything to be ticking along nicely, but just at the crucial time, everything has all gone wrong. Not with our stuff, just the general test. Meaning, pull back out and start again. But, in my favour, meaning I may get replaced some time next week now, before I lose my mind too. Over 130 days away this year already!

The Mystery Of The Scallion

And so I'm sitting back, on a quiet nightshift, all alone... all alone? Hang on, what's happened to The Scallion?

Well, we'll have to wind back 18 hours.

It was about 5.40am yesterday when the first signs of a disturbance appeared. It had been an extremely quiet shift, I'd already been down for my "breakfast" at 5am, and there was little reason to hang around. Talisker would be taking over in 20 minutes, and I'd probably see him in the accommodation for what little handover was required. "Goodnight," I said to The Scallion.

"No. You'd better stay to handover to Talisker," The Scallion quickly said. I explained there really was no need, but The Scallion was having none of this. "No," he said, "I'd prefer if you wait here. I don't want you going down there and telling him anything."

Telling him anything? "What do you mean?" I asked.

"I think you know what I mean," The Scallion said, quite firmly and with a trace of simmering anger.

I searched for a moment. What could he mean? We'd just been sitting in a small unit together for almost six hours, playing online poker, with small conversational exchanges. Absolute normality, until now.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm not interested in your and Talisker's games," The Scallion curtly explained, but upon further queries would reveal no more, and just reiterated that he'd prefer if I stay until Talisker arrived, and then I'd understand. It was pretty clear that he believed I already understood, however: my games were continuing.

A few minutes of a pretty tense silence ensued before I launched into a further series of "What the hell are you on about?" These were all firmly deflected with a "Wait and see," except for a brief allusion to his computer screen. On it was an open folder with the contents of his memory stick. A little earlier he'd asked about some files on it. I'd taken a cursory look at them and just told him to delete them. The Scallion, over the past week, has displayed even less computer literacy than myself, and these files looked like junk: some .rar files, with an icon demonstrating Windows couldn't open them.

It appears these files may be the heart of the matter. Maybe. Because it seems that The Scallion interpreted my suggestion of deletion, followed by my leaving for bed, as an admission of guilt; evidently I was going to sneak down and tip Talisker off after having deleted the vital evidence. As I'd said before, "What?"

Anyway, after some more tense silence, Talisker arrived, I had a friendly exchange with him, and The Scallion then said I didn't have to hang around. I wish I had. But it was 6.15am, I was tired, and just presumed I'd query him about this strangeness the next day.

So, I got some sleep and woke to another day. I got up, stretched, took a shower, and watched a little tennis. I didn't have a coffee for the first time this hitch. I popped into the galley and exchanged a few words to Baracus, who seemed a little subdued. I went to the evening meeting, mercifully brief, then headed out to the unit, where Talisker was seeing in the end of his dayshift.

Just about the first thing he said to me was, "Oh well, that's The Scallion on the chopper..."

It seems whatever game The Scallion perceived myself and Talisker as playing, he wasn't willing to play along. Perhaps. The details are still vague, and Talisker only went so far as to explaining them. That wasn't to say he really knew what was going on either, but he definitely had information he wasn't willing to reveal. But by mutual agreement, it seems, it had been decided as best that The Scallion got the first possible chopper off this rig and back to Aberdeen.

Analysis could be spouted, and certainly was between myself and Baracus, as to what on earth had gone on, but I'll save it for here. All I can really come up with is that The Scallion was very unhappy with the offshore life. This was his first trip, after all. However, for me it's been just about the easiest job I've done - if he can't hack this, he's done for when he's dumped in Brazil for months, or has to fester in some West African snakepit. The accustion of playing "games" and a variety of other retrospective circumstantial evidence suggests there was some brewing of paranoia in The Scallion's mind. Some covert plotting between myself and Talisker? Doubting my good nature? But I'd given him a can of Irn Bru just hours earlier!

It's all a bit weird, anyway, and certainly sudden. The upshot of it is we're now down to three men just as we're about to start getting busy again, so the timing isn't ideal. But of significantly better timing is July 4th. American Independence Day and my own day of liberation as, barring bad weather (in the North Sea?) I'll be escaping this demonic metal asylum in the sea back to my beloved home and joyfully weeping friends and family.

But for now, alone in the unit suddenly, I'll just pump up the music and dance around like a caged retard.

Rather

You wouldn't believe how long my toenails are right now.

Trickling On

Well, the days trickle by steadily and anonymously. 6pm to 6am nightshifts, sometimes with bursts of work, often with hours of online poker. Everything went tits up, not with our equipment, mercifully, but with a bunch of other stuff. Just as everything was in-hole and ready to go, it all went wrong, and the whole lot had to be pulled out again. The result being that the first of two tests has been abandoned, and by about Wednesday we should be ready to run back in for the second test. And so, aside from a few hours work tonight, the days ahead will be very quiet. Looks like I'll be losing a lot of money on the poker.

The good news - I think - is that I may be returning home by Thursday/Friday next week. This is due to some loosely adhered to rules about only being in the North Sea three weeks at a time, but some murmurs from base suggest that this could be the case. As I have holidays booked at the start of August, this either means: I joyously have all of July free and savour some much-needed time off; or I'm pumped straight onto some other damn job right up until the day of my holiday.

We'll see. For now, my focus is on the current passing of days, which promises to be gentle. There has been a shift in dynamic however: job leader, Mr Vinegar has been replaced by rival property tycoon Talisker. Mr Vinegar was as lethargic as me when starting this, still on the wind-down from the Herculean EG mission. But Talisker has arrived with sets of to-do lists and a can-do attitude. I'm not averse to the odd to-do list, but my can-do approach to them depends on time of day and how far away the next coffee break is (answer: not far).

I'm also in fierce competition with Talisker with regard to flat-owning. In my company there are a couple of guys with two flats, and one may have three, but both myself and Talisker are setting the pace with five. We both have a van too, though inside Talisker's van are a few Polish people and a tiling business, so he maybe wins on points.

I see more of the other two guys, with six hours a day apiece. Baracus continues to confound, entertain and infuriate. His Bollywood music, whether on computer on from his voice, has to be quelled immediately. I'm still recovering from his wedding slideshow. Scallion meanwhile, a dinky Glaswegian, comes out with pearls of wisdom. Over dinner, in absolute earnestness, "Did you know that the proper way to eat is with the fork in the left hand? That's how you're supposed to eat in restaurants." "I wouldn't know, Scallion, I've never been to a restaurant," was all I could respond with. I introduced him to online poker and he lost £50 in a day, before sagely moving onto play money.

And so it goes. Tonight I'll pressure up two carriers to 10,000 PSI, and if I survive will have the luxury of empty time for a few days. And hopefully, before my limbs atrophy and my wages disappear into poker oblivion, I can be set free and back into a world of wine binges and renewed insomnia.

Coming On Through

The safety guy is an important part of the fabric of each rig. Often they're an all-powerful force, chairing daily meetings and inspiring fear; usually they strut about a bit, and show safety videos to rig newcomers. Sometimes the weaker ones skulk around in the shadows, a defeated force but still with menacing potential. On this rig, the safety guy appears to serve the purpose of unintentional comedy.

With his round, bobbing head and inane grin, he resembles a cartoon character of yesteryear, or perhaps a toy dog. His speech and mannerisms appear lifted directly from a 1970s children's TV presenter handbook: he'd be a smash hit on Jackanory. He is ginger, of course. But above all, above everything, and something that everyone on the rig is obviously hyper-aware of, is his penchant for using the phrase, "coming on through".

He cannot go a speech, announcement or conversation without using it. Not once, but frequently, all the time. Usually he chucks it in at the end of a paragraph, like a kind of meaningless denouement, but he also slips it into the middle of a sentence, and really it can appear at any given moment. Very rarely does it make sense in the context of what he's saying: it is overwhelmingly used without any point, and the more I try and think of one the more senseless it becomes. He like to use it with another little phrase of his, "that one there" (also with plural or subjective variations, "those ones there", "this one here" etc). Both used so liberally, his conversations becomes heavily bolstered with filler, and filler that once you're aware of entirely overwhelms the point of what he's actually trying to say.

We've begun to count how many times he can drop into one "session". At one safety meeting, he dropped it in fifteen times, Baracus counted twenty-five during the second part of his induction, and Scallion counted twenty-six at yesterday's safety meeting. This equates to roughly once every thirty seconds, something backed up by the much shorter announcements during the daily evening meeting in which he averages three or four for a two minute talk. I overheard someone today claiming they'd heard him "double-dunt", i.e. say "coming on through" twice in succession, and that they'd lost count after twenty-two, suggesting we're not the only people to have found a grim fascination in this man's conversational tic.

Undoubtedly, as some of the regular crew of this rig have murmured, it becomes pretty annoying after a while, but for now, for us, it's still got a high novelty value. Baracus especially delights in shouting it at any opportunity. And hopefully by the time it does begin to grate, I'll be coming on through onto a helicopter, and safely back home. But that one there's still a few weeks away. Coming on through then...

Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen played a fantastic gig to a sold out crowd in Dublin last Friday. At least that's what I gather from a few reviews on the internet, because among that awestruck crowd were two empty seats. Many miles away, incarcerated aboard my latest floating prison, I was warming the seat in my two-man room, watching the football on a tiny television and finding it hard to conceive that, but for a convergence of chance events, I would have been watching Cohen by the side of a dark-haired Irish beauty.

Eight-and-a-half months ago, fresh from his 21st birthday spent offshore Brazil with me, the wrung-out Spinxy returned from the land of samba to Arbroath and impregnated his girlfriend before lighting up another cigarette. Then, last month, young Mutton Balloon injured his hand in some vague incident, as yet undetermined. And finally, at about the same time, down in Angola, a little error of calculation by Mr Calm let to unmitigated disaster offshore as several large chunks of metal were lost, gnarled and broken, kilometers underground during a large oil well test. This latter incident has so far cost about $15,000,000 and has somewhat overshadowed my own recent effort (merely $30,000 - $50,000) and cost the job of the guy in charge (of the contracting oil company), and has meant a re-test is required. Thus four extra personnel are needed, and together with the aforementioned out-of-action colleagues, suddenly nobody of my experience was available for a job in the North Sea... except me. Thus, last Thursday was spent packing my bag for offshore, rather than for Ireland, and was spent in numerous phonecalls cancelling various plans. I had time to briefly wish Green a happy 30th birthday, but couldn't even go out to eat as I had to sort stuff out. And due to the short notice, I wasn't even able to send the Cohen tickets to Ireland, so that at least someone might enjoy them. Last Thursday and Friday weren't much fun.

We'll not even mention that my first few days offshore were spent doing virtually nothing, as delays have put things back several days, and that I could have gone to Ireland after all. No, let's not mention that.

My initial fury has since evolved into mere grumpiness, then apathetic lethargy, and has finally settled upon a kind of faux-contented resignation as to my cirumstances. Cohen has come and gone, as has most thoughts of the outside world. Instead, my focus has slowly shifted to the task in hand, and the situation that surrounds me. Which, as far as the offshore world goes, is actually pretty comfortable.

The rig is one of the better ones I've been on. No, one of the best, in fact. The two-man rooms are good, and after the insomnia of Aberdeen (I don't have curtains yet) I've been sleeping very soundly. I've been able to watch all the football so far. The food is unquestionably the best I've ever had offshore: massive, hearty, tasty, varied, and always eagerly anticipated. A few days ago I had to lay down the law and ban myself from second helpings, as I was practically eating my bodyweight daily. Our workspace is great - a new unit to ourselves, with speedy internet. And unlike the mania of Equatorial Guinea - 24 hours to rig up seven large pieces of equipment - we've had tons of time to rig up very little equipment. It has been very leisurely. A good thing too, as myself and the first man, Mr Vinegar, who was also in Equatorial Guinea with me, have really not been firing on all cylinders.

The team I'm with are good as well. This is my third job with Mr Vinegar this year, so we're pretty familiar with how we operate. Joining us are the livewire "Baracus", a cheeky and hilarious Dubai operator from India, and a new boy, "Scallion", who is charmingly obedient. I worked with Baracus only once before, a week on base in Malaysia last year, and he brings great entertainment to the jaded leadership. He's had four-and-a-half months off this year (!) and so is keen and motivated, and chatters incessantly. He spent ten minutes yesterday, during pressure testing, eagerly rehearsing his PA announcement, "Attention all personnel. Pressure testing on the pipe deck is now complete. Thank-you very much!", which involved much gesticulation and oratory booming. He's been taught to speak "Scottish", and so frequently comes out with, "Aye min," and "Fit like loon?" as well as many other unpublishable comments, all of which seem amusingly out of place with his Indian accent.

I've just started to go on nightshift from yesterday, and expect a little bit of action in the next day or two, but then a week of further insouciance. Then home? No. Because we're currently still rigging up just the first test of two, so I can expect at least another three weeks here. Three weeks of good food, fast internet, crazy Indians and a diminishing concept of home and reality.

But hopefully back for July 16th. Why? Because I've got more Leonard Cohen tickets, this time for Edinburgh. Lightning, surely, can't strike twice. Cohen, you don't escape me that easily.