The Weeping Chef

I think the chef is depressed. Usually on the cheap stereo in the kitchen, dreadful, pumping mid-90's trance blasts, regardless of which large, middle-aged, bald(ing), failed-in-their-chosen-profession northern-English cook is on shift. But since the most recent one - more a head balanced atop a sphere than an actual man - appeared on the rig for his month's service, the music has taken a turn for the downbeat. We have Pavarotti and classical music, and not long ago I heard The Scorpions' melancholic lighters-in-the-air post-Communist mega-anthem "Wind Of Change". I can only imagine that his wife has left him, or that he's having some other crisis of confidence that I am all too familiar with in chefs, having lost years of my life working in sweaty kitchen with these deeply unstable characters.

I'm pretty depressed myself, as it happens. Early yesterday morning, our carrier appeared on surface and so we got everything broken down, downloaded, and packed away, thus ready to leave the rig. But one too few choppers arrived, and though my colleague escaped, I am left stranded. It's the big election day today - the presidential one - so no choppers, meaning that it won't be till tomorrow I get away. That's two entire evenings of cognac-drinking celebration lost, enough to ignite a fury in anyone. I've probably got another week in the country, as there's two sets of kit to check over in the base.

Chambers liked my shirt.