Shattered

We hurt those we love the most.

This is my room, and my home for the last month.



As you can see, it’s not hotel-deluxe, but for a rig (or drill ship) it’s not bad at all. A bit of space, only two beds, a sofa, desk, and the mixed blessing of the TV. But the chief factor in favour of this room is the window. Almost every other rig room I’ve been in is windowless, and therefore either a dark cell or artificially-lit hell. But with a window comes natural light, a view of outside, and a considerably fresher life to the space I spend over 80% of my time.

Here is a closer shot of my window, and my sea view.



Better still, as well as providing light and a view, the window opens also. As the air conditioning is usually a bit on the cool side, and the Brazilian springtime is pretty warm, this often has the counter-intuitive effect (for the Scottish mindset) of warming up the room. A pleasing breeze can be relief on most days.

So it is unfortunate, that a few days ago, when opening my window, there was a small accident – and my window broke. Not just broke, but shattered, into thousands of pieces. The nature of the fracture though meant that it didn’t explode, rather remained shattered within its frame.

Here we can see:



Thus, I now have a window I can’t see out of, and only lets through half the light of before. My room is darker, my life is darker. Everything takes one step closer towards total darkness.

Have no fear, however, light is at the end of the tunnel. Progress has been made, and this week I’ve actually done about 8-10 hours of work. But even better, on Monday I’m due to be swapped out, so will be off this rig and on my way home. Reports must have filtered through from drill ship to my Aberdeen base of me curled up in dark corners, shaking back and fore, howling.

So freedom, finally, beckons. And so too the bright, shining lights of Aberdeen.