Nev 360

It's All Over

2011-06-03T11:41:00.000Z

Dear reader,

I arrived onshore yesterday, after a brain-melting 49 days offshore on my final job in the oilfield, and tomorrow will be back in the UK, freshly unemployed.

With my job ending, this blog - which has always been intrinsically linked to my employment - will also now conclude.

However, like a phoenix from the ashes, a new blog has already begun, which will detail my travels over the next few years. It may be found here: http://nevworldwonders.blogspot.com/2011/05/travel-plans.html

Thank-you for reading this blog over the years. It has been an interesting few years and I hope that has come across in my writing. It has been a pleasure having you.

Goodbye.

Nev

Pie On A Mountain

2011-05-22T00:53:00.000Z

As already mentioned, it's my final job.

I've been in Ghana since March 31st, a total of 52 days now - that's longer than some people have been alive. Two people specifically: a baby called Ella and a baby called Isaac. Ella - named, perhaps, after Ella Fitzgerald - is a mere three days old (meaning I have been in Ghana over 17 times longer than she has existed) is the daughter of my brother and his wife, thus making her my niece; Isaac - named, perhaps, after Isaac Asimov - is now thirty days old (meaning I have been in Ghana a mere 1.7 times his existence) is the son of my cousin and her husband, thus making him my... second-nephew? Cousinson? Sub-nephew? I bet the Koreans have a proper word for this.

So it's been more than a lifetime here in Ghana, and it's not over yet. The last five weeks have been spent offshore, aboard a 10-year-old drillship that already acts like an unsteady pensioner. Really, I've never been on a rig or drillship that seems so uncertain in the water. Aboard a floating vessel a bit of movement is to be expected, even on one of oil rig proportions, but on here the rocking motion is taken to distracting levels. Crane lifts are the most disturbing - 10,000kg objects turn into giant wrecking balls as the crane desperately fights to control the movement, sending personnel sometimes literally diving for cover as they flail around, slamming into anything in its path. Even without a load the crane is hazardous; standing, supposedly safely, in a bay yesterday, the large lifting hook swung quite violently into the bay and would have smashed my head way beyond concussion had I been standing a few steps differently.

Likely, I have another week or two here, before I go home, finally and once-and-for-all. Job over and, well, the whole actual job over. No more oil rigs, nightshifts, helicopter rides, helideck strolling, or misanthropic 50-year-olds who view all women as prostitutes but whom I have to appear friendly towards because they are the client and pay our wages. Five years of this alternative world will be over. For better and for worse, in many sincere and different ways.

In many ways I'll be very sad to go: this job has been quite, quite different from a 9-5 office job (I presume - I've never held a 9-5 office job, but have seen them depicted on TV). I've been to a total of fifteen countries, excluding the North Sea, with them, and although perhaps not all holidays destinations, even the more challenging were interesting experiences. I would be in no hurry to go back to Nigeria or, especially, the grim Angola, but places like Mauritania and Ghana have had an unexpected charm. And then, of course, some of the places I've been to were like holiday destinations. I stayed at a beach resort hotel for a week in Malaysia before the job was cancelled. Brazil may have seen ups and downs, but I got weeks on the beach there, most notably sight-seeing in Rio de Janeiro and visiting the holiday town of Buzios. Trinidad saw days of sitting by the outside pool, drinking gin. On my first ever job, in Egypt, I stayed in a two-storey multi-roomed apartment hotel, alone, and watched the sun set over the pyramids. Baku, in Azerbaijan, was an onshore bombardment of pub crawl alcoholism.

Then there's the work. Despite all the above, not all my working day is filled with leisure activities or damaging my long-term health. The work might sometimes have been relentless, or stressful, or filled with bawling Americans or bitter Scots, or seen me soaked in brine during a North Sea winter or just soaked in sweat during another of Africa's everlasting summers, but above all that it has been interesting work. Not the sort of work that makes for entertaining reading for anyone outside my precise profession - unless you want me to regale tales of splicing cable on the rig floor, forcing APDM to get beyond the seabed, or that time I welded an AH-38 to an MDL to achieve wireline SRO - no, not always for its specialist anecdotal qualities, but because once inside this alternative world of tool assembly and data acquisition, all improbably set kilometres underground, there was something deeply satisfying when it all came together, when data appeared onscreen like magic, and I could sit back with a coffee and tweak data messages and make nice charts. Like a mountain, it was a challenge, and while not always "fun" at the exact time, there was a satisfaction at the summit, not just of the clear view but of the struggle that had gone into getting there.

Rig life too was not always so bad, and could even be quite refreshing, like a retreat away from normal life. A good rig with a gym, a decent helideck, good internet and TV, and perhaps even "bippy-bap", i.e. table tennis, could be quite enjoyable on a quiet job, for a couple of weeks at least. No booze allowed, so there was a vague healthiness to the whole thing too.

Of course, my job wasn't always sunset strolls on the helideck or smooth data acquisition and smiling, helpful drillers sitting side-by-side with company men who became like brothers. Like all jobs, there was a dark side. Yes, I know you might be surprised - "the oil industry has a dark side?" - but even this noble profession has moments that aren't always butterfluff and candy.

The worst aspect, to get it out of the way, is the one I fully embraced when I first joined the company, and that is the absolutely uncertain schedule. Unlike many offshore personnel who work set rotations, I have always been on-call. It's a mixed deal, because in many aspects I rather like it. Rather than the feeling of being in a loop that I imagine a set rotation would bring, I always felt a sense of progression, of going on individual "missions", of having an uncertain future in which a phone call could come at any moment and the next day I could be in any country in the world. It was quite exciting, at first anyway. In the last couple of years I realised how much my life was affected by never being able to reliably plan anything. Sure, I might be home for months at a time (which was obviously very nice) but hardly ever during that time would I be able to plan a week or two ahead. Arranging to visit anyone not living nearby would have to be last minute - unless I booked one of my four weeks of holiday off to do so.

(I have cheekily visited both Germany and Ireland while technically available for work, but please don't tell anyone.)

Maintaining relationships, of any ilk, are pretty difficult when living at such a random schedule, and I suppose eventually this overtook the excitement the randomness would bring. Because it's the only real negative of the job in the end. I can handle the sweat, blood and tears, the angry middle-aged men, the long shifts, the cakeless rigs and the sometimes numbing stretches of boredom offshore, because when all bundled together and baked in to a gigantic omnifarious pie comprising the many ingredients of my job, it was a juicy pie worth eating, albeit with some gritty bits. But pour on the sauce of randomness, and taste is spoiled a little. Oh, I do like pie metaphors.

Of course, none of the above is the reason I am leaving, it is just the musings on a job I am poised to leave. Because short of being in a job that involved watching football at my leisure, assessing new brands of pie around the world, or getting girls drunk, my desire to travel matched up with my ability to travel means that I am ready to travel.

I'll miss the job, no doubt. Right now, sitting into my sixth week offshore Ghana, on what has been a job of very hard graft at times, I am only thinking of being onshore, in Edinburgh, with a pint of Theakston Old Peculiar in the Barony, enjoying it alongside a massive sense of relief, and looking forward to a summer free, a guaranteed summer of leisure, where I can make plans and not fear the phone. But once the pint is down me, and a few weeks or perhaps a bit longer pass by, and the novelty of being home without responsibilities has faded, I'll start to miss the job, or certain elements of it. Because there was a definite strong camaraderie with those I worked with, a general job satisfaction in a small company that was great to work for, and of course the money wasn't bad either.

Like eating that multifarious pie up a mountain, it might have been messy and tough work, the sauce might have soured and the ground underfoot slippy, and the pie may have been baked inconsistently making for the pastry being burnt a little much on one side, but after you've eaten a pie on a mountain, despite the wind and rain and cloud cover, how can pie in the suburbs ever compare? How good can a crushed biscuit or flat sandwich or flaky Cadbury's Flake ever taste on a mountaintop again? The answer is... probably not as good. Do you understand what I'm saying? Pie On A Mountain.

Uncle Nev

2011-05-20T23:32:00.000Z

I am now a very proud uncle. My brother Ian and his wife Katherine had a baby just the other day. If it had been a boy I am assured it would have been called Baby Nev, but perhaps it was better for everyone it turned out to be a girl, which they have named Ella Audrey.

I'm still in Ghana, working like a dirty sweating hound, but hope to be back in a couple of weeks, when I will be introduced to the first of a new generation of Christies. I will also then be a free man, without obligation to the brash world that is oil-seeking.

As for Baby Nev, have no fear - my friend Handsome Matt (who some of you may recall from my adventures in Korea) is having a baby in August, and he promises me he will call it Baby Nev. He lives in Sydney now, so he'll be my first stop on my travels when I visit him to make sure he's named the baby correctly.

START Haiku

2011-05-09T21:00:00.000Z

One of the predominant features of life on the open seas, aboard a rig or drillship in the enduring quest for oil, is the safety culture. Rigs are inherently dangerous places, with all manners of alternative ways to kill a man, and so an awareness of safety is important. Common sense counts for much, but fastidiousness in the correct upkeep of equipment is also paramount as was tragically demonstrated last year, when a crane on a Transocean rig I was on catastrophically failed, catapulting three guys into the water, with the body of one never recovered.

So a safety culture offshore is a good thing, but of course to keep tabs on the ongoing safe practice of a rig means a trail of paperwork will be generated. Naturally, maintenance of equipment should be backed up by evidence it's fit for use, but what about making sure personnel are acting safely? Can we really trust that common sense will prevail?

The answer to that is a resounding "no". Offshore life combines a range of nationalities and a range of imbeciles, and common sense can take a backseat to brash arrogance, pig ignorance, the desire for quick results, and sheer exhaustion. Thus to the oil industry's credit, a safety culture has been drummed into the workforce for many years now, to urge the need for efficiency rather than urgency, to highlight the importance of stopping a task if you are unsure of what is involved, and to empower any individual on the rig to stop any task they feel is unsafe.

High-minded principles indeed, though in practice for the third parties, such as I, you're going to get bawled at by an American if you suggest he pause for a while in his duties so as to optimise his own safety. Nonetheless, the theory that every individual can stop any other to ensure good safe working practice is a good one, just let down by the actual type of individual that tends to be involved in offshore operations.

The problem further breaks down in the area of common sense when the paperwork issue comes into play. Bureaucracy infamously has never been bedfellows with common sense, and in offshore safety culture actually works against it in some cases. The desire to tick all the boxes overrides the desire for practical safety, and the desire for "100% safety participation" doesn't mean all workers being careful and efficient in their duties and rather involves everyone filling in a nonsense bit of paper every day whether it's of any value or not.

This bit of paper is the STOP card system, or rather on this Transocean rig the START card system, because they want to be more positive about safety no doubt. (The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year was, incidentally, a Transocean rig - the Deepwater Horizon. I'm on the Deepwater Millennium.) This is a slip of paper to note down any safety observations, positive or negative, made throughout the day. It's a good idea, but with one special failing on this rig - 100% participation is demanded, so that everyone can pat themselves on the back and say what a good safe job they've done. (Incidentally too, on the year of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed eleven people,destroyed an entire rig, and caused the worst oil spill in history, Transocean awarded its executives millions of dollars in bonuses for a record year in safety, saying,“Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate. As measured by these standards, we recorded the best year in safety performance in our Company’s history, which is a reflection on our commitment to achieving an incident free environment, all the time, everywhere.”)

The problem with enforced 100% START card participation is that is takes no account of common sense. In my first week here, before our equipment was on board, I spent a day or two going no further than from my room to the galley. There were few high risk encounters en route during this ten metre stroll, so I had to simply compliment the cleaner on doing a good "safe" job. Currently, during an eye-of-the-storm calm spell, I'm only going from my room to my working unit outside - not much danger. The counter-argument to those who say they've not done anything to warrant START card observations is that they should get out there and find something, but this is plainly stupid as a bunch of guys poking around in corners looking for dangers is obviously more dangerous than them simply staying in bed. I've heard of people, in the past, of just making stuff up too, just to fill their quota.

Non-compliance, on this rig, means being run off the rig, i.e. sent home, possibly losing your job. It happened to one guy just a few days ago, and possibly someone else today. Never mind that by sending people home without replacement means their colleagues being overworked and operations jeopardised, Transocean want to maintain their 100% record and ensure their executives continued bonuses.

Dutifully, I've been filling in my daily cards, using it as a means to complain about the lack of basic facilities, especially in the changing room which now lacks soap and handtowels, and the weekly drill at 1pm which interrupts me and all other nightshift right in the middle of our sleep. Of course, I don't expect these to be acted on - after all, soap and handtowels is a bit of a stretch for the world's largest offshore drilling company - but at least it will annoy the Health and Safety guy on board who has to put up with my petty complaints daily.

Recently, in order to inject a little creativity and thinking into my cards, I've started to play with the prose structure of my START cards too. Rather than the ramble of a complaint about soap, I've turned to haiku, which as my learned reader will know is a traditional form of Japanese poetry, which uses three lines in a 5-7-5 syllable format. This has had the unexpected impact of making my START cards actually quite enjoyable to write, as well as having giving them a pleasing rhythm. It's also massively increased my productivity (in writing START cards, at least, not in actual useful work) as I've written five in the last two days.

Here, for your reading, are my most recent five. They focus on my current peeves of the boat drill and the lack of soap (called Gojo - it's a special and very effective version).

One o'clock boat drills
Interrupt sleep of nightshift
Tiredness means mistakes

Lifeboat-2 T-cards
In disarray, disorder
Finding mine is slow

Fixed weekly boat drills
Lack element of surprise
Too predictable

Cable on walkway
Came free of safety cover
I tucked it back in

Changing room Gojo
Has been empty for a week
I can't clean my hands

As you can see, they embrace they very best of what both START card and Japanese poetry have to offer, and I just hope the Health and Safety guy has the education to appreciate them (he doesn't). I may embrace other poetical forms (limerick? iambic pentameter?) as the job wears on.

Some Changes

2011-05-01T21:52:00.000Z

Excuse me for not being so attentive to this blog recently, but big changes are afoot and this blog will soon be getting a gritty reboot, Batman style. All the news now follows (warning: one is a lie):

Leaving work

After five years working for a terrific small(ish) oil service company, in a job with all manners of ups and downs, I have handed in my notice, taking effect from the start of June. Perhaps I will write a little more in the near future about what I will miss and not miss about this work, but needless to say it's been a remarkable five years that was entirely unanticipated upon my return from Korea in early 2006.

Travelling

As of September this year, I will head off travelling for the next two-to-three years. I have decided to create a new Seven World Wonder lists, as six of the original seven no longer exist and a recent worldwide poll was conducted by a Swissman, therefore fraudulent. I have selected ninety-three man-made monuments that I'll visit on the travels, and that I've researching for the last few years, so to hopefully come up with a definitive list. More details will follow on this blog.

Weddings and Babies

My brother, after an awe-inspiring decade-long engagement, got married at the beginning of the year, and any time now will produce a baby via his new wife, Katherine. This means that some time in this month of May I will become an uncle for the first time. I'm not terribly sure what this entails. What do uncles do?

I also became a semi-uncle just a week ago when my cousin gave birth to a child. Yes, a child. I think a semi-uncle has less responsibilities that a full-uncle, so I can probably get away with just patting it on the head when I see it.

And for those of you who have heard of the delectable Handsome Matt you will be delighted too to know he will be producing a child. The timing of its arrival is excellent, as it arrives in August, and I will begin my travels in Sydney - Matt's home - in September. He has promised to call it "Baby Nev".

Aside from my brother's January wedding, I've got a couple more weddings lined up, both for friends of my girlfriend. My friends never seem to get married but hers seem much more keen. One wedding is in mid-August, and I haven't told anyone yet but I intend to dress up like a clown to make the day so much more memorable. The other wedding is next January in India, where my girlfriend - whose name I keep meaning to remember so I can share it with you here - will fly in and join me, in Goa. That is, if she's still talking to me for, ahem, leaving the country for many, many months.

Finally, due to work commitments I had to miss the recent Royal Wedding between will.i.am and Jane Middlemass - or something like that - which I was quite sorry about, as I was well up for a day of Union Jack waving and gin disasters. Instead, I slept through the entire thing. I hope they gave someone my seat.

Ghana

Right now, I'm offshore Ghana. I arrived here a month ago, spent two weeks onshore and have been offshore since. It's a pretty full-on job, with probably the most equipment I've seen in one location before, and as such the last ten days have been spent in near-continuous action. It's really been quite tiring. Gone are the days of leisurely coffee breaks, and Football Manager extravaganzas (it is the year 2031 and Thurrock are in League 1 - but I haven't played in ages) and they have been replaced by set shifts of sweat, grease and stifling heat. Why, it's enough to make a man quit.

My colleagues are Bigboy, the Rabbit and SHAKATTACK, making up what is quite a strong team, and probably what will be my last ever team. I'm keeping my emotions in check right now, as there's obviously some time to go, but I fully expect to be a weeping, sobbing, shaking wreck of a man by the end of the month.

Dancemaster

I came fifth in the annual Dancemaster UK finals, beating the likes of Chris "Swan Manoeuvre" Thomson and "Dynamo Kid" Aaron Mulberry, but couldn't overcome The Rhombus Triplets or, of course, Tricky Masterton. I totally nailed the Swoophoof round and my Human Beatbox wowed the crowd, but I was lacklustre in the Slidestep and the Charleston. But overall, it was a truly wonderful experience that words could never do justice, so I won't even attempt to.

Film

Despite not having been to the cinema in almost five years, I wrote a film. It was under some duress, from ex-castlemate and last year's Edinburgh flatmake Mike. Early this year the documentary he shot in 2009 and edited in my flat last year was shown on the BBC, and he's set to another documentary in the summer about Faroese whaling, with consent from the Faroese government and with, I believe, interest from Channel 4. For the last year he's been interested in making a proper feature film, and had discussed at length an idea with me. We'd made a very rough start last year, but just a couple of months ago were able to sit down and talk about it properly, leading to the very rapid processing of a full script.

It still needs plenty of editing and adjustment, which we'll do over the summer, but has potential. For the curious, here's the "logline": A tale of two worlds colliding in a small village in the Scottish Highlands. Gordon, 80, an eccentric cantankerous crofter finds himself rescuing a Chinese illegal worker on the run, Grace, 20. The unlikely couple stumble into adventure as they discover they share a mutual enemy, which leads them to a dark realisation.

Beer

I'd love a beer right now.

Triumph

2011-03-16T22:23:00.001Z

Today, for the first time ever, I managed to complete the Press & Journal crossword, without using any references or external assistance.

2011 Update

2011-01-31T16:07:00.003Z

My blog... is dying...

(Here's a picture nothing to do with anything, but I need to host it somewhere)

Christmas Nomad

2010-12-25T21:36:00.000Z

Merry Christmas... from the North Sea.

Yes, alas, this year instead of spending the festive period surrounded by the laughter and joy of loved ones, with a roaring log fire and the mess of shiny wrapping paper torn open with excitement, I am adrift in the bitter North Sea, covered in sticky tar-like oil like the excrement flung by a debased Santa’s elf.

I am aboard the Oc. Nomad, a couple of hours helicopter journey from Aberdeen (although due to snow I intended up taking the scenic route: flight to Bergen then chopper from there), somewhere between the Shetland Islands and Norway. I arrived a mere four days ago, just to wrap up a two-month long job that was in its very final stages, replacing my old childhood friend and neighbour and current work colleague but now SWORN ENEMY Burness, who has been able to escape home to his family’s embrace, and joining my long suffering colleague, The Mountie, a very familiar face this year after months of our souls fading together into the ennui of twilight that was the Novotel in Nigeria.

In almost five years as a burly oil-giver, this is my first actual Christmas Day offshore. I’ve spent a couple of New Year’s Days offshore before, but always had luckier breaks for Christmas itself. As you might imagine, a rig in the North Sea in the winter isn’t the traditional image associated with a season that otherwise surrounds itself with reindeers, pine trees and baby saviours of mankind. However, despite being a mechanical hell devoid of the qualities that normal human beings would regard as desirable, the 25th December still exists out here, and Christmas is still, in its own way, celebrated. So I’ll quickly take you through a Christmas Day offshore.

I woke around 8.30am, a splendid lie-in after a tough day previous (more on that later). The Mountie appeared and wished me Merry Christmas, and I rose and showered. Then it was present time. I’d taken three presents with me from normal life, and opened them in front of the Mountie, who had none. I received a “Return of the Jedi” DVD and 50ml of “Allure Homme Sport Chanel” from my girlfriend, and a £30 cheque from my grandfather; I think I’ll spend it on a prostitute, or drugs. I went through to check my email – I received no Christmas wishes or, in fact, any emails whatsoever – then watched Soccer AM with the Mounty until lunch at 11.20am.

Lunch was a special treat. Laid with tablecloths, and with crackers, Shloer and a paper menu. Unlike the buffet style service that exists on rigs, for the first ever time in my years eating on rigs, there was table service by kitchen staff – ladies, no less. There was a good selection of three different courses, and I opted for vension with raspberry sauces, turkey with all the other stuff, and Christmas pudding. From my cracker I got a small yellow comb; a history of Tom Smith, the apparent inventor of the Christmas cracker, and a paper crown. I didn’t wear the crown, it didn’t seem right.

After lunch, I wrote an email – to my boss – and spent £20 playing Deal or No Deal online. I thought I had a system. I didn’t. I phoned home to listen to the sounds of family enjoying themselves, and phoned my girlfriend who was very full of the cold and so wasn’t enjoying herself quite as much. Then myself and the Mountie settled in for an afternoon watching “Return of the Jedi” on my laptop. Observation made: Princess Leia murders quite frequently; as well as shooting dead a number of faceless Empire troops without flinching or moral reflection, she sets a bomb that kills hundreds – bad guys, slaves, musicians, employees, AI robots – in Jabba the Hutt’s palace (and that’s after murdering Jabba by hand, effectively). Her body count is second only to Lando Carlrissian, who by blowing up the Death Star kills several millions surely.

Dinner – chilli con carne – was fine and normal, and it was back to the internet after. My boss had replied, wishing me Merry Christmas. Myself and the Mounty then went through the football fixtures and placed two £10 accumulator bets on the Boxing Day games. Tomorrow has the football, which is very exciting as it means the day passes quickly. I bought some Irn Bru and a Yorkie from the rig bond and enjoyed this daily treat when Top Gear started. It’s now finished and I expect the rest of the evening to pass by smoothly with some internet and mindless Christmas TV.

You may have noticed that at no point during my offshore Christmas extravaganza did I do any work. That’s not because I decided to specially take it easy today, but because there isn’t any work to do – I finished everything yesterday and my container is on the boat. It’s a slight source of frustration: both myself and the Mountie are spending Christmas offshore precisely because it’s Christmas. No helicopters today or tomorrow. There were two yesterday, which our names were on, but we simply couldn’t get everything finished. Christmas Eve was not a fun day. Our equipment appeared at 7am, many hours later than scheduled hence we’d been up all night waiting. It was delayed due to the thick, gloopy, tar-like oil that this oil well has been testing, that clogged everything up. Our tools very much included.

I have never seen anything like this before. Usually when stuff comes out from the deep recesses of the earth, it will be a bit muddy, a bit dirty, a bit oily. This time it was virtually glued together with this evil black tar that immediately transferred itself to my entire body and everything else around me. When handling equipment and moving away, my glove would remain stuck in place as my hand pulled out. New gloves would immediately turn black and sticky. Everything stuck to everything as though dipped in tar, which it kind of had, and made work impossibly slow. Our main piece of equipment is a 30ft length of pipe, inside of which a 20ft pair of tools are placed inside. Usually they slide out with a bit of manpower, this time they were jammed solid. In the end we had to use the rig mechanical tugger in an improvised set up to yank the tools out in bursts. And we had three separate sections of this 30ft pipe to work with.

All this was time consuming. If we’d started at midnight, as scheduled, then we’d have finished on time and made the helicopter, and have been home for Christmas. Or if the oil had just been normal instead of crazy glue from hell we’d have made the chopper. But a 7am start with evil tar was too much, and in the minus temperatures in the North Sea, during bursts of hail, we watched as one, then two, helicopters landed, filled with people destined for home, and then took off again, without us. We then crouched back down, and futilely went back to attempting to scrub tar off metal using diesel and detergent.

So Christmas Eve was very disappointing and not the greatest fun I’ve had, but today was calm, work-free and tinged with a smattering of festivity, as well as the first booze-free Christmas I’ve had in over a decade. And as I’m booked on the Monday chopper, I’m guaranteed a New Year onshore, something I suspect will not be entirely booze free.

Age 32: Let The Hunt Commence

2010-11-26T10:09:00.003Z

Happy Birthday, Nev! I can now - legally - make union with someone half my age.

Basil The Bow Wow Does Not Exist

2010-10-30T12:25:00.003Z

Basil the Bow Wow does not exist.

That is the alarming, childhood-undermining discovery of late. Basil the Bow Wow, a cornerstone of my childhood, does not appear anywhere on the internet. Type in his name, in inverted commas, into Google and a total of zero hits are found (I guess the writing of this entry might change that to a single solitary hit). Zero internet hits = non-existence.

In fairness, up until a few weeks ago, Basil the Bow Wow had slipped down the sides of my memory too. It was during a visit up north, to see my mother in her lovely new home in the countryside, and in evening discussion with my brother that the name was brought up. I took a few seconds before the memories came flooding back.

Basil the Bow Wow was a toy sit-on dog-on-wheels, with a voicebox. A St. Bernards, though in a size suitable for children whose years on earth were in single digits, he could be pushed around by the frame at the rear, or sat on and propelled by eager child feet. Or more likely, in our family, my sister would be made to sit on him while my brother grabbed the frame and careered my distressed sister around at high speed until she inevitably smacked against a wall and cried. But let’s not blame that on Basil the Bow Wow.

Although a mini-St Bernard’s on wheels would have been enough for a successful childhood toy, it was Basil the Bow Wow’s voicebox that elevated him into cult status in our family. Basil the Bow Wow had a string by his neck, which when pulled would allow him to say one of a random selection of friendly quotes. As my brother and I sat around, chuckling at the memory of Basil the Bow Wow’s chummy, lovable, and desperately eager voice, we tried to recall all the quotes he’d come up with. This involved a phonecall to our sister, who added an especially good one.

Pull Basil the Bow Wow’s string, and he would say:

“Hi, my name’s Basil the Bow Wow. What’s your name?”
“Hi, my name’s Basil the Bow Wow. Will you be my friend?”
“Hi, my name’s Basil the Bow Wow. I love children!”
“Hi, my name’s Basil the Bow Wow. Will you play with me?”
and as my sister recalled:
“Hi, my name’s Basil the Bow Wow. AWOOOOOO!!!”

Of course, these days it’s illegal to say such things to children, but in the hazy nostalgia of my youth it was a more innocent world. Basil the Bow Wow would be pushed around the house, his string pulled, and his friendly and enthusiastic words would pour out.

Quite how it happened I don’t know, but it was Basil the Bow Wow’s decline that gave us the biggest laugh that evening. I blame it on my brother, but I’m sure I must have had a hand. Because after much wear and tear, poor Basil the Bow Wow went downhill, and frankly a little senile.

His head, first of all, became limper and bent down at an angle. I can only imagine this was from repeated assaults from my brother, who as a young child was a considerable horror. Once with head held high, now Basil the Bow Wow looked broken down and unhealthy. The worse he looked, the more my brother bullied, blow after blow raining down on Basil the Bow Wow’s broken head. What a horrible child.

And then his voice went. This may have been natural decline, or it may have been heavily exacerbated by the discovery that if we held the string upon pulling it, we could manipulate Basil the Bow Wow’s voice. By holding the string back as it tried to pull back in, his voice became slow and warped, but by sudden release would often go fast and ridiculous. Such a discovery for children is pure gold, and we never grew tired of it (even today I would derive endless amusement), including my sister, gentle back in these days, who usually disliked the torture of our dog-like toy. Yes, even she would laugh at Basil the Bow Wow as his pained, warbled voice groaned out: ““Hhhhhhhiiiiiiii, my name’s Basil the Bow Wow. Aaaaaaaaaaa...... wwwwoooooo.....”

Such an assault on his voice, and the mechanism that powered it, eventually proved too much for Basil the Bow Wow to bear, and something snapped inside. He still had the power of speech, but now when his string was pulled, he would gasp out his random statement in ultra-rapid fire – one second and he’d said it. It was undoubted comedy – yet undoubted tragedy too. Basil the Bow Wow, with his broken head and broken voice, was dying. Now the only way to understand what he was trying to say was by the very means we’d broken him, by holding onto the string and letting it release slowly, thereby holding back the broken mechanism and preventing the fast release, with the result his statement would be delivered with a reluctant melancholy. Basil the Bow Wow was tired, he didn’t want to speak any more.

It was the end for him. Foul children we were, some other toy or game consumed us and he lay forgotten, and was eventually put into a cupboard and to the very back of our minds. Long after I’d grown up and left home, my sister retrieved him from his hidden spot in the cupboard. Basil the Bow Wow had grown mouldy, his voice didn’t work. He’d loved children, he’d wanted to play with us, and he’d wanted to be our friend – and without a second thought we put him out with the rubbish.

But much time has elapsed since then, and the reminiscence between myself and my brother was fond, as we laughed about all the happy times we’d had with Basil the Bow Wow. And so later, in discussion with my sister, we thought it would be a terrific idea to get hold of a replacement Basil the Bow Wow for my brother, who gets married early next year and will have his first child in around May (making me, incidentally, Uncle Nev. Yikes). Basil the Bow Wow, a commercial toy, might still be available, if not brand new in Argos or wherever, then at least on Ebay.

Which is why we are astonished that absolutely no trace of his existence appears on the internet. We’ve found various other toy sit-on dogs, though without voicebox, but none are Basil the Bow Wow, and his name does not register anywhere. This isn’t some obscure toy from the 1850s, this was a (surely mass-produced) toy from the 1980s. Even if he wasn’t available for sale, I’m surprised that nobody in the history of the internet has ever mentioned his name, or found him in their attic and tried to sell him for £10. Of the many toys that came and went during these halcyon young years, Basil the Bow Wow was once of the most memorable, along with our sledges, my computer chess and a giant cardboard box we spent a whole day playing in. But his memory appears to exist only with my direct family, the rest of the world, as well as discarding him, has fully forgotten he ever was.

So Basil the Bow Wow, to answer your questions after all this time: My name is Nev, yes I’ll be your friend, I love you too and I’ll be delighted to play with you - if only I could find you. And, of course, AWOOOOOO!!!

Pope Says Hi

2010-09-16T12:50:00.003Z

Well, I got back home from Nigeria just a handful of days ago. Just in time to meet the Pope.

Yes, the Pope visited Edinburgh today, and though I couldn’t commit to meeting him due to my uncertain work schedule (he’s quite old now so needs lots of prior notice, and I thought I’d still be offshore), he decided to come anyway, and meet the Queen for lunch, some cardinal for a cup of tea, and have a little cruise round Edinburgh in between.

This simple arrangement has put Edinburgh into a bit of a tizzy, and they’ve closed every road and put every policeman onto Princes Street, where they jostle with people selling memorabilia, some collecting for charity, and thousands and thousands of schoolchildren. There was a lone protestor too, handing out leaflets about child abuse, but I give her short shrift as she was missing the spirit of the occasion.

Although I’m not a Catholic, I still share many things in common with the Pope and his many millions of followers, such as neverending guilt, an appreciation of the (now sadly defunct) S Club Juniors, and of course, papal infallibility. Of these, papal infallibility is the most important. A lot of people don’t seem to get this, when they complain about the Pope and some of the beliefs he espouses that they claim are outdated. The guy is infallible. He doesn’t make mistakes. Don’t you get it, guys? You’re the ones that’re wrong. If we can all just stop listening to our inner voices and start listening to the Pope’s voice, then maybe we can start to get things right too.

Today then, after getting out of bed and performing my morning ablutions, or whatever you call them, I thought I’d stroll into town to say hi to the Pope. I live just five minutes from Princes Street so it seemed rude not to. The Pope had originally planned to cruise down the Royal Mile, which would have been far more convenient for me, but it was deemed a security risk and Princes Street chosen instead. By security risk, I think they were referring to the cobbled streets, which no doubt would have been a little uncomfortable a man in his 80s, especially after having had lunch. When you’re the Pope, security in its normal sense doesn’t apply, because any bombs or bullets that come your way are deflected by flashes of glorious light. The former Pope, John Paul II, who was a more kindly Pope would just have the glorious light absorb the bomb or bullet, but the current one, Benedict Sixteen, is bit more badass and would actually deflect the bomb or bullet back at the assailant. For this reason, I guess all the police gathered today were here as much for the protection of the people as they were for the Pope.

My first jaunt down town, about 10am, was a pre-Pope stroll, and duly established that there were lots of people. I’d checked with the BBC news and they said the Pope would be arriving incognito at Holyrood Palace to meet the Queen, so I decided not to hang around just to watch a blacked-out vehicle pass, surrounded by noisy schoolchildren and excited Catholics, and so went and bought a coffee and a sandwich then back to my flat, where I played Football Manager. Football Manager, as ever, was quite engrossing, and I realised it was almost noon, and that the Pope would be doing his Princes Street cruise at half-noon, so I quickly got moving, to the National Gallery where I reckoned would be a good spot to watch the Pope.

...and I almost missed him. The Pope was early! He had explicitly told me he’d be going down Princes Street at half 12, which I naturally took to meaning he’d be starting the journey then. But no. It was 12.25pm, and he was already halfway down! Crafty Pope. If I’d been just thirty second later I would have missed him, but fortunately I arrived just in time to see him majestically swoop by in his rather odd Popemobile, which reminds me of something I’d expect to see old people drive in Florida, perhaps when golfing.

In truth, it was exactly as expected, a bit of an anti-climax. An old man drove by in a car – that’s basically the synopsis of the day. Fair enough, it was an unusual car, and the old man is God’s ambassador on Earth, but I don’t believe in God and aren’t particularly interested in cars, so perhaps it wasn’t the event for me. Besides, after learning that in the last eight years of the Queen Mother’s life, over 80% of her public appearances were, in fact, done by an animatronic puppet, I can’t help but feel sceptical when I see a famous old person in public. Was it really him? His smile was appropriately benign, but his gaze was unfocussed and his wave very fixed.

I’ll leave you to decide. For I managed to get one photo, very quickly taken, of him as he drove by. Look!

There he is, just on the right. To the left of the ice-cream stall. See? No? Honestly, just look a bit harder.

Ok, here’s a zoom in and arrow. What do you think? Pope or puppet?

Sleeping In A Bed Of Dead Puppies

2010-08-26T20:20:00.002Z

Sleeping in a bed of dead puppies. That’s how The Mountie described our situation right now. The precise breakdown of the analogy or metaphor I’m not sure of, but I know it instinctively feels right. These puppies have been dead a few days, there’s a fair bit of mush, and God they stink. Sleeping at night is peculiarly comfortable, but certainly not desirable.

We’re now approaching five weeks in Nigeria and from today are officially further behind than when we first arrived. The rig and the job has been plagued with problems. The fatality last month is naturally the most significant, and was all wrapped up with the catastrophic crane failure. But since then, other problems have followed, all of a technical nature but all with the result that we’re still here, still on the rig, and still waiting. Waiting to work, or just waiting to go home and remember that life takes place in an actual vast world and not just on a floating boat in the anonymous Bight of Benin.

It’s of great frustration. We only have a couple of days of work to do really, but operations just cannot seem to get to that point. Our equipment is working well and we’ve successfully demonstrated our system is ticking away nicely, and rig operations were at the brink – a day away! – of being far enough along so that we could wrap everything up, smile, high five each other with a “job done” holla, and go home. But operations have gone into reverse, equipment is returning from the seabed back to the rig, and we’ve got to start it all over again. It’ll take at least a week to properly being again.

I could bore you with rig operation chat, but it’s all just a bunch of acronyms, pieces of yellow-painted metal, gaskets, valves and all of the aforementioned failing in creative ways. For most of the time, The Mountie and I are just innocent bystanders anyway. We’re set up and ready to go, and have been for some weeks, but even when the starting pistol finally went it turned out to be a false start. And so we mooch around in accommodation, stare blankly at walls, and malign the fact that we are grown men sleeping with dead dogs.

The Mountie has hope, however, even if he doesn’t feel too hopeful. His holidays are approaching and he gets swapped out next week. My own hopes have been gathered together, crushed into a small box the size of a little acorn, and put aside in the back of brain for use at a future date. There are murmurs that I may be swapped in a period of time larger than a week, but I know that if this happens then I’ll be punched hard in the face and sent packing to America, for another job. It’s a more appealing prospect, I’ll admit, than continuing in the Groundhog Day that offshore Nigeria seems to have entered, but it’s not quite the same as arriving back at my sun-kissed cottage in the countryside to be met by my beaming wife and my two lovely children – Rufus aged 4 and Mooshella aged just 2 1/2 , and my haven’t they grown? – rushing up to and embracing me, or whatever it is that normal life is (I forget the precise details now).

But let’s not upset ourselves with vague visions of the future, and concentrate on the plus points of the here and now. Such as my nightly helideck walks, on a helideck that rates very high on my comprehensive helideck index. Or the cakes, which have occasionally been quite nice – the Danishes were spectacular (though they’ve been absent for some
time now...). Or the excitement of getting back laundry and wondering what else has gone missing – I’ve only two pairs of socks now, and The Mountie lost 80% of his wardrobe but went on the warpath and got it all back (except the socks). Or the stairway banisters, which have just the right amount of friction to them. I think that’s all.

Yes, that’s all.

My Two Lives

2010-08-16T21:34:00.001Z

I have two lives and two careers right now: my life offshore in the
oil business, and my intense career as a football manager of a lower
league English club. It testifies to the state my head is in right now
that I’m not sure which one is real and which one isn’t.

I strongly suspect that the oil career may be a figment of my
imagination. According to that, I’m still in Nigeria but haven’t done
anything at all in weeks, which oddly seems to be the case every time
I go to Nigeria. A couple of weeks ago there was the fatality
offshore, resulting from the sudden and catastrophic failure of the
crane. Myself and The Mountie were downmanned and sent back to the
Novotel in Port Harcourt, where we spent a week drinking gin, playing
a Nigerian card game involving Swiss flags, Star of Davids and latent
psychic abilities, and lamenting our Groundhog Day existence that
seems to have been going on since March. I’ve worked out that so far
this year I’ve been away 150 days, which is 67% of the year, but about
110 of these days have been in Nigeria, overwhelmingly hanging around
in the bland Novotel. It occurs to me, at the back of my mind, that I
once lived in Edinburgh, and had friends and family, but that’s dimmed
to a mere dream within a dream.

Fortunately, unlike the darkness of the Novotel in late May, myself
and the Mountie kept ourselves psychologically healthy with the
aforementioned gin and card games, but the Novotel wasn’t to last
long, as last week we returned offshore. We had great hopes that this
would herald the recommencement of operations, which for us are only a
few days worth of work before we’re finished and can go home. But this
was a somewhat foolish hope, as a week has gone by now with absolutely
nothing whatsoever happening.

A couple of years ago, on this same rig, a different crane failed
suddenly, dropping a gigantic piece of equipment on a guy, killing him
instantly. With that and the more recent crane accident, people have
become understandably jittery, so for the last two weeks very
extensive ongoing checks and tests have been undergone on the
remaining three cranes. These are very, very nearly complete and very
soon – so we believe – a decision will be made as to whether we can
carry on.

In the meantime, myself and The Mountie have only had the most minimal
amount of work to do, and otherwise have had a lot of time to kill.
Table tennis has killed a small amount, as has eating Danish pastries.
But there’s still a lot more time in a day.

The last couple of days have seen helideck pacing kill an hour, after
most of the week was rendered non-viable by weather and “random”
incidents. The most concerning of these was a few days ago, at about
9pm, when I’d ventured up onto the quiet helideck on a peaceful, calm
evening. After doing only a few circuits, I was greatly alarmed when a
fire hose – fixed in position and aimed at the centre of the helideck
in the event of a helicopter fire – suddenly spluttered into life and
became spraying foam and water. A few paces more and it would have
sprayed over me. As this was spluttering, the hose at the far end
exploded into life with much more force, ejaculating a forceful blast
of foam across the entire helideck, and only my far distance from it
prevented me getting soaked or even knocked off my feet. The far one
soon stopped, but the close one continued, sluggishly. I left the
scene and returned half an hour later with the hoses again dormant,
but couldn’t get into a rhythm as I was in too much fear the hoses
could go off again at any moment.

They’ve behaved since then, but the helideck only kills at most two
hours a day. Meals maybe another hour. Washing, coffee, meetings, and
checking very slow internet another hour or so. But there’s still a
lot of time in the day. So what do I do?

I have become a Football Manager. My greatest addiction has returned.

As a young lad, many years of my life were lost to a game called
Championship Manager, in which I could take the helm of a football
club and take it to glory or ignominious failure. It was a game that
could suck a day, then a week, and suddenly a year from a life without
you even noticing. All engrossing, I lived many lives as the manager
of teams such as Manchester Utd (I deliberately got them relegated by
playing Ryan Giggs in goals and fining him every week), Italian
minnows Casale, Wycombe Wanderers, AC Milan, Portugal, Ivory Coast and
tiny Kettering. But recognising that I was growing up without social
skills and with the knowledge only of obscure winning tactics in a
fictional universe, I kicked the habit. It was tough, but I kicked it.
And for years I’ve been clean, with a mere tiny relapse a few years
ago when bored in the North Sea.

It struck again. It only took The Mountie to say, “You want a go of
this?” and offer me Football Manager 09/10 (the modern incarnation of
Championship Manager) and suddenly my life has been sucked from this
world and replanted me in another.

In this new – real, it seems – world I am inhabiting, my name is R.
Russell de Russell (I’ll let you guess what the R stands for), born in
1964 from Belgium, and I am the manager of the Blue Square South side
Thurrock, average attendance 200. The year however is now 2017 (with
Cameroon and then – oh no – England winning the World Cups) and after
five years coming 15th every season, I managed to get promoted to the
Blue Square Premier – which, for unfamiliar readers, is just four
leagues below the top division. I have achieved the heights, such as
being voted Blue Square South Manager of the Year and signing 38 year
old Jimmy Bullard, but also seen lows, such as my debt-ridden club
almost being bought by a consortium who threatened to replace me.

It’s tough, being the manager of a poor, barely supported football
team with a yellow home strip and light blue and purple away strip,
trying to motivate a bunch of players being paid about £100 a week,
but I’m thriving on it. Many lower division Belgian clubs have tried
to prize me away from Thurrock but I have remained resolute and stuck
with my little team, who now command crowds of up to 900.

Of course, being a full-time manager is a demanding and full-time job,
and so I am utterly immersed in it, with no time for outside thoughts,
such a friends, family, sleeping or working on an oil rig. Thus I am
dedicated to my profession and my football management lifestyle,
blocking out the distracting world around me as I stare at a laptop
screen that has become my real world. My career has become my life and
everything I am.

Thus, I now have two lives. My real life and my imaginary life. And as
the scenario of sitting in a room on a giant boat in the Atlantic
Ocean south of Nigeria and getting paid to do nothing there is clearly
a nonsense one, I can only conclude that my football management career
is my real life, and lose myself forever in this most immersing of
addictions.

Fatality Offshore

2010-08-04T10:55:00.001Z

It's been a pretty dark time over the last few days. Myself and The Mountie went offshore with the full expectation that we'd be done in no time, as for once matters were fair cracking on and moving speedily. But things went wrong.

There was a fatality, plus two serious injuries, on board during a crane accident. A crane was load-testing, which basically involves dunking a large bag in the water, and the calculated extra weight tests the crane. Except this time it failed catastrophically. The crane basically snapped and threw three men in the water. Two were saved and flown to Johannesberg for treatment, the other wasn't found.

For myself and The Mountie, it started literally with a jolt. We were in our cabin, on our laptops, when we felt the drillship jerk slightly. I dismissed it rather casually as a large wave, The Mountie thought something large might have been dropped. A few minutes later the rig alarm went off, saying "Man Overboard" and informing us all to muster. This very simply involves going to the lifeboat and standing next to it. A straightforward operation, but the most chaotic muster I've ever been part of, as it took over 45 minutes to get even a remotely accurate headcount. It was only after this period, and after some increasingly plaintive PAs requesting the guy phoned the bridge, that it transpired that there was a man missing. It was thought only two men had gone overboard. In fact, there had been three. Despite boat and helicopter search-and-rescue operations, he hasn't been found, and I presume was dead within minutes of hitting the water.

As far as my own safety went, I was never in any danger, and the work I do offshore doesn't really expose me to too much. Nonetheless, it's very sobering to be on a rig when there's such an accident. I saw the guy who died at the morning meeting, and by the afternoon he was dead. I'm sure he just expected it to be a routine day, just as I had, and just as we all do most days.

The upshot of it all is that operations have been suspended. The crane is hanging off the side of the rig and needs to be recovered before they can recommence. There has to be a full investigation into the entire incident. Also, separate to all this, another piece of equipment needs repaired that could take some time. This means that after a few days offshore, myself and The Mountie are back in the Novotel, waiting indefinitely for things to restart. We are occupying our time with football, Football Manager, gin and chess, cards, anticipation of the "day's special", and occasional dips in the pool. But no table tennis - the table is still broken, and bats missing.

I've deliberately kept all names of the rig, rig operator and oil company out of this blog, as I don't want people accidentally stumbling upon it. Everything I've said here is unofficial, as there were no rig meetings about it, and therefore only rig rumour to go by, but I think it was mostly reliable. From the internet I've found the following:

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article224696.ece

and also (copy and pasted):

Hay lads

the rig i am on in Nigeria the xxxx xxxx today just had a major disaster i was watching as it happened, they were load testing the port aft crane when the fu..... crane boom snapped!!!!!!! also ripping the crane cab to bits throwing the crane op and the ET around a 100ft to the sea below seen the poor buggers falling they were lucky it wasnt the deck cause it was close............also the lad who was supervising the load testing is missing i.e dead, the ET is in a serious state the crane op is hurt but looks like he will make it. IT TOOK xxxxxxxxxxxx 15 MIN TO LAUNCH THE FRC BOAT THE SMALL CRANE/HOIST WAS SPEWING OIL AND WOULDNT LOWER!!!!!!WTF!!!! AND OVER AN HOUR TO GET A FULL MUSTER....................... be safe lads cause disaster is never far away offshore specialy down here

Back Home At The Novotel

2010-07-28T19:58:00.000Z

Ah, things are back to normal. Yes, I'm back in the Novotel in Port Harcourt!

As I calculate it, the Novotel has been my home for the year more than my actual home in Edinburgh has. It has assumed a grim familiarity, which ranges from my intimate knowledge of every choice from the menu to being greeted by name by most of the staff. The identikit rooms - I must have stayed in about seven different ones by now and the only thing that varies is the number on the door - I could easily navigate blind.

I am here again with The Mountie, and this time we're digging in for the long haul. The majority of March, April and May were spent in the Novotel so we know what to expect, and are now armed with chess, whisky and cards. Of greater concern is the table tennis table, now missing two bats and a net. We have brought this issue up with reception, but if you know the Novotel and you know Nigeria, you can be assured this will not be remedied very soon at all.

With a little luck though, it will be only a handful of weeks here, and I can return to enjoy a little of the festival in Edinburgh, and resumption of a normal life enjoyed for almost a month since I returned from Norway in late June. Having been practically away for almost four months by that point, I was feeling a little jaded but have been suitably refreshed by a pleasnt few weeks that included:

- The World Cup. Not a classic one, in the end, and a rubbish final, but it still overtook my life for the couple of weeks after I returned from Norway.

- Whisky. I have acquired an expensive taste for whisky and boast a respectable little collection. On the plus side, it means I am drinking less beer; on the minus side, it means my alcoholism is getting pricier.

-Golf. I played a round of golf with my grandfather and my cousin. It was the first time I'd played golf in 18 years, and I was actually not too bad. It was very enjoyable, and I intend to play more, with the ultimate goal of one day getting one hole on par.

-York. I went to York with a brunette. I heartily recommend it.

-Film. I'm supposed to be writing a film with BBC documentary film-maker Mike. It's been slightly hampered by him being in London for weeks and now me being in Nigeria. Despite that, we've still done about a third. It's awfully good.

-Mother House. My mother bought another house. In the country this time. She bought it because it was the only way to combine her solitary cat and her manfriend's five lively Labradors. It appears to be working, but I give it less than a month before the cat gets torn to pieces in a fit of canine enthusiasm.

That's all. I'm going to finish drinking my Old Pulteney 17 Year Old. Myself and the Mountie drank half a bottle of Dalwhinnie 15 Year Old last night and it somewhat hampered our enjoyment of today, but I'm recovered now and as I may be going offshore tomorrow I need to savour what could be a last evening for whisky for up to... a week!

World Cup: Improvements

2010-06-18T00:48:00.002Z

The Rubbish Trumpet World Cup 2010 is gathering momentum: just when it seemed the entire tournament would lifelessly vanish in a droning blaze of goalless draws and perfectly spherical balls shooting vertically into the high altitude ionosphere, all of a sudden the football playing representatives of the various nations have become reanimated and started to entertain. In today's game featuring Mexico ripping out the wane heart of France there was even the astonishing novelty of hearing the sound of singing: above the sound of a billion bees came the sound of Mexican triumph, victory over the French and trumpet bearers together in the simple yet so relieving sound of celebratory chants from human voices.

The trumpets were also silenced yesterday, when the host nation were soundly thrashed 3-0 by a farming nation smaller than Moldova and condemning them, almost certainly, to being the first host nation to be elimated before the second round. I know I shouldn't take such smirking delight at such a fact, and I have nothing against the badly named country in itself ("South Africa" is a description of a location, not a name, much in the way that the "Central African Republic" is a description of a country and its political system rather than a proper name for a nation. For the record, I would name them "Gun Trumpet" and "Superland" respectively), but for their efforts in reducing all crowd noise from the varied joys of the sound of thirty-two nations' unique support to the constant steady menace of approaching insects I feel they deserve a swift booting from the tournament. Mind you, FIFA deserve a bit of a slap too for standing idly by. I've decided not to call them FIFA anyway, as the acronym is French, and so from now on I'm going with the English version, IFAF (or, for the pedant, IFoAF).

But controversies within a World Cup are part of the fun. I've accepted all remaining games will be soundtracked by a ghastly buzzing and don't really mind, just as long as this unique part of South Africa's apparent culture doesn't stray beyond the tournament; I also clearly enjoying moaning about it as much as possible. I'm enjoying this new football, widely accused of being too round and having a mind of its own, and thus responsible for every bad kick or goalkeeping fluff. I'm mightily impressed by IFAF throwing out thirty pretty girls from a stadium because they were wearing orange and therefore promoting an unoffical brewery - the consequences, of course, being days of news and coverage for the unofficial brewery. And most of all, I'm loving the fact that Maradona is back, as de facto Argentina coach, and looking meaner than ever. Snappily dressed and with a gangster beard, he struts about the touchline, flicks stray balls to players with occasional fancy flourishes, and gives brilliant press conferences where he says stuff like: "[Pele should] go back to the museum", "We all know how the French are", and (after kissing and hugging his payers upon a 4-1 victory) "I still prefer women. I am dating Veronica, who is blonde and 31 years old." Oh, Maradona.

So, things are getting better and I hope I read the signs correctly that indicate a promising World Cup ahead. However, like most things, improvements can always be made. The quality of the football is a matter for the teams and although integral to the enjoyment of the tournament is mostly beyond IFAF's (oh, ok, I'll call them FIFA) control except for tweaking certain rules and introducing comedy joke footballs; however, FIFA can deal with logistical issues and make general tournament-wide innovations that can have a positive impact for the crowds and the TV viewers. So if I was the entire organisation of FIFA, this is what I'd do (in no particular order, except for number one).

1. Ban stupid plastic trumpets. Obviously.

2. Change the way tickets are sold from the second round onwards. This is from personal experience, going to two games in Germany 2006. One was a first round game between Korea and Switzerland and had an amazing atmosphere, perhaps the best I've ever witnessed. Why? Because it was full of Korean and Swiss fans who had bought their ticket in advance, knowing their teams would be playing. But the second game I saw was a second round game between Ukraine and Switzerland. And it was terrible. Not just the dire football, but the total lack of atmosphere. This was because when I - and most others there - had bought the tickets, it had just been a second round match gamble, and most people had calculated either Spain or France being one of the teams. Therefore, the crowd was full of French, Spanish and mostly curious Germans, and had a minority of Swiss or Ukranians. During the day we saw loads of French and Spanish trying to sell their unwanted tickets. So the stadium was full of people who didn't really care - not conducive to an electric game of football. I suspect this is the case, to varying degrees, for most later games. I'm not sure exactly how it could be done, but FIFA need to try and ensure the tickets aren't sold way in advance to random punters (like myself and the curious Germans) but hold back, say, two thirds until they know which teams are playing. If a country can't fill their third, then sell it to the opposition or the host nation fans. Anything that maintains the good atmosphere of the first round onto the later rounds.

3. Don't book players for taking their tops off during celebrations. Come on, FIFA, what's this all about? It's not as if they're revealing their erect ejaculating penises.

4. Ban players retroactively for diving in the box. This isn't my idea, it's derived from an idea by Justin, but video evidence should be used after games and if a player has blatantly dived in the box - whether leading to a penalty or not - they should be banned from the rest of the tournament. I'm not suggesting changing the game's result, just stamping out diving players. Because it's sickening when a game is decided by cheating.

5. Don't ban players from playing in the final just because they've picked up two yellow cards. A red card in the semi-finals, ok, fair enough, if it was something really cynical at least. But the final is meant to be a showcase between the two best footballing nations on the planet, and to have that game minus one, two, three or whatever of the best players in the world, just because of some earlier minor indiscretions, undermines the game.

6. Have the women's World Cup on simultaneously, in the same country. I'm serious. Nobody really gives a damn about the women's World Cup - especially women - but if it was to be held in the same country at the same time, then I believe it would generate a lot more interest. If the games were held in the morning, or at a time not clashing with the men's games, it would attract a lot more passing interest. No doubt some might complain it would be it the men's tournament's shadow, but that's better than being entirely invisible, and being in the midst of the world's biggest sporting spectacle would be excellent exposure for the game, and would provide a nice counterpoint. Even if in women's football, Germany always wins.

7. Declare a month's national holiday everywhere in the world. You know it makes sense.

My situation as a viewer is unchanged: still offshore Norway, still flitting between Norweigan television coverage and all kinds of internet streaming, with zero alcohol beers helping me through the matches (there have been a few where proper alcohol really would have helped). I'm realising my situation, given that I'm offshore, is astonishingly lucky, as the games fall at excellent times (as long as I'm willing to cut my sleep a little short) and the rig action is very quiet right now. Jobwise, there's a thing stuck in a hole - but you don't want to know about that. Happily, I can be here for no longer than one more week, which will see me through to the second round, where (I pray) I can watch the remainder of tournament in a succession of pubs, in a series of incoherent states. And that would be a result.

South Africa 2010

2010-06-15T00:33:00.002Z

It's the World Cup: I love the World Cup.

In this bleak and heartless universe, where life is just a vehicle for the expression of pain and where death is a godless and eternal void, the World Cup is a genuine ray of light and burst of colour. Temporarily, we can put aside the crushing misery of our daily lives, and revel in a festival of football, and glory in the sublime achievement of mankind to organise this global event that overtakes an entire nation and captivates billions of diverse individuals across our spinning heavenly body. For a whole month, magic dances and we are all enchanted by the dazzling spells conjured by the feet of a few hundred supremely blessed athletes. If you - yes, YOU - are not touched by the World Cup in some way, then you are not fit to be a member of our species: please leave mankind immediately.

Truly, there is nothing quite in the same realm. Sure, the Olympics may have more participating countries, but it only takes place in one city rather than across a nation, is far less focussed and has no building storyline or theme (except of "unity"...), and the best sport featured - the 100m - takes place in the first few days meaning the weeks following are all downhill. The World Cup is focussed only on football, with recurring heroes and villains, impossible moments of drama, bitter injustices, outstanding skills, and a rising level of excitement and tension as the tournament draws to its brilliant and ultimate conclusion to crown one team only as the Champions of Earth.

Even those not normally partial to football are touched and stroked by the World Cup. My mother, not known for a close interest in the beautiful game, openly enjoys the tournament, and will include it in her conversations and even watch the occasional match. It is a worldwide event, coming round for only one month every four years (that's one out of every forty-eight months, or 2.1% of time itself) and this rarity of occurrence makes it even more special.

Indeed, as is often regaled during social converse, you can track your life by World Cups. Looking back on each tournament and where and how you watched it, the progress of your life can be observed. The first tournament I can remember is Italia '90. Aged 11, I wasn't really into football then, and didn't watch many games, but I recall being on a school trip to Holland, and hearing the result of the opening game, a massively surprising 1-0 victory for Cameroon over Argentina. I bought a poster of the Holland team while there, and watched most of the later games, back home in Dingwall. Dingwall was the scene also for USA '94. This was certainly when the World Cup came alive for me. My abiding memory is of the (instrumental version) of the Bernstein's West Side Story song "America" being used as the BBC's theme, and my whole family tapping furiously in vague rhythm every time it came on, and eating a grand curry for the final, where poor Roberto Baggio blazed his penalty over the bar to give Brazil the cup. I watched loads of games, mostly on late at night, and that was it: aged 15, I'd fallen in love for the rest of my life.

Fast forward then to me at 19, and an Aberdeen University student, studying (rather improbably) biochemistry. Of course, by the start of France '98, the university year was over and the vast holidays of the undergraduate had begun. The majority of the games that tournament were watched at home, in my conservatory, shared with the likes of Green and M. Fraser, on what was considered a rather swanky TV back in that past millennium. The opening game was Scotland vs Brazil, obviously a big event, and made even more memorable by the tremendously misjudged gesture by my deviant friend, H, who appeared wearing a Brazil top. This did not go down at all well, and H has never really lived this down. I may have had a short-lived diddy evening job at an off-licence that summer, but can't remember if it interfered with the football - I have a feeling I may have missed a few games because of it. Regardless, the final took place at the same time as "T in the Park", and with a large crowd of bohemian youths/neds, I watched France beat Brazil 3-0 on a big screen, to the surprising delight of the masses.

My favourite World Cup was next: Korea/Japan 2002, aged 23. As well as being a brilliant tournament, full of surprises and upsets, it also was the premise of a self-set challenge to watch every single game of the tournament, but without compromising my lifestyle. My job then was evening work washing dishes at Estaminet, which was my post-university career for a couple of years. My lifestyle then was basically that of a total waster. I would finish washing dishes - or rather "washing dishes" might be more accurate - at 10pm, and then go out almost every single night and get myself into a state of absolute intoxication. As the games took place, in UK time, between 6am and 2pm, some nights I couldn't even go to sleep as the football would be starting. Even when I did sleep, it would only be for a few hours, as every day for almost three weeks I would have to be up by 6 or 7am to watch the first game of the day. Hours of football then followed, and then I'd have to go to work. And then further intoxocation. It is no understatement when I say this was all very bad for my health. After three weeks there was a blessed two day break from football, but by this time I was visibily gaunt. I had barely slept in that time. The World Cup final was an interesting twist. It took place at noon on Sunday - and, astoundingly, my work decided to put me on an entirely unprecedented ten hour shift, 12-10pm. I thought they were surely joking, as I only ever worked evenings, 6-10pm, but they were gravely serious and said I'd be fired if I didn't turn up. As it transpired, they had brought in a few TVs for the final, to show in the bar, and were expecting a few people and thus extra dishes to be washed (they were wrong). Anyway, I got around this by smuggling a TV into the kitchen, propping it up on a sink, and very slowly grating a large block of cheese for two hours while watching Ronaldo score two goals against Germany. This successfully completed my mission of watching every single game that tournament (although I was barely conscious or coherent for much of it).

Aged 27, I had just returned from two years living in Korea by the time of Germany 2006, and had just started a new job - the job I'm doing to this day. My intention was again to watch every game, and I almost succeeded. What failed me? The World Cup itself, as I went over to Germany for a week to watch two games - South Korea 0-2 Swiss, and Swiss 0-0 Ukraine (Ukraine won 3-0 on penalties). While there, I watched loads of games on big screens, in Cologne and Hanover, but it was the actual transit between UK and Germany, via Holland, that took place during the games that resulted in missing a few. The rest of the games were either watched at Justin's, or at work. Still very new, I was on base every day for training. Except training in these days came in the form of using your own initiative, as it was termed, or "speak to someone else" as it might be put in plain English. This suited me very well, as after speaking to people in the morning, and perhaps actually doing some real training, in the afternoon I would hide myself in an obscure unit, set up an elaborate "test" with some electronics and let it run while I watched the football via BBC or ITV internet streaming. I watched the final at a friend's parents' house in the country, after being invited for a weekend-long barbecue. This barbecue/party invite was entirely independent of the football, as that group of friends had no real interest in the most important sport and tournament in human history, so I had to watch the thrid-place match alone, but we all watched the final together and thoroughly enjoyed Zidane's glorious finale. I believe this barbecue has since become an annual event; however, as I behaved quite badly I've not been invited back since.

And so we arrive to the present day, aged 31, mature and wise. I was deeply worried before this tournament as I'd not booked any holidays and there was a real fear that if I was sent away on a job, depending on the nature of the job I might miss a considerable amount of football. Although sometimes I spend vast swathes of time on rigs or in hotels just to hang around, I also sometimes have quite a lot to do. In the case of the latter, sitting down for two hours of football three times a day would simply be unthinkable.

Happily, I appear to have got lucky, and my current stint in Norway is extremely accommodating for watching the World Cup. I'm on night-shift, 7pm to 7am, which means that the first two games of the day (1.30pm and 4pm, Norweigan time) can be watched before I start work. It does mean I'm only getting about five hours sleep a night (8am to 1pm) but I can live with this. The evening game (8.30pm) is marginally trickier as I'm on shift, but fortunately the bulk of my time is currently spent monitoring data in a remote unit where I'm little disturbed. The internet here is utterly fantastic - the fastest I've ever seen in my life - and so this means I've been able to stream the matches.

Yes, streaming matches online has very much become a flavour of this current World Cup. Although I have the option to go to the rig's "Blue Room", a cinema-like set-up that shows the games, I've mostly been eschewing that to watch them either on my own room's TV or on my laptop. This is because for the first game of the day, I'm still so knackered I can't get out of bed, and because online I can get English commentary. Sometimes. Streaming games online is becoming somewhat of an art, a juggling act, because it's all so unreliable. Most of the sites I try simply don't work or require dubious downloads, and some manage to show only seconds of footage before freezing. Happily, I've hit upon a few winners. The improbable iraqgoals.tv is a gem, and shows a mixture of BBC, ITV and Australian TV commentary, and I watched part of yesterday's Italian game via it, with Italian commentary. I've discovered another site with loads of links, mostly useless, but I've managed to watch ESPN coverage from it once, and it handily links to iraqgoals.tv. There's worldfootball.us, a new discovery, and - Justin, you'll love this - justin.tv, which promises more than it delivers, but did help me to watch the England-USA game hours after it had actually happened. The England-USA game is the only one I missed live, as things were incredibly busy then while dealing with a minor crisis and so two hours of football was definitely out, but I managed to see the highlights plus the second half, hours later.

Of course, the quality of internet streaming is awful, though better than nothing obviously, but this adds to the flavour of the whole tournament for me. Sometimes it freezes or stops and I can't really make out the individual features of the players, but I can still see clearly what's going on and every day is a challenge as there's never any guarantee as to which website will be working, and Norweigan TV (on this rig) only seems to show certain games. But that's half the fun of it, desperately trying multiple websites just before kick-off, and then having to switch after half an hour when the chosen one gives up.

I think I'll probably have another week of this before heading back onshore where, one would imagine, it would be much easier to watch games, especially as the volume of games decreases. With luck, if I'm not whisked away to yet another job, I might get to watch the second half of the tournament in Edinburgh, in pubs, drinking, as opposed to watching it alone drinking the alcohol-free beer supplied on the rig (which I'm quite getting into, if truth be told). As long as I get to see all the games though, I really don't care where I am, or how little sleep I'm getting.

A word, finally, on this year's World Cup itself. Isn't it rubbish? The quality of football has been pretty dire, and the games dull to watch. I think it'll improve, as things warm up, but watching a series of 0-0s and 1-0s is not entertainment. No, and especially when soundtracked by that damn stupid trumpet. If you're going to let a few hundred (? thousand?) people blow some bloody atonal one-note trumpet for the whole game, almost entirely drowning out the natural ebb and flow of the crowd, why not just rig up the stadium speakers and blast out the bee-like buzz at full volume and save everyone the effort? This awful trumpet is becoming an absolute blight to this World Cup, making the games unpleasant to have to listen to, and making it impossible for the viewer - and, I'm sure, the actual crowd - to get into the feel of the game. Football (as well as many other sports) is very much driven by crowd atmosphere and so to drown out cheering, booing, singing and chanting by some blasted ugly horn that drones incessantly for the entire duration of the match creates a weird feeling for the game that affects both fan reaction and I have no doubt the football quality itself. The trumpets are continuous and aren't "played" in reaction to the game's events, rather just blown for the sake of making a racket, oblivious to the action.

These trumpets are obviously the bane of South Africa 2010 and in addition to the half-empty stadiums (seemingly caused by terrible infrastructure and traffic gridlock rather than poor sales) and propensity for the crowd to Mexican wave at every opportunity, I do fear that this may end up being the poorest World Cup in my experience. I hope I'm wrong. And I especially hope that God reveals Himself and cuts off the mouth of every person playing these trumpets.

Regardless of my trumpet-hatred and the poor football so far, my love of the World Cup is totally unshaken and each night shift I look forward to going to bed just so I can wake up the next morning, ready for hours of football. Tomorrow (well, today technically) is New Zealand vs Slovakia, The Coat of Ivory vs Portugal and Brazil vs North Korea. Now, just look at these three ties and wonder in awe at the majesty of this tournament.

The West Phoenix

2010-06-10T21:31:00.001Z

So, Norway it is.

Norway has a reputation for being the swanky one in town when it comes to oil. The rigs especially. Unlike places such as Brazil and Mexico, who appear to believe that economy and efficiency is all about having the cheapest, oldest rigs possible and cramming the rig workers in like cattle, Norway takes the other approach and has lovely, modern rigs where they treat the workers well, and allow them a degree of comfort. I daresay that both approaches have their merits when taken from the bigger picture of overall cost per oil well; but from the perspective from an individual who has to spend weeks or months of my life – a one-shot deal of finite duration, you will be aware – there is no doubt where I’d rather be.

In fact, where I’d rather be is Edinburgh, in my flat, drinking whisky – but let’s not get into that.

So I’m happy to report that the rig I’ve been on since Friday, the West Phoenix, is without any doubt the best I’ve ever been on.

Let’s qualify that statement a little. Although I’m certainly still a fresh face in comparison to some of the haggard geriatrics that make up the offshore business, I’ve been to quite a few rigs in quite a few countries in my four years in my job. Many offshore workers can spend years or even decades shuttling to and from the same rig, and even many service company personnel – who work on a job-to-job basis rather than rotation on the same rig – will be based in one area as opposed to being sent around the world. But one of the highlights of my job in a small company that don’t, by and large, have international employees dedicated to one region, is that I get to go round the world. That may mean highlights such as Malaysia or lowlights like Nigeria or Angola, and with lots of quirky spots like Mauritania, Trinidad and Ghana in between.

And it also means a tour of the world’s rigs.

This has taken many forms, with Brazil being the main villain: six-man rooms, porn-obsessed Brazilians, ghastly meat gloop masquerading as food, cockroaches, and a perpetual struggle to be allowed to contact the outside world. Sleeping in the eight-man container next to the helideck on a rig on Mozambique hasn’t yet been forgiven or forgotten, likewise the rusting hulk offshore Oman in which I had to spend days lying in bed because there simply wasn’t anywhere else to go. But usually conditions are a little better, with two-man rooms, edible food, and a modicum of space. But luxury they are not. At a rough count, I think I’ve been on about seventeen rigs in about ten or so countries, and even the good ones could never be mistaken for floating sea hotels.

But the West Phoenix, well, it's something altogether different. It's vast, for a start, a considerable size larger than what I'm used to. There are three TV rooms, at least - as well as flatscreen TVs in every bedroom (never mind that it's predominantly weird Norweigan TV, that's not the point). The internet is ultra high speed, the fastest I've ever encountered in my life whether onshore or offshore, and is in every room. It has all sorts of bonus features, such as bingo nights, sun beds, saunas, lots of board games and even a lift within the accommodation for those who can't summon the energy to walk up three flights of stairs. But best of all are the one-man rooms. Yes, one-man rooms. Oh, what a rare luxury this in on a rig, where usually you're stuffed in some pokey coffin with many other men grunting, sweating, snoring and chattering around you. I've never before had a one-man room on a rig before; I'd grown used to abandoning privacy for weeks at a time upon arriving offshore, but now I've experienced it I don't know if I can go back.

Another minor highlight is the unit I'm in when working, which has a profer hifi system in-built, meaning that I can playing pounding techno at ferocious volumes.

So that is where I find myself now, in the offshore luxury of a Norweigan oil rig. My previous three months were more-or-less spent in Nigeria, doing exceptionally little except vegetate. Oh I wrote a 157 page book too. Nigeria is my excuse for writing so little recently as it's a profoundly demotivating place, and I don't know what's worse: being trapped for interminable weeks in the listless Novotel in Port Harcourt, or actually having to go into Port Harcourt itself and deal with the ferocious and stifling heat, chaos and anger. I've still not really got my head back to normal yet, and only having a handful of days at home before going to Norway means I'm still in a bit of a mental daze.

But never mind, because Norway is of a finite duration - a maximum of two weeks left - and the World Cup starts tomorrow! Hurray!

Novotel Ennui

2010-05-19T20:17:00.001Z

The last 28 days of my life have been spent virtually entirely in the Novotel in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, doing nothing.

It hasn't been very interesting.

Bovril

2010-04-15T15:30:00.001Z

I've been really getting into the Bovril recently.

Nutcracker Nightmre/Bye Bye Belt/Nigerian Dream

2010-03-20T19:21:00.003Z

Nutcracker Nightmare

Though it’s easy and tempting to look back upon the innocence and simplicity of childhood, where every day was summer and spent climbing apple trees, with the fuzzy glasses of nostalgia, the reality is that at these unpolished and raw young years life could swing from the greatest of highs to the greatest of lows. The wild euphoria of running around with a ball was only matched by the crashing devastation when a fellow infant reduced you to tears by rudely taking the ball away from you. As years go on, it is easy to forget the extremes of emotion encountered daily, before the severity of adult existence crushed the spirit and reduced living to a finite middle ground of unwavering grey.

Fear is something that is still experienced in adulthood, like a headache ranging from a dull background throb to excruciating and immediate headsplitter. But it usually has some basis in reality, if perhaps not always entirely rational, such as the fear of the unknown (dark, future, death). As a child, though it’s easy to quickly forget, fear of the unknown can come at many different angles, since there is so much that is unknown.

Which is why, perhaps, as a young child I was afraid of a mouse with three heads.

Many years ago, when I was perhaps five or six, I watched some very odd cartoon which featured a mouse with three heads. My memory of a cartoon watched about 25 years ago is obviously pretty vague, though that I remember it at all is testament to its impact, but I seemed to recall it being somewhat of an evil mouse, and it appeared from a hole in the room and did evil stuff. It was magical, as three-headed mice surely are. There was also something about a king in there.

As a child, this three-headed mouse tormented my night-times. I would lie in bed, frozen in a mortal fear, looking at the corner of my room, convinced a three-headed magical mouse would appear at any moment and cause all sorts of horror. It was a particularly pointy-faced three-headed mouse, its cartoon roots making it no less sinister: it was no Mickey or Jerry. For a period of months (though surely not years) this awful mouse cast a bad spell upon the night, threatening to appear from a sudden mousehole at any moment. No wonder I often slept with the light on.

Years on and into adulthood, and no longer afraid of three-headed mice, it has occurred to me at time to wonder what the cartoon I saw actually was. How reliable is a 25-year-old memory? All I knew was there was an evil three-headed mouse, maybe a king, and the cartoon was definitely very weird and so therefore probably Eastern European. And so, what else to turn to but Google?

And there we have it. After a combination of searches for three-headed mice, kings, cartoons, and Eastern European animation, I found it: Schelkunchik, Щелкунчик , or The Nutcracker. With Wikipedia giving a nice little summary of this Russian gem, I found that it was also on Youtube, and so have been able to watch it again for the first time in two-and-a-half decades and relive my old nightmares. Animated to the sound of Tchaicovsky, it has definite shades of Fantasia, but in a freakish way that only Communist cartoons can manage. For those who can’t be bothered with 26-minutes of Soviet animation, here’s a little summary.

It’s Christmas and a fat royal boy gets a present, a nutcracker (in the form of a soldier). He quickly discards it for something else, and then a poor girl starts sweeping the room and dancing with her broom. She notices the Nutcracker. Then the scene is a big royal throne room with king, queen and baby prince, receiving presents in a ceremony. Suddenly, gnawing its way through the floor, a large evil three-headed mouse appears and starts to cause all sorts of trouble. It’s a queen mouse, and has a three-headed baby mouse son under her cloak. The queen mouse is about to kill everyone but the king pours poison on her, she explodes, and her tails lands on the baby prince, turning him into a nutcracker, and turning the rest of the room, people and entire palace into ice.

Then we’re back with the poor girl. The three-headed mouse (the son, grown up) appears from a mousehole in the corner of the room with lots of mice minions and attack the girl. But the nutcracker comes to life, summons all the Christmas tree baubles and they all have a big battle. Just as the three-headed mouse is about to kill the nutcracker, the girl throws her clog and hits the mouse, making him and all his minions explode. Then the nutcracker turns into a somewhat gay-looking prince, the poor girl turns into a beautiful princess, and they dance for ages as the ice kingdom comes back to life.

So there we have it, my childhood nightmare in a nutshell, nutcracked, and with having confronted my fears, my nightmares can fade. And with the Soviet Empire crumbled and our only threat coming from a ragtag bundle of warriors in the mountains of Afghanistan, perhaps all our fears can be eased: the Islamic militants don’t seem to go much in the way of cartoon making.

Bye Bye Belt

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed in my last entry, about pole-dancing, something extra on the pole aside from erotic dancers. This was in fact my belt.

Just before pole dancing mania began, there was an incident. It had been waiting to happen for the week prior. My belt was on its last legs, as I first noticed when whipping it off for airport security. One of the notches, very worn, had ripped to the outside, thus leaving just a rather sickly, twisted belt in its place. Eventually, it could no longer take the strain, and broke. Bye bye belt.

This was no normal belt, you must be aware. I’ve worn this belt for likely ten years now, maybe more. This belt travelled and was part of my day during every trousered moment of travelling in 2001. It faithfully stuck by me during every respectable moment of two years in Korea. And the last four years, it has jet-setted around the globe in search of oil, and very patiently tolerating my expanding waist. It’s been with me since belt setting “2” all the way to the frightening belt setting “6” (but only after large meals, honestly). But finally, like a faithful old dog, over-service broke it in two. However, I feel that by tying it to a pole-dancing pole, where it has been left, it at least has the chance of a new life.

The sudden lack of belt also means that I am beltless for the remainder of this trip. Fortunately I am not dieting, and so my belly is successfully keeping my trousers in place.

Nigerian Dream

Since I last left you, in the strip club guesthouse, there have been a few changes. Mostly, myself and the Mountie are no longer living in such questionable accommodation. Instead we have been dismissed from the secure compound and banished back to the badlands of Port Harcourt, and to French “Novotel”. No escape from the French, it seems. This, overall, is an unfortunate move, as the compound had a tennis court and many other delights, even that of space to walk, whereas the Novotel has merely a table tennis table and really nothing else to offer. Sure, it has a bar, but the beers cost three times that of the compound, and a whisky costs £7!

The upside, I think, is that for now all work is over. There’s been a bit, but mostly I’m done until going offshore, perhaps next week. For visa reasons, it is easier to keep me in the country until my whole two or three days offshore, even though I’m not doing anything.

The Mountie and I have done our best to keep ourselves entertained. Last Sunday, to celebrate cessation of hard work, we drank champagne and smoked cigars. We felt awfully sophisticated. We tried this again last night, except without the champagne and with some whisky instead. It would have gone fine, but it was a different type of cigar we tried – “Romeo & Juliet” – and the difference was significant. After finishing it, both of us (and the Mountie is a regular smoker), found ourselves in a state of utter weakness. Light-headed and exhausted, and with a good few drinks down us already, we agreed to call it a night. It was 9.30pm. I don’t recommend the Romeo & Juliet.

Table tennis, or “bippy-bap” as we call it, has otherwise occupied us. The table is in a tent in the small Novotel gardens, and as a result is stiflingly warm. After just a few games we are dripping with sweat, and whichever one of us has lost also in a furious huff. Fortunately, I am up in the (best of three) series 6-4.

And 6-4 it will end, for as I speak The Mountie is on his way back to the UK, back to cold weather, and back to freedom, for he has holidays booked. I am left to fend for myself in the Novotel. Until tomorrow, when another colleague, “The Yellow Bunny” makes an appearance. I don’t know if the Yellow Bunny smokes cigars, but I know he doesn’t drink much, so I sincerely hope his bippy-bap skills are honed.

Lunch Hour At The Strip Joint

2010-03-11T12:03:00.002Z

You join us during our 4 hour lunch break at the strip joint.

In fact, this takes place in our - myself and the Mountie's -own accommodation, which oddly has a strip bar pole right in the middle of it. The only explanation I can think of for this is that a lot of French people appear to use this staffhouse.

It's only temporary accommodation anyway, as later today we're going back to our pleasant one-man mini-flats. Our work here is just about done: the last few days were pretty busy, assembling and fitting stuff onto big bits of pipe, in up to 37C heat. Lots of photos taken, lots of Frenchmen consulted, all good so far.

So, job done, go home? It appears not. Offshore is due in a couple of weeks (only for a couple of days) so until then we get to pretty much kick back in the Onne compound, the weirdly, blandly, charmlessly pleasant fake village set up to safely house lots of fat oil workers so they never have to interact with a real African (except hookers and cleaners). In this compound, with guards stationed all around and rolls of barbed wire lining the walls, we are pretty much safe from rampaging kidnappers.

So, two weeks of waiting. What can we do to occupy our time?

The Chicken Republic

2010-03-06T23:23:00.002Z

The Chicken Republic has no chicken. Welcome back to Nigeria.

“Could I have a chicken burger and a chicken-cheeseburger, please?”
“Sorry sir, we have no chicken-cheeseburgers any more.”
“Oh, well, could I have two chicken burgers please?”
“Sorry sir, we have no chicken burgers.”
“Oh... um, do you have any chicken?”
“No.”
“Hmm, well what food do you have?”
“We have ice-cream and salad.”

Yes, after almost a three year break, I've found myself back in the mean streets of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where the pock-marked streets fill with unceasing, desperate traffic, where black-clad police with rusty guns swagger and shout (and guard us), where mounds of rubbish decay and slide into streams, where our hotel has two levels of security before we can enter, where goats ride on the back of motorcycles or hang dead from the back of trucks, where archaic vehicles defy all-known mechanical laws in the pursuit of impossible motion, where every morning invites a new day of humidity and sweat, and where – and I would have it no other way – the Chicken Republic has no chicken.

It has been three years since I last visited Nigeria, and in that time the days and weeks of frustrated fury that it bred in me have mellowed to a grim amusement bordering on fondness. Oh Nigeria, you naughty, cheeky boy, who throws tomatoes at the neighbours' windows. Oh Nigeria, you little rascal, who puts a potato deep into the exhaust of the headteacher's Volkswagen. Oh Nigeria, you awful rogue, who pesters the minister's daughter with obscene “sextexts”. Oh Nigeria, you scourge of my life, who sets fire to the local dog. Oh Nigeria, you brutal criminal, who deserves your life imprisonment for a series of violent attacks on old ladies. What I mean is that Nigeria, a vast country of 150 million people, is a mixed bag that invites multiple interpretations, but that these interpretations will invariably range from “cheeky” to “utterly evil”. It's not a country for the faint-hearted, or for minister's daughters; but approached from the right aspect it has a certain spirit that isn't entirely unappealing: approached from the wrong aspect and you might just wish your armed escort would lift up his battered gun and quickly end your misery.

That in Port Harcourt the local political rebels MEND have recently ended their ceasefire and have openly resumed hostilities and a policy of kidnapping foreigners is only the dainty cherry on a lovely pie.

Myself and my fellow beardy colleague, “The Mountie”, arrived here on Thursday, after an overnight in Paris (to puncture the bubble of glamour, our evening was spent at a Charles de Gaulle airport hotel; gosh, how I hate that airport). Our bags were lost in transit because they offloaded our bags in Lagos, but to our minor surprise they appeared 24 hours later, much to the relief of anyone with a sense of smell. Our first few days were spent in Port Harcourt, checking equipment, trying to buy chicken, and being very glad that the astonishing prices charged by the Novotel weren't billed to us. Previously, three years ago, I'd been under the wing of Halliburton, and stayed in the faded, jaded Presidential Hotel (now out of favour since stormed by armed rebels), and with this brought security in the form of an armed vehicle escort and lots of police with guns. Now we've gone solo, almost, and security comes in the form of Ezra, a tough but cuddly policeman, who sits in our car and smiles, and plays with his phone. He's far too nice to shoot, so I'm hoping the rebels will bypass us out of common courtesy.

For now though, our days of Ezra, the Novotel, chickenless chicken restaurants and Port Harcourt mania in general are over, as we today arrived at the sanitised freezone of Onne, just south of Port Harcourt, and where oil companies and fat old foreigners can rest safely and securely without having to indulge too much in local culture – except, of course, when it takes the form of a young and attractive female allowing a deeply unappealing and usually married man to have sex with her in exchange for money. Ah Port Harcourt, ah oil business, ah human civilisation for thousands of years.

The secure compound we're staying in, generally though, is decent, if anonymous in style, and certainly feels a lot more relaxed than the last compound I stayed in, in Malongo in Angola, which had every appearance of an army camp, had no bar, and a shop which forbade you to buy more than four small beers. Things here are clean, the accommodation is very comfortable and spacious, internet is easily accessible, and there's a bar without apparent alcohol limitations. Instead of Americans, the dominant species is French: I still have not decided my opinion on this. On the downside, the distance between accommodation and the work yard is large, and requires a driver, which causes logistical hassles and less daily freedom.

How long myself and The Mountie will be here is uncertain. Our immediate duties are to fit some stuff on some other stuff and makes sure it fits – a highly precise and technical operation, you can be sure. After that, we expected to dally a little before going offshore, but speaking to a French gentleman named Marco it seems that offshore could be many weeks away, in which case it's unlikely we'd be hanging around here until then. So we'll see.

Marco, I should quickly and quietly mention, and copy directly from an email sent to my boss, is a Frenchman who epitomises all that is bad about France. He's so high powered as to virtually be able to fly unassisted, but quite frankly is the rudest man I have ever met. When The Mountie shook his hand, Marco barely even registered his existence. He only registered mine because I'd been pestering him with phonecalls all day. Perhaps I should send sextexts. A nasal Gallic-nosed Frenchard with rigid, curly locks, in his 50s and without a smile, his deeply ill manners and total lack of help had myself and my good-hearted colleague firmly agree on one descriptive word: prick. Yes, Marco, if you read this, we think you are a prick. If I could press a button that would kill you, yes you Marco, after a week of pain, then I would press that button while staring into your piggy little eyes. Marco, I hate you.

With these sentiments I should probably leave you. But just be glad that after four days in Nigeria the nation I have now grown to resent most is not Nigerian, no not at all, but is French. Worryingly, it is the French I will be mostly dealing with in the next few days. Chicken Republic – you rumbustious imp - all is forgiven.

Bohemian

2010-03-03T10:49:00.003Z

I am surrounded by bohemians right now. Mike is just putting the final touches to his BBC documentary, and lives a lifetyle of decadence, housecoats and whisky. Last night I was at Simon's book signing in Blackwell's, just round the corner from me. He spoke and read out parts from the book, and I have to say it was very enjoyable. Especially the parts about me. As I was buying his signed copy, I noticed a CD by the counter, by a girl called Julie Fowlis, who I used to go to school with. I purchased it, only to later realise the CD itself was missing. No matter, I will claim it today. It's all in Gaelic and Mike is interested in hearing it, as it might go well with his documentary, which takes place in Lewis. In a wider orbit, there are relatives with books out, or a sister's friend displaying art in Edinburgh's National Gallery.

I'm getting sucked into this bohemian creative mania too. I try my best to be a stoic, blunt, pragmatic oil-based luddite, but it now seems as though Mike and I will write a film together in a few weeks. He's got an idea which, rarely, I think is good, and with his exquisitive film knowhow and my... hmm... we think we can make something possibly quite good. In the meantime, I've got my own book out. It's called The Sponsor's Parade, and there is one copy in existence. I don't recommend it.

Fortunately, all this bohemian awfulness is to be shaked and shot out of me very soo, as tomorrow I go to Nigeria. In Nigeria, there is no room for the bohemian. Gracious, no. If I had more intelligence, I'd be deeply scared, but the bohemian in me thinks it may be "interesting".

Back From Ghana (a couple of weeks ago)

2010-02-22T17:44:00.004Z

Crivens, you must be thinking, it’s been a while. About a month, in fact, since I last sat down at my sturdy laptop and pondered the latest events to strike my life – that’s longer than some people have been alive. When others like Varwell and even The Swish Fish update with a degree of regularity, what excuse do I have for my sudden silence? The answer: alcohol. I have been drinking lots of alcohol.

To catch up on all the wild dramas of the first sixth of ZOLO, I am going to employ an old favourite: headings on bold. So grab hold of your chair, or the nearest person, or whatever, and cling on tight – we’re on for a rough ride.

Ghana

I ended up spending three weeks in Ghana, and overall it was a very pleasing experience. Work was done, make no mistake, but it never heavily interfered with the more important activities of eating, drinking, swimming in the pool, or lying around in my pleasant hotel room watching football. Among the viper’s nest that is West Africa, Ghana is a benign grass snake, that is, it’s non-poisonous and could even be kept as a lovely pet. The country is poor, no doubt, but also safe and friendly, and untroubled by the civil war/civil strife/totalitarianism/kidnappings that preoccupy its neighbours. As a result, going out at night was not a gamble with one’s life, and was actually fun. Myself and my colleague, Bigboy, frequented a number of establishments of varying reputes, and spent many a Saturday and Sunday daytime in a state of physical distress as a result.

The entire three weeks was spent onshore, in a state of mild readiness to have to go offshore for what would likely have been a dinky little straightforward job, but the job continued to be delayed and pushed more and more into the future. Thus it was finally realised by the oil company in charge – who seemed to barely care that they were paying for two guys to have a Ghanaian holiday – that it was foolish to keep us in country any longer, and back home we were sent.

Edinburgh

Back home, to Edinburgh, where I have been for the last two weeks, enjoying the fine quality of ale, the fine quantity of ale, and the enchanting company of friends and family. The snow having lifted during my African jaunt, Edinburgh is now enjoying a bright and crisp late winter, and I am enjoying its charming streets and historic buildings, packed with charm and variety, and lots of tourists of course. It’s still a novelty to me, after so many years in Aberdeen, to live in a city that isn’t so utterly dominated by a vast shadow of grey from some overbearing and otherworldly and very grey North Sea entity that has its wings ominously spread across the city. The difference is a little like going the cinema and seeing a colour film for the same time. Or waking one morning to a beautiful lady after being married to the same dour and dowdy wife for thirty years.

Mike

Still lurking in my Edinburgh residence, like a tick on a dog’s back or, more flatteringly, a beautiful orchid where I thought only tulips grew, is Mike. Or film director Day, as he should be correctly titled. Just as doctors can be called Dr and farmers called Farmer (Fr?) and judges called Judy, we both agree that all people should have career titles. Thus I would be Engineer (Er) Christie and Mike would be BBCFD Day. He is putting the final touches to a documentary that has already been bought by the BBC and the trailer (I think) can be seen at mikeday.org. I’ve not yet seen it, as I don’t have particular interest in the film world and especially the unfinished film world, but Mike is giving me a nearly-finished copy to view either later today or tomorrow, to get a layman’s opinion. Having seen the trailer, and little bits and pieces that he’s shown me, I expect it should be quite good. But don’t tell him I said that, his ego’s vast enough.

Varwell

To continue the trend of creative bohemian friends, my good friend Varwell, still blushing from his recent marriage, has a book out. Most readers here will know about it I’m sure, but for those unacquainted it is about the first part of his quest to visit every single place in the world with the name “mullet” in it. The book was released in the last few weeks, and I of course have bought a copy, and even read it. Most excitingly, the first five chapters feature me quite a lot, so you may have no doubt that I enjoyed this terribly. It’s a great novelty to walk into a major bookstore, buy a book by a friend, and then start reading about yourself. But even after chapter five, when I start to get mentioned a lot less, the book continued to be enjoyable. Having known Simon for some time, and reading his blog regularly, I knew the book would be very readable, enjoyable, splattered with Varwellian jokes and with some healthy reflection upon the absurdity of his quest. And so I’m happy to say it did not disappoint. Simon’s writing style is light without ever being flimsy, clear and without ego. Although his quest has an air of the whimsical, the story has its share of very sober moments, especially in the country-that-Europe-forgot, Albania, where the quest begins.

Overall, the book is as much travel book as it is mullet book, and so I invite all dear readers to invest £7 in a copy. “Up The Creek Without A Mullet” by Simon Varwell, available in all good bookstores near you (depending where you live) or a mere mouse shuffle away on Amazon. Alternatively, I’ll sell you my copy for £6.

Bed

Despite my mattress being lumpy and my bed barely long enough for me to lie down straight in, I am sleeping inordinately well. Truly, each morning I am so comfy I can barely find the powers to arise, and when I do so it’s considered an early start to be alive by 10.30am. Life is a pleasant beast when each morning is greeted with such warmth and toastiness, and thus I blame my inexplicably comfortable bed as much as my rampant alcoholism for my lack of constructive discourse of late.

Girlfriend

Scurrilous rumour has it that I’ve been seen interacting socially with a girl. I hope she doesn’t ruin my reputation.

Bathroom Shelves

I really don’t want to talk about these.

Other stuff

I’ve done other stuff too, but it probably wasn’t very interesting.

An African Pub Quiz Holidays

2010-01-22T16:46:00.002Z

Pub quizzes... oh, how I love them. An event that incorporates a keen testing of one's knowledge of the greater world in friendly competition with a diverse range of characters, all the while enjoying a continued healthy hydration with a selection of splendid ale concoctions. Indeed, perhaps the only thing better than participating in a pub quiz, is the joyous celebration of winning one - and winning one well. Which is what myself and my worryingly pseudonymed colleague "Bigboy" did last night, in Ghana.

We'll venture onto that delightful tale in a moment, but first I'd like to dwell a little on the nature of pub quizzes. Pub quizzes, for those who know me well or who have studied the pages of my blog (two Michigan students are currently involved in a critical analysis for their PhDs, they've found all kinds of underlying meanings), will know that I am rather partial to dipping my dirty toe into the murky underworld of pub quizzes. For years, so I enjoy regaling, I regularly took part in the pub quiz in Aberdeen's student union and racked up a whole catalogue of victories - which included prizes of expense-paid holidays to New York and return flights to Cairo. These glory days may never quite be repeated, but unlike the insatiable cravings of those who have tasted fame, I am content to revel in the echoes of past glories and the twinkling sunset of distant days triumphant.

Thus while the epic, twisting, derring-do sagas of these early Aberdeen quizzes cannot and should not be copied, it gives me great and continued pleasure to savour a little quiz now and again. The old team may have dispersed (and even got married to a real girl in one shocking case) and the old student union pub no longer extant, but the inexorable march of pub quizzes go on. Thus over the years I've made sporadic appearances at a few, most notably at Dingwall's Mallard Bar, a quizzing haunt of many controversies that I'll spare my dear reader the tales of, for fear of derailing my chugging train of thought from my planned destination.

Most recently then, it has been Edinburgh that has hosted a return to pub quiz days. My sister, a keen if as-yet unaccomplished participant, agreed that it would be pleasant to enjoy a regular Monday evening quiz in our new adopted city. Edinburgh, with its 5000 year history, has a depth and quality of pub that holds great potential for a sublime quiz. And so, with her vast amount of free time as she dwells in everlasting unemployment, she did some research and drew up a shortlist of Monday pubs hosting quizzes. And so the review process could begin.

The first pub was called Shakespeare's, an overly well-lit bar, with a very unusual quiz set-up, which barely went for the standard question-answer format and instead had various music rounds, picture rounds, and other quirks. As only myself and my sister were able to attend, it was a very time-intensive quiz, barely leaving us time to buys drinks or visit the toilet, but it was a very friendly quiz with a nice range of clientele. There were many merits to the unusual format, but ultimately I'm a pub quiz traditionalist, and enjoy a pause for breath between rounds.

The next was a bar called Cumberlands, and had a greater attendance with my cousin Malcolm, his lady Karen, and my sister's flatmate Sarah bolstering the numbers. It held to the traditional question-answer format, and with the added plus of the quizmaster himself marking the papers (instead of opposing teams, a system I'm not fond of). The quizmaster was the main attraction of the quiz, presenting it very informally as if he was rambling an oft-told story, and simply stood up in the entrance of the particular room in the pub and spoke, without microphone. This made for a cosy, homely feel to the quiz, which had well-judged questions mostly, and featured lots of geography (which I like). Every quiz, one of the answers is "Belgium": this kind of idiosyncracy is what makes a pub quiz stand out. The pub too was good, and our team were leading till the very last round, where a stumble saw us fall to about 3rd place. This is a quiz I can see ourselves revisiting.

Alas, the most recent Monday quiz I had to miss, because I was landing in Accra at about the time it began; but my sister and the other associated companions attended another one, at a pub called the Canon Gait, but gave it a fairly low score, based on being generic, an over-polished look to the bar, and lots of annoying students.

Yes, I have found myself in Ghana, not unexpectedly, but sooner than expected. For work, I should note, not for pub quizzes. I was supposed to come down here for a rather large job involving lots of bits of metal and tons of sweating, but it was cancelled, so I'm instead here to appear thoughtful and sip beers each evening. As twists of fate would have it, another job in Ghana has sprung up while myself and the aforementioned Bigboy are here, the timing of which means it might be worth our time to stay here until it kicks off. As the job may still be two weeks away, and as our hotel has a lovely pool and my room has a lovely balcony, fates have been worse. Ghana too is lovely: poor and stinky, but relaxed and friendly. Nobody yet has taken a machete to me.

And by happy chance, the bar right next door to our hotel happened to have a quiz on last night. Bigboy also considering himself an aficionado of such events, we thought it only correct to go along. If only to raise the profile of our small company in the eyes of the oil bigwigs.

We absolutely trounced the opposition. Scoring 42.5/60, we were a clear ten points ahead of second place, and our team of two was considerably smaller than some of the conglomerates clustered. From the very off, it was clear we would coast to victory, as questions seemed to fall into our laps, and even our wild guesses seemed to work out. Plus, during the mutual appraisal of our intelligence, Bigboy and I reflected that our careers and interests have only recently included the rape of Mother Earth for oil but prior to this was more diverse than that niche field, whereas much of the oil crowd there might be able to identify a big bit of pipe by mere scent but haven't stepped in different walks of life and don't know that the biggest four-letter nation in the world is Iran or that the US state featured in the Robert Redford film "The Horse Whisperer" was Montana. Or possibly they were just all stupid.

It was a fun and well-judged quiz, with a couple of bonus rounds, one of which we won to get a couple of tequila shots. Our overall prize was a drink voucher to the tune of about £20, which goes quite far here, but we made sure we went further, and enjoyed a highly discounted evening of the local Star beer.

The next quiz is next Thursday, which if we are still floating around here we will certainly attend. Though there's certainly work to be done here, it's panning out to be well spaced out, and affords just enough time to enjoy a cheerful sunny lifestyle. Our pub quiz team name may in fact reveal our true motives for this Ghanaian work visit: "Nev" and "Bigboy's" African Holiday. I'll leave you with a multiple choice question:

Q. What is the correct drink to enjoy by the poolside?
1. Star beer
2. Gin-and-tonic
3. A refreshing orange juice (before 11am)
4. All of the above, often

Welcome To ZOLO

2010-01-02T15:55:00.002Z

Well, Happy New Year folks, and welcome to ZOLO.

And with the introduction of the mighty fandragon of ZOLO, we have to wave goodbye to the hefty ZOOG, all 365 parts, but as we wave, perhaps we can discreetly wipe a tear from our eyes. Goodbye ZOOG, though in truth it was one of the lesser fandragons to have bellowed its fire. Nonetheless, it had its moments; I visited all kinds of mysterious nations (albeit to different degrees): Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mozambique, Azerbaijan, Angola, South Korea, Australia, South Africa, Germany and, of course, the United Kingdom; I purchased laser eyes; I smeared myself in a large amount of vegetable curry while sleeping; I successfully cooked edible meals on two occasions for my drunken cousins and we all sampled my many housecoats; I tied myself to several large owls and they flew me across the English Channel; and of course just at the very end, I moved to Scotland’s historical capital city, The Edinburgh.

It is this last development that has, for obvious reasons, preoccupied much of my last month, and which I will briefly detail now, as most of my other tales were covered earlier in the year (though I’m not sure if I mentioned the owl story). In truth, it’s been a sordid tale, heavily tied to the malign influence of my illegal lodger, Mike. Mike, a documentary filmmaker propelled by the vast power of his ego, has been in entertaining form, and in a quite relentless party mood, and seems to exist only between the hours of 6pm and 6am. In just a couple of weeks, I have an absolute wealth of incriminating information about him that should make me a lot of money should he ever take political office.

Thus I must gloss over much of the last week or two, although Cyronic Shock evening is worth a quick gust. Mike has discovered that his iPhone – which, like other iPhone owners, controls him and dominates most of his conscious thoughts – has an application that can choose a cocktail based upon a selection of inputted ingredients. We have, I am proud to say, a very large selection of many interesting alcohols in the flat, thus our scope for cocktails is great. And so upon randomising, we came up with something called The Cyronic Shock.

Cyronic Shock, for those curious, goes something like this (or, at least, our remixed version did): 4 shots of rum, 2 shots of whisky, 2 shots of cognac, 2 shots of Curacao, and an entire lemon.

It may not surprise you that it was unutterably revolting. Deeply, unswervingly acidic, we diluted it with some lemonade with only the unfortunate result that we had a greater quantity to drink. But drink it we did, as our cocktail rules demand, and quite drunk we thus got. We went into, we realised, a deep Cyronic Shock. Our faces went numb and our minds began spiralling out of control, and soon we were in a jazz bar, feeling both hyperactive and ill, which wasn’t helped by Mike’s insistence of drinking Sambucas with three coffee beans inside. I think that sent me over the edge, as suddenly I was waking up in my own home, and Mike... well, God knows. I think he got back at something like 6am, made another cocktail for himself and covered the entire kitchen in it in the process (the blender has no lid).

So Mike has been setting a ferocious pace, one that in my advanced years I can’t keep up, so I was very glad for some days back in Dingwall over Christmas, where I was able to drink wine and whisky at a leisurely rate, except at my uncle’s as I believe my uncle was somewhat like Mike during his own younger years.

And I was saved from Mike over his New Year mania by my sister. I had no real plans for Hogmanay, except to hang about in Edinburgh and see what happened, but my sister was going to a ceilidh in Glasgow... except at the last minute, for whatever reason, she didn’t. And so she generously gave the ticket to me (well, in exchange for £35). And so I ended up in Glasgow, with my cousins and their respective romantic associates, and other associated characters vaguely known to myself.

I love ceilidhs, let that not be understated, and this ceilidh certainly did not disappoint. Years of dancing practice at school, being forced as an awkward greasy youth to pick a deeply reluctant girl to dance in a bright gymnasium, paid off in the end as my brain kicks into gear the moment the music and dances begin, and my subconscious leads me into an approximation of the correct steps. And better still, as the years have matured and progressed these awkward youths into strutting young peacocks and peahens, the reluctance has been replaced with an enthusiasm. Ladies are so keen to dance that they dance with each other if no man is available, and ladies at this event were in surplus: terrific. Thus I was allowed to whirl and twirl and rotate vigorously a selection of delectable flowers in embraces that would usually lead to slaps/drinks thrown/arrest, but in this case met with melting smiles. Oh ceilidh dancing, how I love you; oh whisky, how I love you too.

So the ceilidh finished and after some shenanigans we ended up at some nearby house party, where I subjected some poor girls to some dire chat, but as I was wearing the full kilt regalia I got away with it. Without Mike to corrupt my pace, I managed to not completely lose my sanity, and even woke the next morning/afternoon with a feeling of reasonable health.

And there are, a delightful introduction to ZOLO. May it roar and belch a year of flame, and ignite the passions of life in us all.

Edinburgh and Festivities

2009-12-24T18:26:00.000Z

So, like the gnarled hand of death with its hand around our throats ready for the final squeeze, Christmas is almost upon us. Up in Scotland, the festive season has been appropriately hit by a pile of seasonal snow, giving rise to many pretty festive scenes, lots of minor car crashes, and a whole nation of people in constant exclamation about the state of the weather. I am now in my mother's new house - almost completed after months of work and looking very cosy and nice - in Dingwall, after having travelled up from Edinburgh via a quick trip to Aberdeen

In Aberdeen, just to briefly take the conversation aside, I unwittingly recreated what must have surely occurred in many low-quality British 1970s sitcoms, when I had to venture into my attic to unplug something. I'm now living in Edinburgh, and the flat in Aberdeen has just been put on the rental market but obviously around Christmas isn't really prime time for leasing out. As part of the moving and leasing, I put all my spare possessions (rather a lot) into my attic, took away the stairway, and nailed a big hatch over the top. Access was only possible therefore by removing the hatch, and an additional lock, and hauling myself up the hole. As the ceiling is rather high, and as I have no ladder, this is achieved by precariously balancing a bedside table on top of a chest-of-drawers. And alas, as I pulled myself up, my feet knocked the beside table off, onto the ground. So I was suddenly trapped in my attic, with the floor and chest-of-drawers looking frighteningly distant. My flat door was also locked with the key in the lock, so there wasn't even a possibility of phoning someone to rescue me. So I paced around my attic for a while, considering my options, all of which seemed to conclude in certain death or paralysis, and finally reckoned the best way was just to lower myself from the attic hole, hanging from the ceiling, and hope my feet could find the chest-of-drawers. This was in fact successfully concluded, without serious or mortal injury, but with a somewhat lack of grace. All I required, as I hung from the ceiling, feet flailing, was a jaunty comedy piano number, and perhaps a camp gent/butch wife/black neighbour to make some kind of weak joke about "How's it hanging?" before the credits rolled.

Anyway, that is all to the side and past, and now I'm in a snow-filled Dingwall, in a warm house, alone except for my mother's wimpy cat who spends his entire life pressed against radiators. My mother has decided to invite me to hers for Christmas this year, but has then abandoned me here for the Day itself as she drives, with my sister, to the manfriend's home, hours away. The manfriend has five rowdy dogs, which are entirely incompatible with a newly decorated house and a wimpy cat, so he is remaining in his country home over Christmas. Evidently, my mother, given a choice between "son" or "manfriend" has rejected the 31 years I've faithfully stood by her and opted for the 1 year of the handy house-building manfriend. When I mention any of this to my mother, she gets awfully flustered, and blurts out a series of apologies, and I was in fairness given the option of travelling to the manfriend's home with her, but have opted to stay in Dingwall, where many friends and family are, and where I intend to consume many gallons of wine.

Wine, or Diamond White cider, as won yesterday in the Dingwall pub quiz. It was a Christmas-themed pub quiz, and thus full of all kinds of stupid questions, and so my team did terribly; however, afterwards there was a raffle, and at the very tailed my number appeared, winning me the classic combination of Haribro marshmallows and Diamond White cider, the latter - for those unfamiliar - a staple diet of scraggily-bearded homeless men and 15-year old youths. I intend to save it for a special occasion.

So it's Dingwall now, and for the next few days, but as mentioned, it's been Edinburgh prior to this and my fleeting Aberdeen cameo. I officially moved to Edinburgh a few weeks ago but was promptly sent to Ghana, so only really moved in last week, and have now spent a total of five days there. And it's been a five days of great entertainment, promise and very unhealthy trends.

I decided to move to Edinburgh just about a month ago, and a number of people have asked the reason why. The main answer is "Because I can." I am in the fortunate position that my work allows, although isn't necessarily hugely keen on, me to live outside of Aberdeen. I've been back in Aberdeen for almost four years now. It was a couple of so years in Korea before that, but then something like seven years in Aberdeen before that. So quite a long time in Aberdeen. And I've been getting restless. I like Aberdeen and have many ties to it, but am not tied down to it, so while I have the freedom to go elsewhere, I think I should. And Edinburgh is a fantastic city, where I can walk about the grand, historic buildings and feel like a cultured, civilised gent. It's filled with wooden-style pubs, pretty doe-eyed girls and quirky nice shops - just five minutes from me there are two shops selling antique maps and a further two selling cigars and pipe tobacco. I've been lucky to find - renting - a great flat smack bang in the city centre, just seconds off the Royal Mile and minutes from the train station, where I can live a full and satisfying life without ever having to walk for more than five minutes in any direction. "A change is as good as a rest" it is said, and as I've had an insane amount of rest recently, there was no other alternative but for change.

So change it is... but is it really? Upon regaling a few of my Edinburgh tales to Green, he described it as being something more like a "regression". A return to my old wayward ways, with old wayward characters leading me astray. Are my efforts at cultural improvement and regeneration to be derailed by a series of shady characters of questionable moral fibre?

The most notable of these questionable characters goes by the name of Mike Day. Sharp-eyed and eagle-beaked (or whatever) readers may know Mike to be from days of yore, indeed during 2003 I lived in a castle with Mike. I also sailed on a yacht with him two years ago in the Adriatic. Since then, Mike quit a hated job in corporate law, and has become a filmmaker. For some time, being a filmmaker seemed to simply involve owning a camera and telling people he was a filmmaker, but by some random fluke of the universe Mike ended up actually making a film, a documentary about some traditional Hebridean bird-murdering (go to http://mikeday.org/ for more details), and then ever more remarkably, the BBC bought it. Yes, the BBC. The BBC. The BBC bought Mike's film. This is clearly quite impressive, and is clearly like taking a massive electro-pump to Mike's ego, as he strolls around telling everybody he sees that he's a filmmaker. Unfortunately for Mike, I don't really watch films, and especially ones about seabirds, the Hebrides or tradition, so all his filmmaking enthusiasm is wasted on me - but there are plenty of 15 year old girls he's able to impress with it.

Mike has become my temporary flatmate, a very smooth ploy by him on my first evening in Edinburgh last week. I had decided to go on an "Edinburgh pub familiarisation pub crawl", surely an educational experience. Varwell was in town for the day, so he came along, and my ever-unemployed sister obviously had nothing better to do than to spend her dole money on booze, so she came too also. And then Mike. Except he came with a bag... could he leave it at mine please, it had expensive stuff inside and he didn't want to lose it. Of course... and thus he now lives in the spare room. By the cratefuls of possessions promptly appearing over the next few days, you'd be forgiven for thinking he was the main resident, but I've given him occupancy until February 15th, the day after Valentine's.

So that first night out turned into a somewhat drunken affair. Great fun, with everyone on good form, but just a blur of increasing wastedness. Back at the flat there were no bedsheets yet, so I slept under a pile of housecoats, as did Mike (in a separate bed, I hasten to add). The next day was a day of suffering and recovery, almighty at times, but by the evening and by the time some wine had appeared we were ready for a new evening. The plan, by Mike, was to go what he described as a sculpture exhibition party, which sounded very cultured. The reality, it transpired, was that this took the form of a dire club full of students listening to garbage boppy music: it was not my scene; Mike loved it. I decided it was beneath my dignity to stay long, so disappeared off home, leaving Mike a text message informing him he had 1 hour 15 minutes before I went to sleep. There was still only one set of keys for the flat, and I had it, so if Mike hoped to get back he would have to buzz the door and hope I answered.

I woke the next morning with 10 missed calls on my phone, and no sign of Mike in the flat. My clothes, incidentally, were covered in curry sauce, but that's neither here nor there. I woke, made some coffee, and a little later the buzzer went and Mike appeared, with a bar of chocolate by means of an apology. An apology?

It seems Mike had come back to the flat and buzzed for ages, and eventually got an angry reply. "Go away. You don't live here any more." Mike, a little drunk, was confused, but the voice was angry and Mike figured he must have angered me somehow. Fortunately, he had his parents' holiday flat to go to, about half an hour away.

It turned out, of course, that it was not me that had been buzzed and woken in the middle of the night, but our poor neighbour.

Ok, next night was a YMCA-themed fancy dress birthday party, which I leave to your imagination, as I have to go and be festive.

Christie Cousins' Dinner, Moving to Edinburgh and Ghana

2009-12-14T15:48:00.004Z

It's been a busy week or so. Last Saturday, I held a Christmas dinner party for my paternal cousins, which saw me cook a full Christmas dinner, with turkey, brussel sprouts, bread sauce etc, washed down by a variety of dubious spirits. We all ended up a little toasted, and at one point stumbled over to the casino across the road, bet on number 18 on the roulette table - and won. The night ended with a mixture of terrible DJing (I was the best there, which gives you an idea of our level) and housecoat mania.

The Christie cousin Christmas dinner party.

I was in a grim state the next day, but still (with my sister's and cousins' help) managed to get the flat cleaned and my stuff packed. For on Monday I hired a van and moved out, and Tuesday I moved to Edinburgh. Yes, I now live in Edinburgh, the conclusion of a brutal two hours for myself and my sister as we took a series of heavy loads and boxes up to the top floor - I always live on top floors - of a flat just off the Royal Mile. Upon finish, I sat down in my new flat (it's just rented, not bought) for ten minutes, then drove back to Aberdeen.

I've still to finish working on getting my Market Street flat presentable for renting, as my efforts have been waylaid by going to Ghana. I flew there on Thursday and have been there for the weekend. Not a flight of fancy, but a flight of official high-level business, or more accurately, getting very sweaty in a couple of industrial yards. I had a meeting in Accra at first, in which I eschewed my normal plan of hiding in the corner and nodding at everything, and actually had to put in quite a lot of input, including an impromptu presentation - alas, no public voice as I had no script to work from. Then it was down to a small town/city called Takoradi, where I've been careering around various different yards, shunting and shuffling equipment, and taking photos of different bits of pipe.

Some pipe I was working on. I've edited out the "top secret" part, but just try imagine some more bits of pipe, except shinier.

It's been just a quick weekend away, as by today just about everything is done, and I'm flying back to Aberdeen tomorrow, most likely. There I'll quickly finish getting Market Street ready, and I have a work Christmas party on Saturday - with free booze. And then it's time to celebrate the pagan-turned-Christian-turned-commerical extravaganza called Christmas, but which being a non-pagan, non-Christian ascetic, I have decided to call "Winter Magic!Time" (the exclamation point is crucial).

And one day, whenever that day may take place, I might even start to live in my new Edinburgh home.

The Forsythian Cousins' Dinner Party

2009-12-02T19:02:00.004Z

Well, things have been a little busy recently. Busy is, of course, a relative term, as I've not actually been working, and so have not been part of the daily schedule that so dominates people's lives until their cycle of monotony finally ends in retirement, insanity and death. No, I've been on holiday (though let's not pretend I was grinding at the mill beforehand) and have been busy with such events as Varwell's stag night and wedding, and then last week's poker night followed by a dinner party for the cousins from my maternal side. In amongst all this, I decided to move to Edinburgh, and so have been getting ready for that, and get the keys to a flat next Tuesday.

Despite all this pretence of being busy, I've still found plenty of time to have a few quiet drinks. In fact, you may argue, excuses to drink have been pretty much the cornerstone of why I've been busy. And so let's wind back to the Saturday morning just past...

...where I find myself awake in the stiflingly hot living room in my flat, slumped on the sofa, with the winter sun streaming through the window. The electric heater is on full, pumping out sickly warm air, my body is still awash with sherry, the smeared remains of a baked potato with chicken tikka filler sits by my side, and the room is strewn with debris from the poker mayhem of the night before. I'd had a poker evening, with the poker regulars (Green, Poker Mark, Stan, Julie) plus other assorted luminaries who fancied their hand at winning some money: Vizzy, Kitchen Mark, and two colleagues, my Polish colleague, as seen last year on a boat, and Bigboy, as seen during our mini-lifetime together in Azerbaijan earlier this year. Booze (tellingly, the two non-drinkers failed to win anything back) and stupendous poker skills thrust themselves about for almost eight hours and two poker games (£10 entry each), with the conclusion of the hyper-aggressive Vizzy winning the first and coming second in the second, won by Green, with myself a very respectable second and third place, to on overall profit of £10.

It was a very enjoyable evening, and an interesting change to our regular poker played on Tuesdays, without alcohol or money, but none of this took priority in my waking brain in this baking room.

No, all I could think was, "Oh God, I've got less than 10 hours to learn how to cook."

Because later that day, my sister, my brother and his fiance, my two maternal cousins plus their respective romantic associates, plus my two younger second cousins, were all coming round to enjoy a dinner party, the first ever Forsythian (as it's been dubbed, though the two second cousins weren't actually generated by a Forsyth) cousins' dinner party. Plenty of stuff was all worked out - where everyone was staying, the various alcohols ready and waiting, coal and wood for the fire in my living room to debut, and plenty of plates and cutlery for the occasion - but one big problem remained: I can't cook.

Or perhaps that should be, I don't cook. Because in my modern life, cooking is something that doesn't feature. One notable attempt 18 months ago some may recall, but otherwise when I'm onshore, I go round to Green's for his culinary sensations, or if he's not about I just eat out or get takeaway, or maybe shove a pizza in the oven. But actual cooking is rare, so to have to cook for ten people was quite an undertaking for me. But luckily, I'd had time to decide upon a couple of dishes, deftly chosen by my brother's fiance, and I'd practised them - successfully - earlier in the week.

Here was the menu.

So, I rose from the sofa, got a few hours of rest in my bed, and then showered myself to a waking health. By mid-afternoon my brother and his fiance had arrived, to quietly watch over me in case the effort got too much. But I was feeling fairly relaxed, and there was plenty of time to get the dinner table prepared, and the lamb dish basically involved getting a bunch of ingredients and shoving them into a casserole dish then the oven for 3 hours. Only the soup and the (made the day earlier) vegetarian dish for the token awkward vegetarian required any effort.

And so, by 7pm, all had arrived and were stuffing wine into their mouths, and by 8pm it was time for food, and round one: some soup. Tomato and basil soup, to be precise. And mmm, it was actually not bad. The key, for me, is not to aim for subtlty, just cram a bunch of stuff in a pot and make the flavours wrestle with each other. Wrestling is of greater mass appeal than opera. So lots of tomatoes, basil, cream, garlic, and whatever else ended up in there. The main course, the Cypriot lamb and potato casserole, also turned out pleasingly well for the same reason - flavour bombast rather than delicate orchestral movements. The next three courses I could coast through then, as they were alcohol based and therefore back in the realm of what I know. Amaretto and ice-cream were a nice combination, cheese and port is a no-brainer (and there was no subtlty with my port pouring), and the finale, cognac and cigars accompanied by a choice of housecoat, which also double as smoking jackets. Around the dinner table, us ten family members gathered in a selection of high-quality housecoats, and smoked cigars with a tipple of cognac by our sides (or, at least, the gentlemen did - most of the ladies found both components too manly for their taste).

And so went the dinner party. Everything then descended into hours of drinking, gathered round the coal fire, and reminiscing about all the times the older members of the family would upset and make cry the younger members of the family. It is a twist of cruel fate that of the five Forsythian cousins, the three males are the oldest and the two females the youngest. Thus my sister and Esme, my cousin, were regularly beaten. I, as the oldest, escaped all beatings, until reaching about 16 when my brother caught up with me in size and I realised it was time to quickly leave home and go to university.

It was a terrific evening, and happily only my cousin Malcolm was sick from it, though consensus is that it was due to all the port and not a rogue element in my food (as all else escaped poisoning). And this Saturday, it's the same again, except with the cousins from my paternal side. And I've got to figure out how to do a Christmas dinner rather than just some easy casserole. Yikes.

For those of you who prefer the pictures to the text (i.e. the "Heat" as opposed to the "Classics" readers) I'll leave you some photos taken by sister, from The Facebook.

Varwell Gets Married

2009-11-23T17:21:00.003Z

Good evening ladies and gentleman, thank-you all for visiting my blog, and I hope your perusal is a pleasant one. My name is Nev, and for the next few hundred words I shall be telling you about my weekend, plus a few additional little tales...

The above, for those who cannot tell, was written in my "public" voice. For my public voice, you must imagine the dulcet tones of a radio presenter, on the shipping forecast perhaps, or maybe a host of a civilised afternoon gameshow. It is a voice from my unconscious, entirely unintentional, and is a very recent discovery from this weekend (though the last couple of years has seen a couple of previews during on-the-spot radio vox populi on the street). The discovery that I have a hidden voice for public speaking (though perhaps, alas, not a hidden talent) came in the form a best man's speech on Saturday, during the magnificent wedding of Varwell and his new wife, Mrs Varwell.

Yes, Varwell actually went ahead and married a girl, a fact both delightful and alarming - does this girl know what she's getting herself into? And a fact also a little astonishing, certainly if I'd been told it would happen at the start of the year when Varwell was keeping the very fact he had a sweet lips a classified secret. The veil of secrecy was only lifted upon the grand announcement of a marriage, some months ago, and as part of that announcement I was given the honour of being one third of a best man.

Yes, just one third, because Varwell, quite wisely I'm sure, reckoned that myself or any other of the two best men - Green and Kitchen Mark - couldn't be trusted with a range of important duties alone, so that by sharing responsibilities we might manage to approximate a successful tour of duty. However, less wisely perhaps, given that he was fudging the issue of "best", and given that he is a committed Christian, he managed to choose possibly his three most devoutly heathen friends to perform these duties for him on this most special of days. Fortunately, his choice of a heathen trio didn't induce God's full anger, and just made Him a little peeved, and we were treated to just an afternoon and evening of steady rain, and not the furious bout of thunder and lightning and celestial roaring of "NO!!!!" we feared.

We gathered then a day before the wedding day, on Friday, in a Ballater, a small dozy town of wealthy royalists about an hour from Aberdeen. This choice wasn't arbitrary, and certainly was no statement of Scottish Nationalist Varwell's love of Our Queen of The UK, but was because it was the to-be Mrs Varwell's home up until Varwell plucked her out and demanded she live with him in Inverness. Green and I drove Varwell there before noon, so we could give the caterers a few packets of fruit juice (inexplicably this had to be done at noon precisely or else the entire wedding plan would fail). Varwell then vanished to meet his future in-laws, thus leaving me and Green at a loose end, without evening our hotel ready to accept us, so we had no choice but to start drinking.

And that pretty much was Friday. Drinking in the pub, joined at stages by an assemblage of characters, such as Kitchen Mark, the simmeringly beautiful French Claire, a curly haired chap called Keiron and... oh, God knows, I was drunk.

Hence, Saturday morning wasn't my brightest. But the wedding wasn't till 2.30pm, so I had plenty of time to freshen up, take a stroll through Ballater for some lunch, and put on my full kilt regalia, and help Kitchen Mark - a sassenach (albeit ginger) - get into one too.

And so, the wedding. Gosh, it was a religious one. I've been to a number of weddings now, and all but my uncle's and two utterly surreal Korean ones have been set in a church, but Varwell pulled out all the stops by having not one, not two, but four different ministers at his, including his own father. And he included communion as part of the ceremony - the first time I've ever witnessed communion and, goodness me, it's a slightly intimidating experience for the uninitiated. I think it was the chanting that got me (I didn't mind all the blood). But it was a well-judged ceremony, with a nice little moment of freestyling from the organist, and "Bring Me Sunshine" playing at the end as Varwell plus wife exited the church brought a light moment of laughter, especially given the dark rain that had descended on Ballater.

And then it was over to the main hall, for an evening of food, ceilidh dancing and boozing. Ah, but one small hitch – I had a speech to do much later in the evening. And so, unless I wanted to deliver some drunken ramble of a speech and almost certainly offend the 75% Christian audience with tales of fisting, Richard Dawkins and the S Club Juniors (who, incidentally, are all “legal” now; yes, Frankie too), and especially Mother Varwell who was in a perpetual flurry of anxiety that everything went well, it would be wise for me to temper my alcohol intake. And thus I did so, with a big frown on my face.

I still had some wine and champagne of course, and mingled with the masses, and enjoyed a buffet dinner. And despite the impending speech, I was feeling remarkably relaxed about my first bout of public speaking in ten years (and with earlier efforts being mortifyingly bad). Until about 15 minutes before, when suddenly my entire being went “oh crap”.

Varwell was first to speak, and produced a seemingly off-the-cuff, sincere and humorous thank-you to everyone, and especially to his new wife. He was followed by the father of the bride, who managed a few confused and unquestionably unrehearsed mumbles into the microphone before quickly proposing a toast. It wasn’t quite my turn, as because there were three best men, we had collaborated to divide the speech into three sections, all based around parts of Varwell’s anatomy which led to various anecdotes and warnings for his new wife. This included several props, including the main one, a lifesize outline of a human body, with a frightened photo of Varwell’s face for the head, and such parts as the stomach, the feet, the heart, the brain, and a discreetly placed fig leaf.

Mark began, and produced a fine display of off –the-cuff quips, especially in silencing an argumentative (and very worried) Varwell with “Is this a speech or a conversation?” Of course, earlier that day, he’d had practice in speaking to an evening larger audience, global no less, when he’d spoken live on Radio 1. He’d woken at 5am gripped by panic as he realised he’d left his sporran in his suitcase – in his flat in Aberdeen. French Claire had driven him back, and while listening to Radio 1 he’d texted them about it, and they had phoned him back asking him to speak.

Green then followed, managing impressively without any copy of the speech or even notes, and managed some terrific, if unintentional, comedy when he lost his earplugs prop in his sporran and sprayed all his money over the table trying to find it. As he often speak publically, albeit less on comedy matters and more on dry and technical specialised sciences, he was more concerned with timing than of stage-fright, but managed such lines as “Simon only has eyes for you, Nicole... well, for you, and maybe for the occasional 18-year-old... single malt,” just right to elicit a slight gasp of surprise-then-relief from the more devout element.

And then the microphone was handed over to me, and from within my radio voice took over. It’s strange how the few minutes seem to have vanished from my memory, as I can only really recall the sight of about 130 people looking at me, looking at my speech a lot, and moments of surprise when some jokes went down much better than expected. The speech ended by referring to Varwell’s “most important organ” and then a few puns as “you don’t want to balls this one up” and “you have to look after the big man”, before revealing I was referring to Varwell’s heart, and saying a few nice words about Varwell (who is a splendid fellow, truth be told), proposing a toast, and sitting down to great relief.

I proceeded to drink really quite a lot then.

The wedding got into full gear then, as the ceilidh begun and I remembered how much I enjoy being Scottish. Can there be a better way to celebrate a wedding than a ceilidh? Disco dancing is so tacky and excludes much of the crowd, but ceilidh dancing is hugely enjoyable, traditional, is so energetic it gives the satisfaction of exhaustion not unlike climbing a hill, and most importantly I get to manhandle lots of women.

Varwell and his wife had very correctly opted for a full evening of ceilidh dancing, uninterrupted by anything else except a half hour cake break. The crowd were enthusiastic dancers and the floor was always busy, and the night disappeared into a whirligig of Scottish dancing and vigorous stripping of willows.

And perhaps because of all the dancing, I woke the next morning, despite the many whiskies and wines, feeling astonishingly fine and fresh – as I enjoyed reminding a worse-for-the-wear Mark. A bunch of us ate lunch, and then it was back to Aberdeen, where life continues on as before.

There we go then. There’s other stuff I’d love to tell you, such as the stag night last week, but I’ve written quite enough. I failed to take any photos at all that night, though I’ll endeavour to find some and perhaps post a few up in a couple of years’ time. Oh, and I’m moving to Edinburgh in two weeks time. That’ll be nice.

And so we come to the end of this particular blog, but I would like to thank you all for reading this far, and I of course look forward to having you with me next time, when I expect to be reporting on the topic of a dinner party being held for my cousins.

Aberdeen's Union Square: The Official Review

2009-11-05T17:50:00.010Z

Just last week, and to great fanfare, a new shopping centre opened in Aberdeen: Union Square. On its opening day, a reported 60,000 people - 25% the population of Aberdeen - poured through the doors to view a whole bunch of familiar shops in a slightly different context. Usually, the opening of a new shopping centre, whether big or large, thick or thin, or pink or brown, would not register highly on my consciousness (which is very preoccupied with housecoats these days), but Union Square happens to be on my very doorstep, and heralds the first step in a potential shift of focus for Aberdeen's city centre, making me even more central than I already am.

To celebrate this new collection of "Next" shops and "Costa Coffee" coffeeshops, I thought I'd take the 2 minute walk from my flat to Union Square to see what all the fuss and hysteria was about, and whether it really measured up. As an experienced veteran of shopping centres in many glamorous world cities, there could surely be no better choice than myself to make a studied and critical analysis of where Aberdeen's new gem figures on the world stage. And to accompany this review, for the ease of my younger readers who find my word selection tricky on their literary palate, I've included some pretty pictures. Regular readers will be pleased to see my reintroduction of the "bold" style, and some font size increases too: I spoil you. I have decided to arrange the review in the format of "pros and cons"; so here goes:

Pro
The main facade is quite attractive.

Architecturally, I'm very much a traditionalist and tend towards classical and just plain old styles over the more modern look. That's not to say there's not a ton of terrific modern architecture out there, but Aberdeen in recent times has put up a lot of pretty drab anonymous cheap-looking buildings that look plastic and nasty against the traditional granite of Aberdeen. But I find the facade of Union Square bright and open, not overstated, and even a little grand. Despite my second photo here making it look a little dingy (it isn't, it's just my poor photography), from the inside I think the facade works even better, and makes Aberdeen's Station Hotel and surrounding buildings look quite impressive.

Pro
The Giant U

I like this giant U, just outside the facade (there's another one at the rear entrance car park). It's simple, bold and makes a statement, and looks good from a distance or close up.

But Con
A lamp post

But why, oh why, after all this well thought out design, did someone have to put a big lamp post right next to it? If the person who designed this feature would like to get in touch, I will buy you a drink if you will sit down and justify this to me. Instead, they should have put some nice ground lighting, to light up the U at night.

Pro
Masterful integration of the train and bus station into the shopping centre

Let this not be understated, this is the masterstroke of the whole enterprise, and the reason alone that justifies it. Visitors to Aberdeen by train or bus were for years greeted with sheer drabbery. The area was run down, unattractive and a very unwelcoming introduction. But now, the area has been made functional, attractive and a pleasant arrival. If you don't fancy the Station Hotel across the road, there's a (slightly too gigantic) Jury's Inn Hotel attached and, indeed, dominating the complex. What has happened is a general shift in Aberdeen city centre overall, making the station area more desirable and thus the areas between it and Union Street, for years pretty shabby, much more in the public attention; indeed, council funded regeneration work is already underway.

The above photo is of the side of the train station, which has been cleaned up, and I think looks good inside the main entrance of Union Square.

Con
Stupid Ugly Pillars

All this good work into creating a nice looking shopping centre, and the pillars, which should be a nice touch, look ghastly. Some cheap metal painted grey, already they look tattered but even brand new they added nothing of aesthetic value. I'm not asking for Greco-Roman columns (though wouldn't a "Doric Column" have been particularly appropriate to the area?) but just something that looks like it hadn't been left over from building a warehouse.

Pro
Attractive, spacious interior

Whoever designed Union Square has obviously taken some tips from other shopping centres. Nobody is asking for quirky charm in such a construct, rather a clean, bright, neutrally attractive space is requested, with a smattering of style, and this is what is delivered.

Con
Crap doors

In the front facade, there's only one pair of automatic doors, and already one is broken. This may amuse me when watching people walk into it, but I'm sure wasn't the desired effect. Otherwise, all the doors are opened by the old fashioned technique of "pushing". I hate such doors in public areas as it inevitably means I feel obliged to hold the door open for someone, awkwardly, and they feel obliged to thank me, awkwardly. But perhaps this is more an issue with me.

Pro
A concise history of Union Square, before and after.

Con
I'm afraid to see it because local "toughs" are camped out in the comfortable sofas.

Pro
Look at all these lovely shops!

Ok, fair enough, I've never even heard of "Zara", "Faith", "Cult" or "USC", but no doubt girls have. The Apple store has had legions of people literally ejaculating in their pants with excitement and though I'm not so enthusiastic, it at least means I only have to walk two minutes to complain when my iPod next breaks down. And "Next"... well, there's already a gigantic, brand new one in the Bon Accord Centre, which I went to once but found nothing to suit my tastes (this is not necessarily a criticism of Next), but I'm sure there are lots of girls in Aberdeen delighted to have the choice of two giant Next shops within five minutes of each other.

There are many other shops there, of course, but I've got better things to do with my day than take lots of photos of shops that you get in every high street in Britain, nay the World.

Pro
Food

And in case you'd exhausted Aberdeen's repertoire of fooderies, Union Square has added to the list. I've never heard of the unimaginatively but functionally named "Handmade Burger Co" but presume it's not a misleading title (how shocked we would all be if they only sold pre-packed shellfish). "Nando's" I have heard of, though never frequented, but it's another novelty to Aberdeen that has generated mass excitement; indeed, earlier at lunchtime I saw a queue of eager people gathered, just to gaze. "Costa Coffee"... lovely, I suppose, and in the same picture you can see a "Yo! Sushi!". I'm a big fan of sushi, albeit less so of gratuitous exclamation marks, and so should welcome its arrival, but it makes me feel very guilty, because there's already an excellent Korean-run sushi stall in the nearby Aberdeen market, but I've not been there in a year because I always feel under pressure to speak Korean there, and my Korean has rusted to embarrassing levels these days. But I couldn't look at myself in the mirror if I abandoned the private Korean enterprise in favour of the big chain... so perhaps I'll start paying young children to go to the Korean stall and buy a sushi selection for me. Or is that frowned upon these days?

Con
Boring layout

Ok, whisper it now, but there's one big problem with this much-anticipated new shopping centre: it's a little boring. After you enter the large main hall, you are faced with two choices: short corridor or long corridor. The short corridor pretty much goes direct to the bus station; it's not meant to be exciting so is straightforward and functional. The long corridor however is, effectively, the shopping centre. Union Square is just a corridor! You walk and you walk, and a few minutes later you reach the end, which is either to an outside car park, or Boots. It's really boring. Fair enough, there's two levels, but it's all just a linear A to B layout. I just feel there should be... something more. If it was at least a ring layout, you could go round and round, which would surely encourage shopping, but the current layout is somewhat underwhelming. And at the end of the corridor, there's no escalator, just a choice of stairs and lift. And only old or deeply unhealthy people take the lift in a shopping centre (and I don't want to share with them).

Pro
A cinema

There's a lovely new cinema as part of the shopping centre, which isn't of great use to me personally, but is terrific for all the youth and young lovers of Aberdeen.

Con, kind of
Lack of shops

As yet, there are still many empty spaces in Union Square, still to filled with shops or restaurants. To be fair, much of these are on the way and no doubt will make the place seem even more bustling.

But I do quite like this big poster in front of a non-shop - it acknowledges, perhaps unwittingly, the Aberdonian pessimism of something good actually happening, and the surprise when it actually - somehow - does. As if the idea of Aberdeen getting a new shopping centre was about as unlikely as seagulls ganging together to steal an entire ice-cream van... in fact, knowing the demonic nature of Aberdeen seagulls, this perhaps isn't so unlikely.

Pro
A lovely big car park, just near my flat!

Terrific, somewhere to park if I ever get round to buying another crappy car.

Con
Parking costs money

And it's not cheap. I think it's a little cheeky to ask shoppers to pay money for this kind of car park, but I suppose it is the city centre. And I suppose it does stop people like me parking their car in it for weeks.

Pro
The barriers aren't working yet!

And when they do, I might sabotage them in the night.

Pro
The regeneration

I'm just stating what's already been said, but it's worth re-emphasising. Union Square marks a major step in the initiation of the regeneration of Aberdeen city centre, which will hopefully eventually be followed by an improvement to Union Terrace gardens, pedestrianisation of at least some of Union Street, an improvement to the potentially lovely Castlegate and, most importantly, escalators installed in my Market Street flat: there's really an awful lot of stairs to climb, you know.

Con
Cheer up Aberdonians!

Leak

2009-11-01T20:38:00.002Z

Quite wet today outside (and in).

The Mystery

2009-10-22T16:52:00.001Z

It was my mother's birthday yesterday - an ever-youthful and enchanting 55 - and so I popped to Dingwall for the day to wish her well and to witness the ongoing ageing process. In the evening, the family went to Fortrose, where my brother now lives, and feasted in a bar/restaurant called "The Anderson". The food, and I can't overstate this, was excellent, and my starter dish of a savoury bread-and-butter "pudding" was perhaps one of the best starters I've ever had in my life. Complementing the meal was copious amounts of fine real ale, for which The Anderson is noted for its vast selection, and so you may imagine that by the end of the night nobody was entirely sober, except my poor sister who was driving - but as she's unemployed she has to do something worthwhile with her time. My mother had a couple of glasses of champagne and was all over the place.

It was earlier in the day, soon after picking me up from the train station, that my mother told me of her recent mysterious happening. And while myself and my practical and unsuperstitious family rule out supernatural explanations, we can't quite figure out the actual one. There are some possibilities, I suppose, but all seem too unlikely. But as Sherlock Holmes once said, "...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" and so no doubt an improbable explanation lurks somewhere.

As I may have mentioned a few times in the last while, my mother this year has embarked upon some fairly significant changes in her life. Mainly, quitting her job as a teacher, after many years of suffering at the hands of children, and selling her home of 25 years and buying a smaller, cosier house, still in Dingwall. It is this new house that is the scene of our mystery. For a few months now, it has been undergoing extensive renovation by my mother's manfriend, Richard. who she's been with for about a year. Richard is extremely handy and capable with a set of handtools, and has filled both a large van and garage with them: the garage he built himself, from scratch. He has installed a new bathroom, heating system, and has basically stripped the entire house back to a shell so as to reconstruct it as a fairytale home for his princess.

And, as we know, every good princess should have a lovely kitchen. The kitchen still has a way to go and is very bare and empty, with only a sink, a makeshift cooker and just the other day an old unit/worktop for basic food preparation. Nothing else at all. It may be a complete red herring, but the old worktop was until recently in the shed, but had originally been in the house before Richard stripped the kitchen back to nothing. As my mother needed somewhere to work, it was taken back into the kitchen.

And so the other day she was at the worktop, making a sandwich or cutting something, just a couple of hours after it had been put back there. And she noticed suddenly, on the bare concrete of the floor, was a small slip of paper. She picked it up, and had to put on her glasses to make out the small print. It was a newspaper cutting, a death notice from the "births, marriages and deaths" section of the local Press & Journal.

It was the death notice of my father, from ten years ago.

Needless to say, my mother was rather startled. Not upset or anything, but a little surprised, and wondering where on earth this cutting had come from. From the reverse of it, it was clear it was from the Aberdeen edition of the Press & Journal too, not the Highland edition Dingwall sells. My mother has her own cutting of the notice, but it's in a known location, from a Highland edition, and cut neatly whereas this cutting was a little haphazard. The slip of paper was in good condition, not faded or worn.

As the only change in the kitchen had been the introduction of the worktop, it has been put under most scrutiny. But nothing from that angle makes any sense. Perhaps the cutting had been stuck in a corner of the worktop and happened to flutter out, but there was no obvious corner for it to be stuck in, and it seems more likely it would have fluttered out when the worktop was originally ripped out and taken to the shed. But assuming it had been the case, why would the previous occupant of the house - an elderly woman who died this year in a nursing home - have had a cutting of a death notice of a man she didn't or barely knew (as my father was well-known in the community she surely knew he was, but they didn't know each other per se)? Perhaps, it has been suggested, she kept lots of such cuttings, and it just happened to be my father's that got wedged in the worktop... but all this leads to quite fantastic coincidence and seems too improbable, especially given it was an Aberdeen edition it was taken from.

So the worktop might be a red herring completely, in which case somebody else has knowingly or unknowingly left the cutting there. My mother has spoken to everyone who has been in the house recently, but all deny knowledge and seem as surprised as she is. For someone to have knowingly left the cutting there would seem very strange - it would be a vaguely sinister act, and my mother is far too pleasant a woman to have enemies, least of all anybody who has been in her house. So that would mean it had been left there unknowingly. Perhaps someone had the cutting in their wallet or purse and it had fallen out onto the floor. But it's a strange thing to keep in your wallet (a photo maybe, but not the death notice) and was in too good a condition to have been carried about regularly. And as I say, nobody my mother has spoken to has any idea where it came from.

My mother laughed at the suggestion of it being a "message from the grave", saying my father would never be so cryptic. Sherlock Holmes would eliminate this impossibility, and so it's being treated as a curious mystery to be solved, but so far all real-world solutions seem very unlikely. I think the level of coincidence of it being from the previous owner of the house is simply too great, and so I have to believe it's from someone who knows my mother. But then... how, and why?

Sherlock would surely figure it out, and perhaps the wise readers of this blog too, but I've obviously a bit too much of the Dr Watson about me and am a little mystified.

Eric the Charity Dog

2009-10-14T22:04:00.003Z

Look at this fellow, just a little bit outside of Marks and Spencers:

Ok, I know that's not really the best of photos. I'm not quite sure what my phone camera was up to. Let's try again, taken from a different angle (I'd make a terrific spy):

Can you see him? Here:

It seems you'll have to trust me on this, but he's a pleasant seeming fellow, honest and tries hard, but perhaps endures more than his fair share of ill luck. Yes, he's a little hapless. And he also happens to be one of these charity guys, who pounce upon you with colossal grins during high street shopping and use numerous forms of trickery to get you to pay £10 or £50 or whatever per month to some bunch of deserving unfortunates (or the homeless), and take a healthy commission.

As many of you may know, I'm not by nature an overwhelmingly sympathetic person, especially to these very irritating faux-charity grinners (and especially not to the homeless). But in the last couple of days, I've been feeling a little sorry for this fellow.

I'm a man of vast amounts of free time: my employers haven't forgotten about me but seem to not trust me on oil rigs these days so instead send me away on mini boat trips. This suits me fine, and I get to fill my free time with idle pursuits and routines, including pacing about my enormous flat, striking snooker balls with great force, wearing a selection of housecoats (five new bought in Edinburgh a few weeks ago), reading weighty tomes and melting candles on my coffee table. And also, daily strolls to Marks and Spencers at 11.50am to buy a chicken wrap and Belgian chocolate milk drink for my lunch.

This week, each lunch-time amble, I have seen this chap, let's call him Eric, looking a pained mixture of desperate and forlorn in the square outside Marks and Spencer. It's like watching an eager dog looking for a friend, and the sad look in his eyes when the world refuses to befriend him. While Eric's two colleagues, a squat dude with dreadlocks and one of a variety of "wacky" (but pretty) females, seem to successfully attach themselves to a series of shoppers, and bounce, chat, grin and laugh maniacally with them, poor Eric is alone. They are the fine pedigrees - Eric is the rancid mongrel. And nobody wants a scraggy, mangy, dirty dog.

But Eric isn't a bad dog; no. It's his very niceness that is his undoing. He doesn't grin, he just smiles nicely. While his colleagues force themselves upon others, like roaring hyenas on prey, Eric smiles politely, steps nervously towards a shopper, and accepts with grace when they ignore him or just shake their head. Then Eric looks down, looks sad, loses another piece of the essence of his being, before quickly bucking himself up, looking up, and stepping nervously towards another uncaring civilian.

And it's heartbreaking. I've seen him every day for three days, when both entering and leaving Marks and Spencers, and the frequent other times I pass by the square, only minutes from my flat. Perhaps that's twelve times in the last three days. And each day, Eric is alone, or being spurned, or today managed to have some very short conversations with a couple of people - but just old ladies who'll speak to anybody, until they realise they may have to part with their money.

I think a significant reason Eric has managed to tweak the usually inflexible strings of my heart is because his forlorn hopelessness in a job he is obviously unsuited to reminds me of myself. No, not in my job now, which makes me blush with joy every time I think of it, but in a godawful job I had many years ago. I've had a number of really terrible jobs in my time, such as working behind a safety-grill in a Haddows in Northfield, collecting glasses in the internationally-condemned Amadeus nightclub 10pm-3am Thursday to Sunday, and washing dishes in a place called Girvans in Inverness, with idiot chefs who enjoyed country music - but the very worst was with a company called Universal Energy.

Universal Energy deftly pounced on me one day when I was in the job centre. With promises of vast fortunes to be made, and remarkable incentives for those capable, I was caught like a greedy fish on a hook, or a 13-year-old groomed via the internet. With a host of other young males, I went on a three-day course in a glorious country mansion, enjoying free food and yet more promises of everlasting success. Only slight niggle at the back of my mind - what did the actual job entail?

It was door-to-door sales, trying to convert non-Hydro Electric customers back to using Hydro Electric. Maybe it would save the customers money, but only a matter of pounds each year. That was glossed over, of course. I was chucked out into some grim outskirt of Aberdeen, with a gigantic list of addresses to visit and hassle, and with a well-rehearsed conman routine ready.

For it was sheer trickery. To go to doors and ask people upfront to change their electricity company just doesn't work. It's not a good sales technique. Instead I had to masquerade as a kind of meter-reader, with a torch and clipboard, and a smooth patter to enable myself to get a foot in the door. Then, still under pretence of being "official", I would have to seem concerned about the reading, and then explain how by converting to Hydro Electric they could be making all kinds of savings.

I very quickly realised that I'm not a good salesman, and that the job was an absolutely miserable way to make a living. Stranded in the suburbs with nowhere to go but your next house, your next attempted con followed by rejection, and with hours and hours stretching ahead, it was awful, and completely exhausting. I only made one sale in two days, but many times got into people's homes. It was only then, when I'd gone through my patter, perhaps by now with a cup of tea in my hand, and brought out the papers to sign, including the direct debit section, did it dawn on my hosts quite why I was really there. I can remember the looks of their faces, and the many (mostly polite) excuses they made to quickly get rid of me.

Two incidents remain vivid. The first was during the first morning of on-field training, accompanying a guy called Alan, who was experienced and one of the best. He managed his way into the home of an old lady, everything was very friendly, and he'd totally fooled her into believing he was doing her a massive favour by getting her to sign these papers. But before she signed them, she'd have to check with her husband, she said, and he was out for the morning. Alan wasn't wanting to accept this, and his mood soured, and his attempts became more aggressive, and the lady - in her 80s and fairly frail - obviously wasn't comfortable. She didn't sign, fortunately, but Alan was clearly very annoyed, and insisted he would be round the next day when her husband was back (he didn't). It was very unpleasant.

The other occasion was alone, and into someone's home with the usual patter of lies. The chap, in his 40s or 50s, was very friendly, and had a very disabled son with Down's syndrome. He went upstairs to get something, leaving me with the son, who couldn't talk, for a few minutes. I attemped small talk anyway. When the father came down, he showed me something, his recent electricity bill I think, and I did my pretend ummering and erring and moved onto the subject of how he might be able to save some money, as I took out some papers. The penny immediately dropped with the guy, as he realised I wasn't a real guy from the electricity board, I was just a salesman. His face hardened, and he was visibly furious, absolutely furious. "Get out" he said bluntly. I hesitated, and he said again, "Get out, now."

The true salesman, in cold sales at any rate, has to be able to plough through life and its potential customers without pause for reflection, and certainly not regret or pity. I realised very soon into this job that I was never destined for sales, and especially not door-to-door with an electricity company, and quit on my third day and went back to doing dishes. A dirty dish never looked so welcome. And so when I see Eric, trying his best in a job he's clearly unsuited for, seeing his pathetic eagerness in the face of an uncaring public he's on commission to hassle, and knowing exactly how he's feeling as his very soul is slowly evaporating, I do indeed feel very, very sorry for him.

And feel very, very relieved that these days I can drink coffee on a boat for a living, and studiously avoid people like Eric during my free time at home.

Bedspread

2009-10-11T21:04:00.004Z

Tip for the day: when drunk, do not take a plastic cup full of vegetable curry to bed with you.

Vanguard!

2009-10-05T18:10:00.001Z

I am on the Vanguard.

That is, the Caledonian Vanguard, somewhere west of Shetland, bobbing up and down not quite as violently as the last few days, but still enough to send me careering high speed down a corridor and into a wall if I neglect to remember my surroundings.

I've been here since Wednesday, when I strode manfully on to this large stand-by safety vessel on yet another "data" mission. This is one of these jobs where, in essence, I chuck a big lump of metal into a random point in the sea, and then make some prayers. If these prayers are heard, I will not only have located the correct location, via GPS, in a seemingly infinite stretch of waves, but my sonar will be speaking to another sonar 500m underwater. I'm a deeply irreligious man, as you may know, but my prayers often seem to be answered, so I can only imagine that God thinks I'm "pretty",

The boat I'm on, the Vanguard, is actually rather nice. My experience of these kind of vessels might not be authoritive, but I've been on enough to know that I don't fancy being a regular seafarer. My usual experience is of relatively clean ships, with friendly enough crews, and surprisingly good food, but always there's an absolute lack of contact with the outside world. Save perhaps a satellite phone, communication is nil - no TV, no regular phone, no internet. You have the sense you could sail back into a post-apocalyptic land and say "Oh, when did that happen?" Cut-off from the normal world may seem quite appealing if, say, you're alone on a lovely island with a long-limbed lady, but on a battered boat with some brusque and burly gentlemen the appeal is not so great.

But this boat is set up for TV and internet, so I've been able to watch the football, the news, and flick through the six channels wondering why nothing is on. The internet means I'm still in touch with all my beloveds, and that work can repeatedly contact with me yet more demands and stern orders... it's ok, I can just pretend the connection is "down" again.

I also have a one-man room, which is a luxury never before experienced in my three plus years of oilfield experience. As you can no doubt imagine, I have been spending a considerable amount of time fully naked. Yes, fully.

The crew of the boat are a mixture of either slightly depressed/autistic or Rangers supporters, but are not entirely hostile and have been perfectly helpful and cooperative. The captain is great though. A pleasant and well-spoken English gent, it seems as though he should be sailing a small yacht with his delightful wife and has just somehow strayed onto this big boat. He's been ever so friendly and eager to make sure our stay is comfortable, and is a most genial host, but I can't help but feel it's a great shame he's not quietly enjoying a Mediterranean sunset at sea with a glass of wine, because on this big muscular supply vessel he seems awfully confused. He wanders about with a cup of tea, swaying masterfully with the boat's rocking, and seems rather baffled about what's going on. I don't doubt his ability on the sea, and would trust him implicity with our yacht should I be his wife, but his grasp of anything resembling modern technology leaves him stranded. Even - or perhaps especially - email. A simple request for him to email the nearby FPSO (a kind of rig) for a Permit to Work (required for our sonar stuff) became a jumbled world of complexity. I would compare it to trying to explain to my grandfather how to operate a computer, except my grandfather is quite good at computers these days. "How do I send this thing?" or "Where did that file save to?" followed by a ten minute trawl through folders looking for a file, the name of which he's forgotten. Or the most ponderous possible scrolling up and down looking for an email sent two days prior, or the horrors of watching him trying to send an attachment. In one sense, it's quaintly charming, in another it's tear-your-hair-out frustrating, especially when it delays your time-limited work by an hour-and-a-half.

It also becomes somewhat concerning when you watch three other crew members gather round to show him how to operate a console that sets the ship's location, and he keeps exclaiming "Oh!" while pressing the wrong thing.

Nevertheless, on Friday and Saturday, our allocated days of work, we correctly got on location and, after a small delay, were able to commence work. When I say "we" I mean myself and my colleague, known here and elsewhere as The Mud Shark. The Mud Shark is not a typical colleague in the sense of some "youth" I've got to order about and discipline, and teach spanner grips or how to photoshop a nice pressure graph; no, The Mud Shark is a very experienced software engineer who designed most of the stuff we run, and was also the first ever employee of the company! Crikey. So I could trust him with all the fancy computer stuff, while I dealt with the seas, tightened a few nuts and bolts, and wrestled with the crew.

The details of the next 36 hours have been saved for the official report and job log, which you must trust me doesn't belong on a jaunty blog such as this, but featured toils, tribulations, but ultimately was successful enough. Initially, weather conditions were gentle, but getting the actual data was troublesome and took all kinds of tricks and shenanigans to acquire. By Friday night, the weather was picking up and by Saturday morning the boat was a-rocking all over the place, with crazy waves, and 50 knot winds (I don't know mow much a knot is exactly, but 50 of them are lots). The boat was straining to stay in position but our little 20kg sonar held out impressively, though I was in constant fear of a wire snapping and it being lost forever. One costs about £20,000 - that's almost a month's wage!

Eventually, and after getting to radio the nearby FPSO to demand they "turn off the gas lift - NOW", we started getting lots of lovely data, all of it in fact, and just before the Vanguard actually turned over and sank, we got everything set and were able to move from location. In howling winds and waves, the sonar was retrieved, and I was able to sleep for fitfully for almost 12 hours straight.

And since then, it's just been life at sea and life at leisure. The work is done, so now I'm just waiting to go home. The boat has a few little weather-dependent jobs to do, but weather is fairly calm right now and it seems to be doing them. If that goes ahead, then I hope to back in Aberdeen by Wednesday. And in true sailor fashion, I intend to get blasted on rum and sweet-talk a few shady ladies into compromising deals. So no change there then.

Human Nature Part 2

2009-09-23T11:50:00.001Z

A couple of months back I wrote a lamentation on human nature, after a few unfortunate run-ins and encounters. The conclusion was grim: humanity is a dirty dog full of fleas, biting you whether you pet it or kick it - or something like that.

Fortunately, every dog is washable, and human nature likewise can veer from dirty, yappy brute to nice, clean mutt. And today I had an example of the good of human nature (and also my own absent-mindedness).

I was on the way to Marks and Spencers to buy a chicken tikka wrap and Belgian chocolate drink, and passed by the Clydesdale Bank machines to withdraw some money, £40 to be precise. I did this and strolled on, and was a good 50-foot or more away when I heard a woman's voice - "Excuse me! Excuse me!" I turned to see a lady chasing after me. "You left this money in the cash machine," she said, and handed me my £40. I was too dumbstruck to say anything but "Crikey" and "Thank-you" as I accepted the money gratefully, and wondered quite where my head had been for the last minute.

So that was nice, and awfully honest, and reaffirms my faith that mankind isn't entirely depraved or sinister.

One day I may become a priest, and I'll use the story to illustrate something. But mostly I'll just talk about housecoats and owls.

Updates

2009-09-13T16:20:00.009Z

Life being sporadic and episodic rather than a novelesque crescendo, there are lots of bits and pieces, whims and fancies, and songs and dances that don't actually go anywhere: they just happen. Thus too this blog is full of pointless incident, maybe fun but without an overriding story arc. Perhaps one day all these loose strands will spectacularly pull together and I can have a lovely Disney adventure written about my life, but for now I will update some of the above flotsam and jetsam that have drifted by in the last year.

Laser Eyes

I am very delighted with my new eyes. After years of shoving plastic discs into my corneas, or hanging a twisted contraption over my ears, I can now wake each morning and enjoy each day with crystal clear vision free of apparatus. I think this has been just about the best money I've ever spent - except for my £20 snooker table, of course. Sometimes I get surges of happiness when I think about it.

Stocks and Shares

When I last mentioned this, in March or April, I was down about £5. Well, I am delighted to tell you that I have been leading the recent market recovery, as I'm now £30 in profit. I've made a 51.71% and £12.93 profit on Caspian Holdings, a 27.58% and £13.49 profit on the mysterious NCC company (bought because they share my initials), and a 21.78% and £3.92 profit on Tullow, whom I worked with recently in Ghana and were very nice people. Additionally, a few months ago I put a whopping £97.91 into Marks and Spencer, because I often buy my lunch there, and it's now worth £103.60. As you can see, if all this continues indefinitely, one day I'll be a millionaire.

Varwell

Astonishingly, my good friend Varwell is still engaged, defying all known odds. He's due to get married - forever apparently - in just two months. At this rate, I may actually have to write a speech.

Housecoats

A while ago, you may recall I wrote an educational and informative post about housecoats. Well, I am proud to announce that two more housecoats have been purchased since, both gentleman's housecoats. Here they are:

This is the Conservative Gentleman's Housecoat. A sensible and resolutely non-flashy number, it nevertheless courts controversy by having a number of "outdoors" attributes, such as a more rigid fit. It goes particularly well with roast beef and the Mail on Sunday.

The Gentleman's Speckled Housecoat. At first glance, a straightforward housecoat-in-black, but upon closer inspection one is astonished to find it speckled in white thread! It's as though Jackson Pollock himself designed a housecoat. This is a frightfully dapper jacket, with traditional fit yet outrageous patterning. Not one for the faint hearted!

Here is a closer look at the speckled design.

And finally, a sad tale. Those who know me well may recall distant rumoured murmurs of a yellow housecoat, swathed in legend and shocking scandal. For this housecoat has been worn on more than one occasion out of the house! "When is a housecoat not?" the famous question goes - "Out of the house," is a typical response, so this housecoat - the Gentleman's Controversial Yellow Housecoat - has its fair share of detractors. But through all that, it remains a housecoat. Alas, fly too close to the sun and you get burnt, and this was the fate of the Yellow housecoat. While being worn as part of a sailing trip two years ago, it got soaked in sea salt and red wine, and was truly a state. I put it in a cupboard for a year and then decided to take it to the dry cleaners, but for some reason it was a little damp and they said they couldn't do it. So I thought, "Hell, just shove it in the washing machine." Delicate ladies, avert your eyes, for this was the result:

A most woeful sight. I should really put it in the bin, but I just haven't the heart.

Here's the housecoat in happier days:

Still At Home

You may recall that I have a job. As I've been home for all but ten days (plus a holiday) since June, it doesn't really feel like that right now. Unfortunately, my peace has been disturbed as I have to go to Montrose tomorrow. Montrose! Montrose is a town with lots of anagrams, but I'll let you work them out for yourselves. Anyway, I only have to go there for three days, and I can come home at night, thank God. I'm there to do some training, but this actually means I'll just sit in a classroom and be confused. Fortunately, I am exceptionally good at looking thoughtful and interested - a skill that has served me well in my 30 years.

Sister

I have a wayward sister who, I believe I mentioned, last year quit her respectable medical career to become a waster, dabbling in a hedonistic world of sleaze and filth. She returned from travelling in foreign countries not long ago and has since been avoiding looking for employment, and just yesterday moved to Edinburgh to continue avoiding it (and to avoid helping my mother get her new house ready, but this is very understandable). Anyway, my sister has generated a new blog, which I've linked to on the right. I take no responsibility for the poor grasp of spelling within.

Matt

Finally, the ladies have all been clamouring for an update on Handsome Matt, who I visited recently in Australia. Was he still handsome, they all wondered, did he still have his charming way? Ladies, have no fear, you are not to be disappointed. Matt has aged well over the last four years, and is not yet fat or bald:

(he is however as cheesy as ever, but this never seemed to bother the ladies)

Goodbye Mail On Sunday

2009-09-13T10:31:00.006Z

Since the age of 17, upon starting university and living away from home for the first time, I've had a routine every Sunday. An unremarklable routine, but a routine nonetheless: I would get up, buy newspapers, and two bars of chocolate (one segmented, one whole), make two cups of coffee, and listen to pleasant, soothing Sunday morning music while devouring all of the above. The routine hasn't been absolutely rigid - if very hungover, I'd replace one cup of coffee with lots of orange juice, and sometimes crisps have replaced the chocolate - and it has been very interrupted during my two years in Korea, my last three years frequently away, and during my Year of the Castle, whereby I'd invariably be too intoxicated to stand by Sunday morning. But overall, for 13 years, Sunday morning would be a gentle time of music, coffee, chocolate and reading.

And the newspapers? The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Express.

The reason for these little-England choices were habit. Growing up, these were the papers my family bought each Sunday, along with the woefully mundane Sunday Post. I've never figured out quite why my parents bought these papers, as my parents were always very friendly and open-minded, but perhaps it too was habit. And so it was a habit that spilled over into my adulthood.

Well, I binned the Sunday Express many, many years ago, as I got fed up hearing yet more tales about dead Diana. Every issue seemed to be another Diana Tribute Special. After Diana died, they seemed to give up on actual news reporting, except for the occasional forced outrage over immigrants (which the Mail did better anyway). I realised that I was reading the same Sunday Express every week, so it was quietly retired in my routine and never replaced.

But the Mail perservered. It may have been rabidly anti-Europe, anti-foreigner, both pro- and anti-Diana, pro-Tory, paranoid about any form of surveillance, obsessed with "Broken Britain", scared of Obama, and pretty much against anything not set in a quaint English village of retirees, but it had the occasional interesting story, a good magazine, a decent review section and once had a double page spread of an owl! Also, I enjoyed appalling my friends, who would buy papers like The Observer, or the Sunday Times, or the Independent on Sunday, or whatever, who would be astonished and horrified that a man such as myself, who walked with the gays, the coloureds and the sick (just like Jesus), could buy a paper holding such right-wing views.

Of course, buying a paper with right-wing views doesn't mean I have to share the views. I'm very capable of reading something and disagreeing with it. It's easy to sit back and read lots of opinions you agree with, it's much more challenging to read and think about a whole bunch of stuff you believe is absolute falsehood, or at least heavily biased. But let's not pretend, that wasn't why I've been reading the Mail on Sunday for the last 13 years. It really, and quite simply, was habit.

And now it's time to break the habit.

You see, the Mail on Sunday, is unutterable garbage. Useless, awful, dull garbage. It's not prime garbage like the Sun or the Star, which still manage to at least be entertaining, have punchy headlines and stories, some quite good sports sections, and very often a half-naked lady; no, the Mail on Sunday is tired and grey and worn-out with outrage. I almost never read any of the stories any more - they are the print equivalent of a fat 50-year old offshore worker ranting about something... I just shut off completely until the noise goes away. The stories don't engage or entertain and they certainly don't inform. I don't take the fat 50-year old tosser out for weekly drinks, so I've begun to wonder why I entertain the Mail on Sunday (only 26 years old, as it happens) in my home each week.

Still, for years I've skimmed the stories, they aren't really the central selling point. What did amuse me more were some of the columnists. Columnists are supposed to be challenging and/or interesting, and for a while they were. But they seem to be on auto-pilot too. Even Peter Hitchens, a man filled with great hate for everything in Britain and especially outside of Britain, although occasionally confused about Muslims as they show religious devoutness, something atheist Britain now lacks - ah, if only he didn't have to live in the same country as them - even he seems to be dashing out his page late on Saturday night from a pre-set list of evils (Britain, Europe, Obama, all politicians, immigrants of course, windfarms, the modern world, lesbians, iPods, cyclists, schools). Though in fairness, he did have a rant about UNESCO and masturbation today. The other columnists have disappeared into a smug world of self-satisfaction that is evidently of great delight to themselves, but not to any readers.

The Sports section is awful. Perhaps in England it's better, but in an attempt to muster a few Scottish readers, they just feature page upon page about Rangers and Celtic. I used to think their reviews were ok, but have realised there's no depth of coverage: the music just seems to be Simply Red, and I don't think I've ever read a book they've reviewed. David Mellor gives every classical music album 5 stars. They have a dire quiz section, including a bafflingly inane chess puzzle which every single week features a single black King and pawn vs about ten white pieces: guys, this is not a puzzle, the game is long over. The letters are all recycled outrage, the only good cartoon (Calvin and Hobbes) they retired over a decade ago, and while I appreciate the gesture of the free CDs, I don't think I'm their target audience (there's been not one piece of German minimal techno yet).

Basically, I buy this paper every week and no longer actually read it.

Therefore, as from next week, the Mail on Sunday is banished from my home, along with its small-minded, paranoid, petty, smug ways.

So, next week, I'm going to enter into a new world and buy a new and different Sunday newspaper. No longer will I have to hang my head in shame when handing over my money. I haven't decided which yet (not the Sunday Express), perhaps I'll give each a trial run, or just rotate the selection, but I am sure that at the very least I'll have some material I can actually read instead of throwing to the ground after fifteen minutes.

The Drugs Don't Work

2009-09-12T23:03:00.001Z

Pub karaoke is not kind to the residential neighbours.

Korea And 90th Birthdays

2009-09-07T20:16:00.003Z

Well, from the winter of Australia, it's back to the summer of Scotland - and the absolutely torrential downpours that entails. While I have so much good to say about this small and insecure nation, I'm afraid sometimes the weather plays the trump card and I have to admit a degree of sympathy for those that flee and live forever in warmer climes. I'm in the lucky position that I get frequent jaunts off to sunny conditions, but to live forever in Aberdeen's varying shades of grey must become wearisome - especially when from these moody clouds is unleashed a neverending torrent of rain, as witnessed last week.

It rained so heavily that at least two of my flats started to leak. Yes, two. Poor me indeed.

Before I re-entered this world of rain and gloom and Aberdonian stoicism, there was the small matter of Korea to deal with. My flight home from Australia when via Korea, and as I spent two very influential years there in 2004 and 2005, I thought it would be pleasant to stop over for a couple of days, to reacquaint myself with the place, and to catch up with some friends I'd not seen for almost four years. Four years! That's longer than some people have been alive. It's also long enough for me to have completely forgotten all but the most elementary Korean that I spent about 18 months studying daily while there. So I was excited, but a little nervous.

It was only two days there, in my old city of Daegu, and in the sticky August heat that settles in that mountain-ringed city of 2.5 million (it's considered a fairly small city by Korean standards). But it was enough to immerse myself in the frantic bustle, catch up with friends, and to reacquaint myself with Korean pornography as shown on the motel TV. Korean pornography is hindered by strict laws that seem to insist the gentleman always wear a big pair of underpants. The lady is allowed to take hers off, but only if nothing rude is shown. There really is very little to recommend about Korean pornography, unless you're very new to the genre and want to dip your toe in gently.

On one of the few moments I managed to drag myself away from the motel TV, I met with my old Korean teacher for a coffee then a meal. I say "old" in the sense of from times past, not as in ageing, an issue she was very sensitive about. 33 years old in Western terms, but 35 in Korean age, she lamented her lack of a husband and the lack of suitable men in Daegu. I dismissed her lamentations as those of a bitter, ageing crone, but she said "look!" and asked me to find a suitable man for her. So we looked for a while from the 1st floor window of the coffeeshop we were in, as loads and loads of people bustled by, and by golly if she wasn't right. Barely a man at all, let alone a suitable one - the streets were filled with young, pretty girls! Pretty, pretty girls! And that's why I love Korea! I thought to myself.

We were joined by a friend of hers, a fellow Korean teacher I many years ago in my Korean blog criticised as being goblin-like, and now feel very guilty about, for she was utterly lovely, if distinctly small. She impressed me by being familiar with Azerbaijan, due to having a student from there, and from a recent one-week trip to neighbouring Uzbekistan, which at the very least got marks for being quirky.

All of the above conversation was done in Korean, a real test for me after having not spoke it for years, but to my delight a surprising amount came back to me, albeit in patchy, child-like form, and with great help from my Korean teacher who has a near-psychic understanding of what I'm about to say. We remained at the coffeeshop till early evening, whereby we joined up with a fellow teacher from my second hagwon in Korea, Ho-Jung. Ho-Jung used to be an innocent, naive even, Korean girl back then, but in the interim had spent a year living in the chaos of Cairo, and was eminently more worldly for it. Also, her English was pretty good, which meant I could relax from my babbling Korean for a short while, and she could also clarify to the others quite what the hell I'd been talking about for the last few hours. We all ate a meal, and the other two retired, while I had a few more drinks with Ho-Jung.

The next day I languished for a while in my motel room - it was just too hot to go outside for very long - but in the evening met with the aforementioned bunch, plus Ho-Jung's friend (and a fellow teacher for a while at the same hagwon, i.e. kind of a school) Im-Soon, and later on we were also joined by Dave, a name much easier to say. I tried to be flash and pay for everything with my credit card, but it was declined! Damn you Egg Visa (I later learnt they had suspended it for suspicious purchases - Australia plus Korea plus a crazy binge on amazon seemed to set off an alert).

And that was that. A very brief visit to two years of my life. Moreso than most of my life, Korea seems like a dream, because it was two years utterly removed from anything else I've done, and since I've been back in Scotland there has been very little I can relate to it. There are very few Koreans in Aberdeen, very little Korean influence here, and I barely know anyone who has ever been there. So although it was a hugely influential period of my life - transforming me from a shambolic shambling wreck that lived in an addled haze to the wholesome gentleman you see before you now - it is a period in isolation from the rest of my years. So to briefly be immersed in that alternative existence was strange, but great.

It's a curious fact that when I left Korea, in February 2006, I had sincerely intended to return for one final year that July. But in May I stumbled, quite without intent, into the job I have now, and it was all change. But things could have been, and very nearly were, very different. For better or worse? I don't know. I have more money now, and hundreds of flats, but oh, there were so many pretty girls back then. Pretty, pretty girls. Now I'm surrounded by burly, hairy men.

Anyway, I got back in Aberdeen on Sunday morning, just in time for a party: my grandfather's 90th. My grandfather is a quite remarkably spritely and inspirational nonagenarian, who for over a year had been meticulously planning a grand 90th birthday party, shrugging off a diagnosis of cancer along the way (since getting it, he's never seemed so healthy). I had no idea what to expect from a party organised by a 90 year old, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. Loads of people had turned out, albeit a few who I think may actually have been dead, and the afternoon was a feast of wine, food, tales and japes, dancing and chatting up old ladies. Ooh, there were a few hotties. For the simple fact that it was a rare convergence of family made it an enjoyable occasion, but it was a fun event in itself, listening to rambling old folk, trying to injure my mother on the dancefloor, appreciating the astonishing music (think Casio keyboard) and getting a chance to wear my swish suit for the first time this year.

Since then, it's been back to Aberdeen life, featuring mostly dinner and Playstation FIFA 2000 at Green's, reading weighty tomes, drinking steadily and drinking arguably too much on Friday while reuniting with Kitchen Mark and his honeybuns French Claire, and wearing a selection of housecoats (classic gentleman's and a new as-yet unnamed one the two favourites). Midweek I popped back to Dingwall as part of the ongoing efforts to help my mother move house. This time was the actual clearing of her house, with the keys ready to be handed over, and a wave goodbye to the Christie home since about 1983. In effect, this involved 10% work, 90% trying to sedate my panicking mother ("What if it falls through at the last minute?", "Where will my cat live?", "What if the river overflows and floods my new house?")

And that's about it... EXCEPT! Well, I have to be discreet here, as there are legal implications, and things are at a very early stage. But, you may recall a month or so ago, my run-in with a character at a train station in London, in which I lent him a never-to-be-returned £80, and I happened to put his details up. Well, I've since been contacted by two different people, both of whom have had run-ins with him. This guy appears to be a professional scam artist, with a few tricks up his sleeve. But don't underestimate the power of the internet, or the determination of the two people that have contacted me (or this guy's apparent idiocy), as we've got some leads. I'd like to say a bit more, but will hold back for now, but needless to say that for me it will be £80 well spent if I can see this guy: a. Imprisoned, or b. Getting his arms sawn off. Check back on my "Human Nature" entry if you want more details.

My Week In Bondi

2009-08-25T04:21:00.003Z

And so, after a week strolling the streets of Sydney, it is my final day in this land of perpetual summer. It is, technically, winter here, but as every day but one has featured blue skies and sunshine far outstripping Aberdeen's summer best, I feel winter is somewhat of a misnomer. "Lo-summer" would be a better term for the season.

Aside from a couple of days spent admiring the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, and enjoying the very relaxed and attractive area around them, this has been a trip more of relaxing than of sight-seeing. I've been staying with Handsome Matt - don't worry ladies, his looks haven't faded one bit in the last four years - and he lives in Bondi, just fifteen minutes walk from the famous beach. So a couple of daytimes have simply involved wandering down there, having a large all-day breakfast, hoping to see a topless girl sunbathing (failing, sadly), and then meandering back to Matt's to take it easy after a hard day. One time I took a longer walk, all the way to some distant and very large cemetary, filled with Sydney notables of a century before, just about all of whom seemed to die before age 50.

Matt has lost none of his charm, but alas my visit has captured him at the tail end of a nasty bout of whooping cough, of all things. This has left him in a weakened state, and at fairly frequent intervals he starts coughing in a very feminine way. It sounds very silly. Illness, I feel, is bearable when it's visible and ghastly and elicits sympathy from those around; alas, when the discomfort is manifested in a girly cough no-one can take seriously, well, what's the point in being ill?

His cough is so puny that even Matt's children have deeper, more robust coughs. Yes, that's been the shock of the trip: Matt has children. Kind of, at least. He's hooked up with a NZ divorcee called Gina, who has a big apartment and two children. All are very nice, and I've seen quite a bit of them over the week. A number of evenings have been spent at hers, supping wine and dining, and on Saturday we all went out as a pseudo-extended family to a Korean restaurant. I encouraged the daughter (7 years old) to try kimchi: she started crying and I don't think has forgiven me yet.

Despite Matt being ill, the good news is that he now drinks alcohol (for a whole year during our time in Korea he didn't drink... I wasn't very impressed). By all accounts, he enjoys considerable amounts, although his illness has curtailed any heavy sessions. In fact, the heaviest was last week, when I'd just arrived, and we ploughed through a case of 24 lagers. Since then it's been moderate, well, mostly, I've still tried to drink at every opportunity. Saturday night was one such: we went down to a large bar with a number of Matt's friends and watched a surprisingly entertaining game of rugby between Australia and NZ, the latter winning by just one point. Then we ended up at a party, where my memory becomes distinctly hazy, but Matt assures me we had excellent banter. All I can remember is giving some shockingly sub-standard chat to a pretty but vacant little blonde girl, and stealing a bottle of wine.

I've enjoyed my time in Bondi. It's a pleasant place to be. Obviously and evidently very wealthy, the chic apartments and ultra-modern shopping centres tell a story of money. The place feels safe and open, and although architecturally modern still retains a definite charm - no two buildings are alike. It's the sort of place I could live in, not forever or even that long, but for a year or two. The quality of life is good, if expensive, and the pleasant sunshine is uplifting.

So, one final evening, and then a flight tomorrow morning to Korea. Where the frantic Asian-style mania will be quite a shock to the system after a week of gentle idling.

The Opera House

2009-08-22T00:03:00.006Z

We could have had this:

Or this:

Or perhaps this:

Or even this:

But instead, fortunately for the world, for Australia, and especially Sydney, we got this:

And it is magnificent.

In terms of sheer iconic status, the Sydney Opera House is up there. It may not be quite the premier league status of the Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building, but it's still a gobally recognised building that gives an instant identity to its city or country. A city needs "its building" and Sydney has its Opera House. But fame is a tricky mistress, and realities can often fail to live up to the hype. Does the Opera House pass the test?

In short, yes, when viewed from any direction, from a distance: it's beautiful, original, distinct and in absolute harmony with its surroundings. But it lets itself down a little when close-up, inside (from the limited visit I had) is dark and dingy and very dated, and even on the outside the style looks a little drab close up (after having tiled a few bathrooms, I can't help but be unexcited by the Opera House tiles). But the structure is incredible, the building has a real presence, and the flocks of tourists testify to its popularity.

So, impressed and inspired by the structure, I even gleefully parted with my money and bought this:

Tin Goose

2009-08-16T18:07:00.003Z

Hello from The Tin Goose, in London Heathrow's Terminal 1, where I am enjoying a pint of London Pride and am in the process of digesting a full English breakfast.

The Tin Goose is fast becoming one my favourite pubs because, though it would fail in the normal world, in the world of airports it is a haven of good beer and hearty food. It's usually busy, but I can always find an agreeable seat (today I'm nestled in the corner next to a power socket) and unlike its rival pub in Terminal 1, it has some nice big windows so that I can see the blue sky and large planes land. Having been through Terminal 1 so many times in the last year or so, it's become a kind of regular, and always a nice way to spin out some time between flights.

In this case, I'm not between flights, rather I'm pre-flight. My flight leaves in about two hours, but I arrived ridiculously early to ensure I got aisle seats for the long haul ahead - about 11 hours to Incheon, Korea, a few hours there, then another 11 hours or so to Sydney, Australia. Having suffered the indignity of a "middle" seat on a recent flight, there was no way I was tolerating it for two long stints this time. Plus, I quite fancied a few pints of London Pride at the Tin Goose.

I arrived in London yesterday afternoon, and was reunited soon after with two old friends known from Korea, Mary, who was visited not long ago in Berlin, and was visiting London, and JuHyeon, who has lived in London for a few years now, married to a New Zealander. With my snappy new clothes bought just a few days ago, both girls looked suitably glamorous by my side, and this was complemented further some hours later (and after a delightful Korean meal in JuHyeon's garden) by a further sweet-faced beauty, another Korean, a friend of JuHyeon's with the not-dissimiliar name of JiYeon, in a bar for some pre-club drinks. Three pretty lovelies and Nev: gosh.

I took a number of photos, but unfortunately left the camera USB cable in my checked-in bag, so you'll just have to imagine.

We thrust a number of drinks down our throats and I tried to charm JiYeon with my utterly useless grasp of Korean, which after years of non-use has crumbled into total rubbishness. Fortunately JiYeon was a lightweight and was drunk easily, so seemed to think my babbling idiocy was acceptable. We stood in a very long queue for a club for some time, watching a group of Spanish get enraged with a group of ghastly, tacky blondes and their stripey-shirted beaus, before finally managing to get into the club - £20! - and realise we were surrounded by hordes of ghastly, tacky blondes and their stripey-shirted beaus. When I say the word "awful", I want you to ponder it a while. A-w-f-u-l. In fact, the club - Pacha was its name - had a few virtues, such as being a pretty nice venue and... hmm, one virtue anyway, but was let down by the rampacked masses, the insanely expensive drinks (£5 for a bottled beer) and the muscular but expressionless thump of workmanlike bore-techno. The clientele were of a low class, and if the doors had been bolted and a fire turned the venue into a collapsed mess of charcoal bodies, I honestly feel the newspapers could accurately headline the story "No Great Loss".

Still, I did a little boogie with my three pretty ladyfriends and was glad they were too polite or drunk to critique my style, and we didn't hang about in this club-of-dead-souls too long, though it was still about 1am when we left. We then went on a wild goose chase for some distant, mythical club before realising that in the battle between tiredness vs desire to dance, tiredness was the victor, and I was relieved to get some sleep.

Thus catches me up till now, as today has simply been a nice lazy day at JuHyeon's, eating more Korean food, and enjoying the sunshine. In about half a day, I'll be in Korea, but only for a few hours (on the return leg I'm taking a couple of days there), and in about 24 hours I'll arriving in Sydney, and meeting Handsome Matt. He has chucked out his flatmate and broken up with his girlfriend especially for the occasion. Well done, Matt.

Clarity In Dingwall

2009-08-13T15:11:00.002Z

Well, last week, as anyone who has approached my company will well know, I had laser surgery to my eyes. Obviously having major surgery to a vital organ is a traumatising experience for even the burliest of men and so I was laid low for over two hours following the five-minute operation, but I can happily report that I have recovered and am in full and magnificent health. Plus, my eyesight is now sharp and clear, and I am seeing the world in a clarity not experienced for over half my life. I have spent the last week making numerous wisecracks about my new eyes (laser beams, zoom-ins, one eye blinded, Superman II, that guy from X-Men) so I will spare the reader having to smile patiently and will skip these jokes, which I imagine have been made by everyone who has ever had laser surgery.

To celebrate my astonishing vision I have spent the last week visiting loved ones, to see their faces clearly for the first time in a decade-and-a-half without artifical aid. This took the form of an extended trip back home to Dingwall, where all kinds of changes and upheavals are taking place. Mainly this is my mother, going wild in her advancing years by quitting her job, selling her house, buying a new house, and forcing her poor manfriend to completely rebuild the new house, seemingly from scratch. Poor manfriend.

In fact, as my ever-young mother claims, the manfriend has been the main instigator of the start-from-scratch attack on her new home. With his five lovely but boisterous Labradors, who spend their time jumping gleefully and crapping on the lawn, he has ripped out absolutely everything from the new house, leaving it a shell, and my mother in a perpetual state of panic. The new house is a charming little house just next to a railway crossing in Dingwall, and historically was inhabited by a railwayman who, four times a day, would manually close the gates by the track to allow the train to pass. More recently it was inhabited by an old and (according to my brother - "Staff Nurse Christie" - who witnessed her in the old folks' hospital) extremely irascible lady, who finally died after a long and ill-tempered life. Her legacy was a house of leaks and breaks and grotesque decor: "rip it out" was the only option. The manfriend has also elected to build a garage, from scratch, in the garden.

So a fair amount of my time back in Dingwall was spent labouring in this new house, and tackling rowdy dogs. I ripped out all the skirting boards, pulled up and moved a hell of a lot of paving slabs, and dug three ditches for the garage foundations. Digging ditches, I have discovered, is not altogether easy, and I don't recommend it as a gentle pastime. Instead, you may prefer my mother's dainty tasks: choose bathroom suites, find nice taps, and worry about stuff. And cook me food, of course.

All this manly labour filled much of my time - last Wednesday to the Monday just passed - but I managed to successfully find time each evening to get quite drunk. The Wednesday was the pub quiz in Dingwall's favourite pub, the Mallard. With my sister(unemployed) and her friend (between employment), we sunk some hefty pints and entered the pub quiz, team name "Morag Is Still Unemployed". My hopes weren't high, to be honest, as girls, despite their many qualities, don't usually seem to be too handy at pub quizzes, but to our astonishment we won the whole thing - £60, not bad at all. It was a good effort by all, but in fairness the marking system, which involved swapping papers with the neighbouring team, helped us somewhat as our neighbouring team were really, really drunk and generous (having two girls in the team paid off after all). And our opponents were just drunk Dingwall locals and "youths".

The following evening was a barbecue at my uncle's, which I expected to be drunken but was only tipsy, perhaps because a day of labour had fatigued me. Or perhaps because I ate far, far too much.

On Friday, I visited Inverness and met up with Varwell and his fiancee Nicole, with Green joining us a little later. Varwell is getting married in November, and rather wildly has chosen myself, Green and Kitchen Mark as co-best men, which in addition to us having to remember to important stuff, also means we have to arrange Varwell's stag night. Because Varwell sometimes scours these pages looking for mentions of his name I won't reveal to you the stag night we are preparing for this good Christian boy, but I wil just drop a few subtle hints: Europe, party hats, multi-entry Bertha, arrest, trauma, slideshow for best man speech.

I took a break from ditch-digging on Saturday, to climb a hill in tribute to an old friend, alongside Green and another from back-in-the-day, Martin. I went woefully unprepared, with just a pair of shoes and a jacket (and other clothes, obviously), but it was still the fully-prepared and booted Green who got stuck up to his knees in mud and needed to be helped out. Apart from a half hour spell when a cloud descended and soaked everything, the weather was pretty clear, and afforded us great views from the top, of which photos can never possibly do justice to the magnificent panorama, but Green took a few which came close. I would attach them here, but I just can't be bothered.

I had been invited to my aunt's new and large country house that evening, for a debut dinner, with her own manfriend (manfriends are very in vogue), my mother, their neighbour and another chap with a book just out and published by my aunt's manfriend. This was very enjoyable, and loads of wine and whisky seemed to disappear, as tales and opinions were belted out, and I pretended to be frightfully intellectual, which is quite easy when everyone has had bottles of wine and whisky.

Ok, I'm getting bored now, I've been sitting here for about an hour writing this stuff. I'm off to Australia on holiday in a couple of days, to see the legendary and mythical Handsome Matt (photos will be posted, I promise) and then for a couple of days in Korea to see some pretty girls (and see if they've aged well in the four years since I last them).

Laser

2009-08-06T15:58:00.001Z

I have laser eyes!

Espionage On Sea

2009-07-27T11:26:00.003Z

It’s been a curious, and mostly fairly enjoyable, couple of days of pseudo-espionage, and as the boat chugs back into the Ghanaian port city of Takoradi it looks like it’s coming to an end. Which is fine, because a boat trip is always a nice excursion, but when there’s no beer, no internet, and no ladies, a couple of days is quite enough really.

The reason myself and my colleague, Psycho, had to endure the hanging around in Ivory Coast, the leerings of Dark Eels, and the worst ever hassle either of us has ever suffered in an airport was all for this: the boat trip in Ghana. We set sail on Friday, on the somewhat plush Pacific Aurora, the nicest and newest supply vessel I’ve been on before, and with great food.

My job, and often life, is spent on rigs, screwing big bits of metal together and crying quietly in corners, so this job has been a pleasing diversion. Instead of the chunky metal and weeks and weeks cast away from civilisation, this was a short mission involving sonar devices, GPS locators, satellite phone uploads, and a race against the clock. In short, we had to locate two spots in the ocean (the Atlantic, which is large-ish), throw our sonar device overboard, and with inconceivable technology, communicate with another sonar 1.4km away on the seabed, which in turn would wake and communicate with sleeping electronics a further 2.7km underground, entirely by acoustic signals. Pacing up and down the offices and hallways of Aberdeen and Houston were impatient gentlemen waiting on our results, our only means of communication by Iridium satellite phone and a data transfer by laptop, dependent on the whims of passing satellites in slow decay since the 1980s. We had 24 hours. Or the game was up.

Fortunately, we only needed 14 hours, in what turned out to be a fairly smooth operation. Psycho and I hurled sonars into the ocean, and thrashed buttons on our laptops, as we adjusted dials and processed data into graphs that transpired, to my great surprise, not to be a bunch of straight lines. Throwing a magnetic aerial onto the top of the supply vessel and connecting it to the satellite phone, we hunched over a laptop and uploaded data files, and felt a little like spies, albeit ones in slow motion and lacking a mighty-thighed lady to stroke/defeat in combat.

And basically, from an operational perspective, it went pretty well. Data retrieved, client satisfied, boat not delayed, and finished by bedtime. I slept fitfully, and have spent the day meandering about onboard, and hope to be on dry land just after dark. Thus catching a morning plane to Accra and then, if the plan truly comes together, returning to Aberdeen, home, and greeting my waster sister returning back from a year’s travels from around the world.

Of course, if the plan doesn’t come together, then I’ll probably be returning into the clutches of Dark Eels. But that’s no fitting end to any tale of espionage.

Disaster Maniels/Slimey Eels

2009-07-24T04:29:00.003Z

Here I am in Ghana, at 4am and as sick as a dog. But that's not Ghana's fault, which so far has seemed lovely. Mind you, all I've really seen is a luxury hotel. But they had tarmac on the roads and white lines down the middle, and the traffic queued orderly, so it's a good start. I arrived here about 12 hours ago, waving goodbye to the Ivory Coast for the time being. But don't worry, I left the country on a high.

Hmm, perhaps not. My last day there turned out to be a day of considerable hassles, broken into two parts: fat white man and lanky black man. We'll start with fat white man, whom the observant among you may correctly guess to be our blustering friend, Dark Eels. Myself and my colleague arrived as normal in the morning, and for an hour remained undisturbed as we waited for our equipment. Then Eels appeared, and barely suppressing the glee on his piggy face asked me to come into the office with him. In there were two other senior people from his service company.

"We've had talks and we've realised we have no option but to kick you out," he said, with almost ecstatic joy.

"Ok."

"With immediate effect," he said, staring hard for a reaction. React! he seemed to cry. "You have to leave right now!"

"Ok," I said, and left the room and informed my colleague it was time to go.

Before we could even begin to pack up, Eels was in the room, his lifetime bubble of smugness only slightly dented by my failure to cry, wail or argue. He launched into yet another monologue - he wouldn't be interrupted, "I have to say all this, let me finish" - about all the reasons we had to leave, which weren't just financial (they were) but because of compliance and liability and... oh, I stopped listening. As he neared the end of his spiel, he wiped the sweaty joy from his forehead and told me he could very generously offer me a lifeline if I could phone my boss and pass this information on so a quick resolution could me made.

"Look," I said, and as I've been saying for the last couple of days. "Why don't you phone him? This is stuff I have no idea about and has little to do with me." Remarkably, this time he agreed. I called the Aberdeen office on speakerphone and listened as Eels bellowed loudly for half an hour. Every time he made a point, he looked up at me, grinning, wanting me to reciprocate his smiles, but I didn't look him in the eye and just looked forward, impassively. Honestly, total lack of reaction is the only way to deal with this numbing idiot. The call eventually ended with an agreement that as least bought us a stay of execution for another few days.

The details of the disagreement I can't be bothered going into - contracts and money between companies - but trust me in believing that Eels created an issue and enjoyed days of roaring, meandering monologues to me and my colleague over something that could have been sorted with a few polite emails or calls to Aberdeen. And trust me when I say that I ever catch his name in the paper and find something ghastly has happened to him - disease then death, perhaps - I will punch the air in glee. The man is one of the most disagreeable characters I have witnessed, in any field of my life.

By fortune, as the call has ended, our equipment had arrived, finally, finally, after days of delay. It took us a mere half hour to get what we needed and pack the rest away, and we were ready to escape, and catch our flight to Ghana. Alas, our hassles were far from over... as Abidjan airport was preparing a new world of nightmare for us both...

...which I'll have to leave till later, as I'm supposed to getting up for 5am for a flight at 6am. I'm getting on a boat in the evening, where some work can finally begin.

Days In Abidjan

2009-07-22T21:54:00.004Z

Having been to places such as Nigeria and Angola where humanity, for whatever reason, has managed to concoct an unfortunate misery, it is rather relieving to go somewhere geared up for the misery and instead receive something a bit cheerier. Such is the Ivory Coast. That's not to say this is the place for a family holiday: it's dirty, confusing, fresh from a civil war that still divides the country, and the people speak French; but it is to say that the Ivory Coast isn't the hell I thought it might be. The people are friendly, the service a mix of the helpful and prompt or simply surly I'd expect to see in Aberdeen, and the traffic relatively well behaved and orderly - they even obey red lights.

But perhaps I cast a soft-focussed lens on the nation by suggesting things might be ok. Perhaps, perhaps not. It's difficult to say. I've been here, in Abidjan, the largest city, since Sunday and have had experiences effectively limited to our extremely charming and unusual mudbrick-style hotel complex and the sizeable but quiet yard of the service company we're working with. In between I've seen a money exchange bureau and a couple of shops, and a number of drives along pot-holed roads. Today myself and my colleague visited a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. Really, a very limited sample. But despite a recent war and a potpourri of poverty-inspired problems, there isn't the feeling of total hopelessness one gets from visiting the aforementioned two nations above. Infrastructure isn't way past the point of collapse. And the people seem nice, not beaten down or just plain suspicious.

Far better, I would say, than the non-locals. No doubt some are fine: I've yet to meet them. I can assure you that those at the base are not fine. Unfine, one might say. I hesitate to name names because discretion is a vital implement in my professional drawer of cutlery, but I will spoonerise the by-worst offender as the fat tosser Dark Eels [name further edited at my workplace's request - hope this is sufficient]. Mr Eels, a fat and eminently unlikeable man in his 40s, has been causing a pain in my ears, much as the smell of an offensively oderous dog might cause a pain in my nose. Unlike a dog, I can't kick Mr Eels hard, or even soft, and I certainly can't shoot him and sell him to the Koreans. Alas. He has assumed the role of interrogative policeman, and strolls in nonchalantly and begins firing off a load of questions about our equipment, prices, personal habits, and personal backgrounds. The first day he tried this, he gave us a fair grilling, but by today we'd figured him out quite well. He is getting some large amounts of hassle from superiors for his own carelessnesses, which he blames on our company, and thus like a young boy beaten in his homelife who becomes the school bully, he is trying to pick on us. But the bully is only effective if he's hard: Dark Eels is the school fatboy. And in myself and my colleague he could not have chosen poorer targets, because we don't really care. We don't panic about his threats to kick us out the base and we don't reveal much of significance in his interrogations. We sit back and "hmm" and let him speak about his skateboarding (?! - he lies a lot) accident and drab sporting opinions. Initially, when he stormed in on full force, he was quite troublesome (and he called himself by a fake name - what?) but now he's quickly assumed a position of familiar annoyance. Like that stinky, farty dog.

Of worthier mention is the driver we've been given for the last few days, a 59-year-old father-of-six Ivorian-Ghanaian called Jean. He's been our main representative of the Ivory Coast and has been terrific. My experience of much of Africa has to not expect punctuality, and I am a person who likes things to be on the minute, but Jean has been brilliantly on time, and unassumingly helpful. He has made transportation, so often a huge hassle on jobs, really smooth and easy.

Aside from tolerating cocks and listening to Jean bemoan the state of Abidjan's ripped-up roads, I have been mostly sitting about waiting. Waiting in the yard for equipment yet to arrive. It should have been there Monday - in fact, it should have been there weeks go - but no, and yesterday and today, also no. It's looking very likely, maybe, for tomorrow morning, in which case I'll grab a couple of boxes of stuff and jump on a plane to Ghana. By Saturday I should be on a boat, doing all kinds of fancy stuff.

And that's that. Or c'etait ce, or whatever the French is.

City Culture: Berlin and London

2009-07-18T16:58:00.007Z

Well, Aberdeen was simply lovely, and I enjoyed mornings on my roof, reading and thinking of culture. And as my thoughts chased conclusions, it became clear that it would be a good idea to explore culture in some other cities. Aberdeen has its charms, but I know the place well and didn't wish contempt to set in; of importance also: work was quiet and free time was mine on a plate. So conclusions were reached: Berlin and London I would go. Berlin is home of techno and walls, plus young Americans Mary and Carlos, two people not strangers to me. London is home of the Queen and Boris, plus my newlywed cousin and her husband, the latter two also not unknown personally. And thus, without a word to my work (who would probably not like it if I was to disappear to foreign cities when I'm supposed to be available) I snapped up some lovely plane and train tickets and set off on a young man's voyage.

To Edinburgh first, where my flight was. Edinburgh was glowing with heat and sunshine, packed full of jaunty tourists, and I had a splendid afternoon and evening enjoying drinks and looking at girls. My flight was the next morning, but at the sensible time of 11am. To Berlin? No, to Cologne.

I've been to Cologne before, for the 2008 World Cup. While it is true the game I saw there is the now-legendary 0-0 between Switzerland and Ukraine, two nations apparently desperate for dire loss in exactly equal measures, I was also graced with the stupendous Cologne Cathedral. This is an absolute beast of a monument, absolutely dominating the city as though a gigantic dragon nestled in the centre. Completely out of proportion with its surroundings, it isn't just that it is massive, it is that is conveys the very aura of colossal majesty. And yet, size is not its only grace, for it is also a work of art, a gothic masterpiece of astonishing perfection and detail. The following picture is a mere tiny sample.

I love it. Cologne Cathedral is one of the best buildings I have ever seen.

My time there was brief, however. Cologne was merely a three-hour stopover between Edinburgh and Berlin, and much of that time was spent trying to figure out the uncooperative train ticket machine. Thank God for young girls. I say that, on this occasion, because one helped me with the baffling options presented on the machine. If I could have thanked her with a kiss, I would have, but perhaps sensing this she didn't hang about for my gratitude.

Off to Berlin then, my first time there but with a generous portion of good reports to follow. I was met at the airport by young Mary, so it was a good start. Mary is a friend from my days in Korea, and is in now in Berlin doing a mixture of English teaching and internet stuff I can't pretend to understand. With her is her boyfriend Carlos, a fellow American, who also does internet stuff I can't pretend to understand. They seem to get paid for their internet stuff too, something I thought was an urban myth. Making money from the internet?

I was veering on the peckish side by the time we arrived at their spacious and charming apartment, so to fulfill my every desire we found a little place with seats outside and I had a royal dose of German sausages and beer. This was precisely what I was after. Further beers seemed a good idea, and we began on this path, but the sound of popping and banging piqued our interest: fireworks. We chased the sound, and soon we had sight of the greens, blues and whites, among other mainstream colours, filling the sky. This took us into a park, and alongside the whirring and banging, we could hear some grooving: music. A beat and shuffle, somewhere not too deep in the park, and after manouevring some dark paths (for the fireworks gave us scant light) we found ourselves at an impromptu party. A rave, one would have called it in 1990. There were maybe 100 people, assembled at the nub of a hillock, facing a tent with DJ, which was set in front of the still-distant (and purpose unknown) fireworks. Each time the fireworks exploded, the crowd did likewise in appreciation.

This pleasant scene - which included the capturing of a beer - lasted for perhaps an hour or so, but there were further plans for the night. Tickets to a nightclub had been secured, for a techy-glitch band called Mouse On Mars, very well renowned in knowledgeable circles. Alas, all the walking had done in Mary, and she was an invalid, but like the soldier shot down, she insisted her comrades went without her.

Thus we did. And the club - Club Maria - was most to my taste: dark, intimate (though still sizeable) and with character. I had several beers. After a live band played, the main support, a man called "T Raumschimscieemeherirer" (or something like that), played. Gosh, he was ferocious. Tech-punk-mania, I might describe it. And then Mouse on Mars came on for a while and pressed laptops and made a hell of a noise. Here they are (you'll have to imagine the sound - try gurgling):

By this time all this fandango was over, it was 5am, and I was somewhat tired. But Mary had slept and healed her wounds, and contacted us, and we all decided to go for breakfast. A splendid idea, although when breakfast turned out to be about a 2 hour round trip away I was less sure.

Nonetheless, breakfast was very tasty. I even had caviar; yes, really. I was at the point of passing out though. This photo doesn't lie.

Eventually, at 10am, we got back to the apartment and I got rest. A little. I was on the couch in the living room, which had very big windows but no curtains. It was somewhat light, and warm. I think I managed 90 minutes.

But no matter, for Sunday was a more gentle day. Myself and Mary went to a flea market in a park. This was a terrific flea market with all kinds of curios, and if I lived in Berlin would be here every week, stuffing my home full of remarkable junk.

I didn't buy anything for fear of getting carried away, but Mary bought a quasi-table, a vinyl record warped into a shell, a book about the past and future of Berlin written in the 1970s, and a purse. Here they are, as posed by myself (the beer was a temporary bonus to the display).

In the park, which was boisterous and fun, a man had set up a karaoke machine, a regular occurrence it seems. Quite a crowd had gathered. There was great enthusiasm. At one point, a marching band appeared, played the YMCA, and the crowd erupted.

We went for dinner after that, and enjoyed a naan-pizza hybrid, one I would like to see more widespread in the world. From then it was a quiet night, as I am getting old and need my sleep.

This I got, and the next day was tourist day. So, after a fabulous pizza (authentic Italian, though sadly without stuffed crust), I went to see the Berlin Wall with Mary. You may have heard of this wall, as it once divided Berlin into two halves: free world and Communism. I think it's a terrific idea and would like to see it implemented a lot more, but others disagree with me, and in 1989 they took it down. But some of it still stands. Sadly, the Wall, for all its historical significance, is just a wall, and a scrappy graffiti-covered one at that.

I'm very much in favour of historical preservation, and respect for antiquities, but the Berlin Wall pushes me to the limit. It is ghastly and ugly and without anything to redeem it architecturally. If I was head of Berlin council, I'm afraid I wouldn't be trying to preserve it. But I'm not, and whoever is had decided to repaint it, with "nicer" pictures over the graffiti. Mary was appalled this, believing the graffiti to be of historical worth. I don't know what to think. The graffiti was ugly, the new pictures were mostly average, and the wall doesn't have much going for it. Bulldoze it in the night, I say.

I hope they don't bulldoze the following, though:

Or this either:

Allowing Mary to go and do some work, I visited the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag alone. These are good buildings. I would have got a good front-view photo of the Brandenburg, but they had a stage show set up with live music, and lots of people. The Reichstag had lots of people also, with the queue about an hour to get in, so I chose not to, and just enjoyed looking at it. A neo-classical building built, I believe, in the late 19th century, it fairly recently got Norman Foster to rebuild its destroyed central dome. I like Foster's style usually, but I think his glass and metal dome a little incongruous for this grand, stone building. Like making a beautiful woman wear a silver showercap.

After a little searching, I then found the Holocaust Memorial. For those of you clued up on your history, you may recall the Germans were a little naughty for some the 20th Century, although they seem very nice these days. Anyway, I'll moderate my words, because I'm hoping to get my blog published and become one of Oprah's recommended reads, and I don't think she's big on Holocaust humour. And the Memorial was suitably on the heavier side of life too. Resolutely non-flashy, it was simple, very effective, and genuinely disconcerting when wandered into the midst of.

Next, it was Berliner Dom time. This is a big cathedral, and I like big cathedrals. It has a disappointing history though: built in the late 19th century after lots of falling-outs and financial wranglings, what we see is kind of a compromise, and they never went the full hog with the plans. It's still a great building, but it's disappointing when you realise - as you did upon seeing its small museum inside - it could have been so much better.

It had a great crypt, with loads of grand coffins of kings, princes, and that kind of folk. And lots of little baby coffins too. I can make jokes about dead babies, because that's socially acceptable these days. However, on this occasion, I choose not to.

And so, effectively, ended Berlin jaunt. I had a final meal with Mary and Carlos after, and then it was a plane to London the following morning. I flew Ryannair, my first experience with them. Oh dear, they're not very good. Cheap, yes, on time, yes, comfortable, classy, professional, God no. The flight was rampacked, there was no way to sit comfortably, and they sold scratchcards onboard - what? At least the flight attendants seemed to be enjoying themselves (to the exclusion of all else).

In London, I was there to see my cousin and her husband, but first of all, the British Museum. It has a collection of artefacts from all around the world, and I've been keen to see it for some time. It's got little Easter Island men, stuff nicked/saved from the Parthenon, lots of Egypt stuff, the Rosetta Stone, and tons of pottery. And lots more. The British Museum is great.

I met with my cousin upon her finishing work, at 5.30pm, and had several beers with her and her colleagues. Several, oh yes. Her husband joined us, and we had several more beers. Several more, oh yes. The plan for the evening was to see a band called "The Twang". When I asked my cousin what kind of music they were, she said "They're... a band..." and I couldn't get anything further. It turned out they were jangly-indie-ladrock, something I would usually cross a street to avoid, but the combination of the good company, the good venue, the good atmosphere and enthusiastic crowd, and of course the several beers made for a very enjoyable gig. We then went out an had more beers. Details become hazy, but I recall having a genuinely terrific night. I don't recall the following photos, which were two of about fifty taken on the subway back.

I woke up in a lovely big double bed the next morning, after my first full sleep in days, and felt surprisingly healthy. I had a daytime plan: visit the British Museum again, and this I did. Later in the afternoon, I met with two old friends, Burness and Rosie. To give a one-line summary of either character cannot be done, so you must simply assume they are both pleasant individuals. Poor Burness had broken his collarbone in three places in a mountain biking accident, and was in considerable pain. Nonetheless, he was still going to a Nine Inch Nails concert later that evening. I enjoyed a few splendid drinks and banter with them, before meeting again my cousin, her husband, and my aunt and uncle, for a pizza. Drinks followed, but I could see my poor cousin and husband wilting as they had had a full day's work after last night's session, whereas I'd slept fitfully and spent the day savouring world culture.

I left them to catch my sleeper train, departing at just before midnight, but had enough time to catch a pint. There I did a good deed. I got chatting to a gentleman, who it transpired was in the process of emails and phonecalls to various people, including his wife, as he'd just returned from Dubai and all his cards were cancelled. It seemed he needed his cards not just to get money, but to retrieve the train tickets bought. So, my good deed on 2009: I lent him the money, £80. He promised to pay me back. I have no doubt his situation was genuine, so we will see not just if he is honest, but if the world is ultimately a good and just place. If I don't receive the money, I will lose my faith in man, and if I do receive the money I'm going to pour gin over a hooker.

And that is that. My sleeper was fine, though could have done with curtains, but was much more civilised than flying, which is barbaric. I am safe at home, in an especially grey Aberdeen, but not for very long, as at 6am tomorrow I'll be flying away for a short jaunt in the Ivory Coast and Ghana. Just a wild guess, but I think they may be a little different from Berlin and London.

Odd Shape

2009-07-13T17:24:00.000Z

Berlin is doing strange things to me.

Summer So Far

2009-07-08T13:20:00.001Z

Life, as they say, is a mighty fandragon, and so no greater joy can there be than the fresh release from captivity. Thus has been my state for the last two weeks. But it's not been a doubleweek of roaring and stomping and devastating villages and virgins, rather my fortnight has been spent quietly smouldering, huffing and puffing patiently, surveying my land. In bold-encrusted headings, therefore, here are some of my surveyings.

Alcoholism

I've flirted many times with alcoholism in the past, desperately trying to fully addict myself, but I have resigned myself to failing. Since my return, I have been drinking steadily, but never heavily, and never before teatime. Uusually, I'm restricted to a few Peronis in the evening: this is not the sign of an alcoholic. Rather shockingly, I don't think I've been properly drunk even once in the last two weeks.

Insomnia

I have fully embraced the world of insomnia. At the best of times, I find it difficult to quickly adjust back to a normal pattern after weeks of nightshift, but this time, after having effectively being doing a nightshift since March, my bodyclock refused to play ball and I started getting up at 3am each morning. Eventually, after negotiation with the gods, I had this shifted to 5am, and now I'm nearing something like 8am, which is quite desirable. It meant, for the first week certainly, I was suffering from chronic lack of sleep, and passing out for inconvenient spells in the afternoon.

FIFA

With Chef Green, I have been playing many games of the classic Playstation Uno game FIFA 2001. This is a sincerely fiercely fought computer game that we take very seriously, seriously enough to log the results in a book, into which I also compile a list of statistics. Loss of temper is frequent, as are raging huffs, and Green has been most displeased that I have won the first two "pages". I am most displeased that he has the best result to date, beating me 6-1 with Derby County. Derby! I have known Green for around 17 or 18 years, and I firmly believe that if our friendship is to end it will be because of this 9 year old computer game.

Mother

My mother is doing all sorts of wild things. Honestly, at her age she should just be baking, but instead she has quit her job and retired early, sold the family home and bought a small detached house next to the railway. As well as this, she has a manfriend! This manfriend is trying to convince her to live on a barge with him. Both my mother and the manfriend appear to rather like each other, but have encountered a massive stumbling block with regard to pets: she has one quiet cat, he has five boisterous and non-little dogs. Nobody knows how this can be resolved.

Weather

Gosh, hasn't the weather been lovely. I've spent mornings and afternoons on my roof, celebrating our planet's increasing warmth. Long may it continue. However, this sentiment I do not extend to my neighbours, who also utilise the roof. Straggly students, who enjoy loud music and smoking "reefers", their presence on the roof is to my ongoing chagrin. What a mess these imbeciles make - broken bottles, glasses, scrappy blankets, a wooden sword, a mangled disposable barbecue, the remnants of illegal drugs (as you know, I am appalled by all illegal drugs). I am not impressed by my student neighbours and am trying to come up with some kind of subtle revenge.

Varwell

My good, indeed beloved, friend Varwell got engaged many months ago, as previously reported. Shockingly, he remains engaged still. It's beginning to look like he may actually get married.

Me

I, however, remain unengaged, and uninfluenced by the intoxifying effects of love.

Berlin and London

On Saturday, I'm taking a little jaunt to Berlin, to see the delightful duo of Mary and Carlos. Berlin, as you know, is the capital of Germany, the most populous nation in Europe, unless you count Russia. When in Berlin, I intend to look at buildings, walk about, and go to a thumping warehouse techno club. Immediately following Berlin will be London, where I'll be meeting my cousin and her husband. Is a cousin's husband a cousin-in-law, or does such a term not exist? When in London I intend to visit the British Museum, to furnish my vast mind with even more decoration.

Blinds

Perhaps the biggest event of the summer has been the purchase of some blackout blinds for my attic bedroom Velux windows. Previously, light would stream in at ungody hours and gracelessly wake me and my lucky companion(s) from our slumbers; now I can't even tell whether it's day or night. I heartily recommend blackout blinds.

Other stuff

I'm almost certain there's other stuff worth recording, but I can't remember right now, and really should go and pay my council tax after months of stalling.

Domestic Duties

2009-06-30T14:36:00.001Z

A 2l bottle of Irn-Bru, a plate of kimchi, and some terrible DJing on my battered decks. Ah, home!

Rig Simulation

2009-06-09T16:02:00.003Z

I'm not infrequently asked what it's like to be on a rig. So for those of you wishing to share in the experience I have devised a litte simulator, so that you too can have your very own offshore experience from the comfort of your own home.

First of all, you need to simulate the unit, i.e. the room you'll be spending 12 hours a day. So take a room in your house and divide it in two (a blanket or some bits of board should do the trick): half a typical room is about the size of a typical unit. Remove anything remotely decorative or comfortable, and turn everything remaining grey. Find yourself a metal desk, perhaps a filing cabinet too, and then a chair. Break the chair and try and fix it: make sure you can't sit back and relax. Set up a laptop and other random bits of electronics, and give yourself an intermittent internet connection. If you're feeling particularly determined, have no internet at all.

We have now our basic workspace, but the ambience is all wrong. Crank up the heat to an unbearable level, and install a gigantic air conditioner/fan in the room. Ensure it doesn't work. Allow it to switch and blast air around very noisily, but make sure it isn't remotely cooling. Just outside of the room/unit, you need to create a source of noise. Perhaps 10-15 hoovers might do the trick. This is mere background noise, to accurately simulate the agonising screech of the crane I'm currently enduring, you may need to borrow a friend's cat and have it tortured at ten minute intervals. Really, really hurt this cat, over and over again. In fact, put it in front of a megaphone as you do so.

You may close the door to soften the noises (a little), but if you do so, you must increase the heat greatly.

To simulate the PA system, simply turn on your radio, find a grainy piece of static, and put the volume to full blast at random intervals. Ensure there is no intelligible content within.

If you choose to simulate dayshift, your hours are 6am to 6pm, with meals at 5.30am, 11am and 6pm: nightshift is the inverse. Meals should consist of very well-done steak (not to be eaten) and chips - or gristle. Do not enjoy. For the foreign rig experience, pour sludge into a vat and add some mystery meats: you are now sampling "culture".

You are perfectly entitled to go outside at any time, but must wear luminous coveralls, a hardhat, gloves and safety glasses, and listen to ugly men swear. All communication must be grumpy. Humour is only allowed in small and very bitter doses. Do not smile. Do not be nice. Do not talk about your emotions. Remind those around you how miserable conditions are. If you have a full blown conversation, ensure it is about mechanics or engineering or bits of pipe, and do not try and understand it.

To accurately simulate sleeping conditions, find a single bed too short to stretch out in. You may turn off some of the hoovers. Every couple of nights, simulate the roomboy by having a friend open and close your door, and sometimes turn the light on. Don't say much to him, or he will talk about about "jiggy jiggy".

Here comes the key part of this simulation: it must last for weeks... no, months. In fact, when you begin, try not to even know how long it will last. Have a friend roll a dice in secret, and then have them tell you an entirely different, lower, number. It is vital you begin your simulation believing it to last three weeks when in fact it will last six.

The good news: when you finish your rig simulation you are allowed - nay, obliged - to drink very heavily for weeks and weeks. DO NOT STOP. And then, just when you've spent your final penny on your final bottle of gin, crank up the hoovers, borrow the cat, and plunge yourself into another month or two of sensory shutdown. You are now fully primed to embrace the offshore existence.

One Step Closer

2009-06-02T19:23:00.006Z

"One step closer to heaven, baby, one step closer to YOU!" So sang the sparkling shimmer of dinky septet S Club 7 to hordes of 9-year-olds, as bright lights and bouncing (with an acceptable amount of gyration) and a whole ton of bombastic colour reminded us that the only emotion is "happy". Happy, stay happy, the song urged.

Well, the immaculate septet may have long since disbanded, with Rachel doing ladsmag softporn, Hannah breaking the states with an appearance in a Chucky film, Jo O'Meara becoming a racist, Tina disappearing on mystery flight 447, and one of the boys doing a mega DJ set at Aberdeen's Tiger Tiger nightclub for Hogmanay 2008, and all the bopping 9-year-olds have all gone and grown up, but the sentiment of the song remains. Every day, we are one step closer: a step closer to heaven, and thus once again being reunited with our lost loved ones. The days blur together, just a dark and indistinct journey, the only clarity being the destination at the end, that glorious white light of oblivion. Cheers S Club.

And so as with real life the days are vanquished one by one on this rig too. If you will recall, I am somewhere on the Caspian Sea, possibly within sight of Azerbaijan's coast or possibly not (who can say?). Each day, in theory, I take one step closer, to the perceived heaven of the normal, adjusted life that is onshore, and therefore take one step closer to you - yes, you, dear reader. Whoever you are, whyever you read, I want to be closer. Step by step, but closer. Baby.

But, ah!, there is a catch. It is this: nothing is happening. For me to get closer, to anything, there needs to be some kind of progression on this rig. But I've been here two weeks (which is almost seven months), and although there have been a couple of short bursts of job progression, there's still a long journey ahead. Things keep breaking. Not my company's stuff, fortunately, but big rig stuff, and each time something breaks many hours and days can get put onto pause.

Thus my days are spent atrophying. I came onto this rig muscle-bound and with pumped-up guns, but by awesome lack of motion I am becoming spindly. Two rooms are my life: a grey container, or a dark, coffin-like bunk. My life feels like a music video whereby the subject remains still in the centre of shot while the sun and clouds zoom by in fast-motion. The highlight off my last few days was creating a formula; for a game between myself and "Bigboy" in which we had to guess the crow-flown distance between two world cities we needed a formula converting each guess into a % accuracy. Due to negative numbers, this was tricker than expected, but in bed it came to me in a flash: in Excel Spreadsheet format, =(1-SQRT(((C1-D1)/C1)^2))*100. I was delighted, genuinely. I hope you can share this. Our current scores as 28-20 to me (I had a late spurt), with my accuracy being 71.32% to Bigboy's 67.89%. My best guess was Moscow to Ulaan Baator: 2900 miles to the reality of 2878 - 99.24% accuracy.

It is such matters, the excruciating minutae of life, that fill the vast emptiness of being. Coffee and Cornettos help too. Occasionally, thought it grows more and more rare, an email from a beloved friend or family member appears in my Inbox, just to remind me that once I was part of a normal life.

The most concerning thing about this epic inertia, as myself and Bigboy have discussed, is how comfortable it's becoming. Without any serious activities to concern us, we are forging a daily routine. His involves films, two helideck pacing sessions and one 40-minute gym blast; mine involves meeting him for dinner after the gym. Time slips by effortlessly, daily we are shocked that eight hours have gone and only four remain of our shift. Food and shelter being given to us without struggle, we are becoming like household pets, maybe not pampered but kept slow and docile to a distant master.

But trap a cat in a flat and what do you get? The cat becomes nervy and jumpy over time, crazy and paranoid. And some savage their masters.

But for now, I'm docile, and hope to stay that way. And we return to the teachings of S Club for the final lesson, for myself and for this oil rig itself: "Don't Stop Moving". And with their permission, I've printed their sage words below, and boldified the relevant parts. Think of this as a church sermon.

"Don't Stop Moving"

Don't stop moving to the funky funky beat
Don't stop moving to the funky funky beat
Don't stop moving to the funky funky beat
Don't stop moving to the S Club beat

DJ's got the party started
theres no end in sight
Everybody's moving to the
rhythm that's inside
It's a crazy world
But tonight's the right situation
Don't get left behind

I can feel the music
moving through me everywhere
Ain't no destination baby
We don't even care
There's a place to be
If you need the right education
Let it take you there

Just go with the magic baby
I can see it there in your eyes (I can see it there in your eyes)
Let it flow
Stop the waiting
Right here
on the dance floor
is where you gotta let it go

Don't stop movin'
Can you feel the music
DJ's got us going around, 'round
Don't stop movin'
find your own way to it

Listen to the music
taking you to places that you've never been before
Baby now

Don't stop moving
to the funky funky beat
Don't stop moving to the S Club beat

You can touch the moment
Almost feel it in the air

Forget about your fears tonight
Listen to your heart
Let's just touch the sky (listen to your heart)
No need to reason why
Just listen to the sound
Let it make you come alive

Soon you'll be home, Nev
S Club dancin' in your room!
Everybody will be groovin'
And getting real funky together
Except the three boys - they'll be somewhere else. And Jo too.

One step closer to heaven, Nevvy,
One step closer with you!

Don't stop moving to the funky funky beat
Don't stop moving to the funky funky beat
Don't stop moving to the funky funky beat
Don't stop moving to the S Club beat

Art Galley

2009-05-30T17:08:00.003Z

As you may know, I am very much a man of culture and urbane sophistication (as I believe was proved by my discourse on housecoats last year). Therefore, one may well imagine the hardships I have to go through offshore. I can live with the fact that oil rigs are dirty, noisy, brutal places, populated by burly men of the same nature, but what is most difficult to tolerate is the lack of the arts. Music taste has not moved beyond 80s soft rock or insanely inane local hyper-pop: there is no place for the sonata or German minimal here. The same is the case with visual art. On a rig, most usually, my taste for the fine is as isolated as the remote platform I am inhabiting. Here, the masses gather round photos of scantily clad femmes contorting improbably - that is their art. A Jackson Pollock is derided as a scribble: "Give me some tins of paint and I'll do that after a night out," is one of the wittier resumes.

So one may imagine my delight to be on a rig with real, high quality art. I’m still enjoying my “independence” on the Istiglal, where I’ve been for over seventeen months now, and daily I enjoy my meals of gristle in a galley teeming with original paintings. I know that you, dear reader, are keen to cast your critical eye on some original art, so without further ado I’ll begin my short tour.

We begin with this neutral, but pretty scene, of a little stream. Isn’t it pretty? And isn’t it frightfully neutral? I can barely think of anything to say about it.

But this little gem has more going on. A horse (you can just see its head) and cart, a woman and child, and a big 2D fortress. The textures in the real thing need to be seen to be believed.

I call this one “Golf Course”. It’s not a golf course, but it might as well be. I promise you, they get more exciting after this.

Into this majestic beauty: “Horses At Sunset!” An inspirational picture of freedom and the theme of the platform, independence. Look at these horses gallop! Perhaps it’s a sunrise, not a sunset: all the best pictures have ambiguity. And I am intrigued by the two horses on the edge. Fainter and more ethereal than the central trio, could they be ghosts or echoes of the reality? The implications are significant.

This also hangs in the galley and is more typical of rig art. When on a rig, look at pictures of rigs... Can you see the mentality I am dealing with here?

Mystery and magic, with just a hint of menace. Any further analysis, I feel, would just detract.

This picture is just rubbish. It doesn’t even hang in the main galley, instead being in the kitchen serving area. Look, the artist hasn’t even tried: he’s drawn a dull scene badly. Why they’ve given it a fancy frame, I don’t know. I apologise for subjecting you, faithful reader, to this, but imagine the horror of having this brute glare at you every day.

And finally, possibly my favourite and continuing the horse theme, is this sweet peach of a picture. Horse and foal in the misty, mountainous outdoors, possibly standing in a small pond. The second picture – “2D Fortress” – featured a horse certainly not enjoying independence; “Horses At Sunset” explodes with independence: what then for this evocative enigma? The picture here seems to be just one small part of a longer, maybe epic, story. The horses sure appear to be free, but they also seem surrounded, and overwhelmed by the scene around them.

Bidding starts on June 1st; if anyone gets past the reserve price then I’ll smuggle the pictures back in my bag.

Independence In Azerbaijan

2009-05-22T14:09:00.001Z

Istiglal: the name of the rig I am welded to, and the Azeri word for "independence". I need not spell out the irony for you, but needless to say my thoughts, will and ambitions are now collectively gathered as part of the hivemind that is sixty men and one massive machine. I wonder what is the Azeri for "assimilation".

In between now and the last entry, have no fear, I did get home. I endured my forty-two days offshore, popped home for ten, and arrived back on this rig about four days ago. My time at home was mostly spent drinking, or feeling somewhat lethargic, with little else of note. After about seven days, the humanity for so long repressed began again to blossom in my soul, and my naturally beautiful nature began to glow, like a beacon of honey. Work must have got word of this, and so I was thrust once again into the Caspian Sea, back into the world of surly ex-Soviets, unsubtle grinding cranes, and chocolate Cornettos.

I did manage a day in Baku this time, and I can confirm that Baku is dusty and with lots of cars. Despite being very dry and warm (Spring is progressing, but isn't yet in the realms of hot) I managed to find a small puddle of mud to step into. The city centre, next to the sea, was quite pretty, and pedestrianised, and looked to be worth further exploration, but my colleagues and I opted to drink instead. While I have been home, drinking heavily, my colleagues had spent the last week in Baku, drinking heavily. Indeed, upon arriving offshore, back to "Independence", all of us seemed to breath a quiet sigh of relief that we might be able to relax a little. My three colleagues have taken to the gym. I, of course, have not been so rash.

And that, really, is all.

Thirty-Eight

2009-05-01T14:55:00.001Z

Thirty-eight days. Thirty-eight days I've been on this rig: that's longer than some people have been alive. If days were steps, I'd be one away from a Buchan novel. But this buccaneering lifestyle is no far-fetched yarn: it is endless days of grit and dirt, blood and toil, sweat and filth, pain and suffering; in short, reality in in barest, rawest, truest form. "But what is reality?" angsty fans of "The Matrix" ask, and I reply: "This is, prick."

But my days are numbered, in lifespan certainly though I know not of the number, but in terms of days remaining on this rig I know I can only have another four. I was permitted an extra 50% of the supposed maximum of twenty-eight days, which those with sharpened mathematical skills will know to be forty-two, which those also with sharpened Douglas Adam skills should know also is the answer to the ultimate question of life. It's certainly the ultimate answer to my life for now, as it will mark my reunion with beloved dry land once more, and perhaps too a reunion with some dry gin.

Oddly though, as I watch the calendar month of April slide by, along with it the merry festival of Easter, the emergence of friends' babies, the announcement of Varwell's engagement to some poor girl, and my mother declaring she has bought a new house and will sell the home I lived in since age 5, I find myself growing strangely attached to my surroundings. This, surely, is institutionalisation. My usual progression with rig life is to cope pretty well for the first twenty-one days; yes, for three weeks, I am a veritable bouncing beacon of happiness, all but hugging the roughnecks and making cute eyes at the roustabouts. But after twenty-one days, the wind appears to change and my mood sours. I've usually finished my books, communicate with only scowls to my colleagues, I find myself getting increasingly restless with my restrictions to freedom, and I begin to find it hard to focus so well. On some occasions, notably an endless hitch in Brazil in 2007, I begin to find myself peering into the abyss. I stop shaving, stop caring, and a sincere form of doom hovers over me.

Thus, my expectation for being offshore for double my preferred duration was that I'd be slitting either my wrists or the wrists of others by now. Thirty-one days was my previous maximum, but this hitch has shattered this record. And most curiously of all, I found that since Day 34, I've actually started to really get into the job. Right now, I'm enjoying a moment of calm, but the last four days have seen immense amounts of work. Dismantling tools, assembling tools, seeing big chunks of pipe pulled out of hole and run into hole and nodding thoughtfully as they do so, replacing suspect tools at the last moment, packing away masses of boxes to ever-changing specifications, downloading data, procressing data, dealing with a load of logistics, and emails pinging to and fro: the last four days have seen 12-hour shifts that didn't relent in pace. It should have been horrific. But for some reason, I really quite enjoyed it. As I flung myself down V-doors, up derricks and through mouseholes, and dashed off convincing-looking data on Microsoft Paint, I found the whole experience quite exhilerating. Perhaps this is what happens after I beat the post-twenty-one-day depression. Upon arriving at the thirty-fourth day, a new life and focus enters into me, likely coinciding (I strongly suspect) with the day my subconscious abandons joy and free will and accepts this mechanised life of an automaton, in a world where all men and machines are mere tools.

So, the fate that awaits when I alight to real life, on Tuesday, in Baku, I can't say. I've heard it said that after prolonged spells offshore the initial return to normality sees one behave like a "social retard". My delight at freedom may be tempered by my fear of all these strange people, all these different directions I can move, and having to pay for and cook my own meals... oh, wait, Green does that for me. Phew. It looks like I'll have a couple of days in Baku, fresh from a university shooting killing eight that seems to have been deemed less important than American or German shootings of the same nature by the world's media. There's some bits of pipe to look at in the Schlumberger yard, so I'm eagerly awaiting this onshore assignment, as you may imagine.

And then home, to the loving embrace of my friends and family, who no doubt will gather round, and poke me to make sure I'm real and not some strange creature. So no change there then.

Sharing

2009-04-20T19:43:00.000Z

With my property empire running smoothly and not requiring daily input, I have turned my muscular financial bulk to the world of stocks and shares. As you may have noticed, those of you who closely follow the news, the entire world has caved in on itself upon realising all the money we had was actually just pretend. Thus, my helping hand was required, and from my network of savings I have pumped money into the London Stock Exchange, to the tune of about £100, about six weeks ago. This is how I have progressed:

My first investment was in "Caspian Holdings PLC". My reasoning for this investment, of £25, was somewhat obscure, based upon a stocks and shares TV programme I used to watch about ten years ago called "Show Me The Money". In this lunchtime programme, company overlords would come on and try and "sell" their company to teams of people buying pretend shares, with the knock-on effect that loads of city people on their lunchbreak would promptly buy their shares for real and substantially boost the value of the company by the end of the half hour show. One such company, a small one, was called Atlantic Caspian, which had something to do with oil, and for some reason it remained in my head. I recall the shares being worth about 15p each. Well, now this company has turned into Caspian Holdings PLC and the 15p shares were a bargain 1/2p. What better time to invest? I bought a bumper 4741 shares. My £25 is now worth £21.33, but it should be noted that as this was my first investment online I mistakenly bought immediately rather than the cost-effective delayed way, which cost me £8.50 rather than £1.50, thus my investment of £25 was only £16.50, and thus my loss is actually a profit. I feel I am very quickly coming to grips with how money actually works in the modern world.

My second investment was something called "NCC Group Plc". I have no idea who they are or what they do; my reason for purchase was because NCC are my own initials. And they've done me proud. My 16 shares, costing me £48.91, are now worth £52.64. If I had invested £489,100, I would have made £37,300. Not bad for six weeks work.

Finally, my third investment was in Tullow Oil PLC. I have no idea why I invested in them, as I've never been on a job for them, and have no insider information either. This lack of nous might be why my two shares costing £18 are now worth just £15.72. I think this may have been an unwise investment, but intend to stick it out until I'm back in profit.

It's a step up, I think, from the online betting I did last summer, while on a job. Here I lost £50 on one bet, when the Polish netball team came back from 2-0 down to beat the Brazilian netball team 3-2! Who could have predicted that? I quit in anger, as it demolished all my good work betting on the darts, and learnt a sage lesson.

Anyway, that's all. In other news... nothing. I wake to the same grey surroundings daily, ignore the dull eyes of the same dour faces in the corridors, sit in the same seat in the same grey unit for 12 hours, and relish the oblivion of sleep, my only escape. Every day is a day less of my youth, a day closer to the inevitable oblivion to which there is no awakening. I have seen the future, and it is here, for evermore, on this featurelessly bleak Groundhog Day rig.

Bye for now!

Eggs

2009-04-12T19:49:00.000Z

Happy Easter from the Caspian Sea.

From A to Z

2009-04-04T18:57:00.001Z

I arrived, wedged at the back corner of a planeful of boisterous Azeri 13-year-olds who applauded the landing, in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, last Tuesday. I remained there for approximately 12 hours before being choppered into the Caspian Sea, or more precisely, a semi-submersible enigmatically named “Istiglal.” Thus, after almost two weeks, I can tell you a lot about this small metal space, and rather less about the nation of Azerbaijan.

What I do know is based on mere hearsay and colleagues' tales, plus a night-time taxi drive to my hotel, through the city from the airport. Despite being a Muslim country, the locals love their booze and channel 5 of the TV is dedicated to porn: I think they may have strayed from the Koran. I approve heartily of all this, even if the porn wasn't very good. What glimpses of the city I grabbed seemed to have more charm than recent expeditions, and unlike slums like Luanda or the blocky sprawl of Johannesburg (to be fair, I didn't get a proper look), there seemed a sense of style and history. Architecturally inspired by Islam, with the more recent Soviet monster looming high. But the place appeared distinct – and that is a vital quality in any good city. A recent post by Green perfectly expresses this and what constitutes the “soul” of a city, so I will direct you there for his excellently chosen words rather than regurgitate them here.

Azerbaijan is also noted for being the only country in the world to leap from the first letter of the alphabet to the last – not a bad effort for a small nation (though Zambia has a good shot, but gets it the wrong way round). I suppose Brazil gives it a shot too, but takes a few practice letters to get going. It's the fourth country now I've been to containing the letter “z”, and I can now proudly boast that I've met people from six different ex-Soviet nations. Well done. It's also country no. 40 for me, a milestone I've celebrated by vast consumption of cake.

In years to come, when I regale my offshore experiences in excruciating detail to my tiny and very weary grandchildren, my overriding memories of “Istiglal”, apart from not being able to say it, will be of cake. I shall tell little “Murphy”, “Geraldine” and “Shirley-Claire” (or whatever my stupid kids will call them) about the two different varieties of cake that dominated my first week, and the excitement that exploded when a third, colourful, cake appeared. My favourite cake is still the understated brown cake with a light beige icing – but gosh, isn't that sponge moist. It goes particularly well if some of the nuts from cake 2 have rubbed off on it. Cake 2 is a lot flatter and denser, and one is enough for any shift. The third cake, that caused such ripples of wonder, is adorned with green icing and a purple-icing flower. For me, the icing was a little disappointing, though the hefty wedges of light sponge never fail to satisfy.

Unfortunately, as I will then say in a low tone to my grandchildren, their restlessness only tempered by the vast inheritance they stand to one day gain, the rig is also likely to have developed a reputation in my memory for safety pedanticness. Health and safety on a rig is certainly a vital thing, of that I will not argue, but when extended way beyond useful causes, it just becomes a tool for pettiness. It has ended up with all the rig personnel looking for any excuse to catch you out on some utterly minor point. The worst yet was today, being “caught out” for not walking in the centre of a walkway outside. What? It all stems from the obsessive desire from everyone on the rig to write at least one “STOP” card (cards noting good or bad safety behaviour observed) every day. The problem is, when our lead engineer wrote a very sensible card noting some slightly off standards from a rig supervisor, the head of the rig – the OIM – called him up and basically gave him a bollocking for it, making him enemies of two rig supervisors at the same time. Hence, we have learnt to only write good cards. Well, the others have. I've only ever written two cards in my entire life – I'm just really, really not a fan of this kind of mindless bureaucracy - and so far haven't observed any extreme behaviour here, so don't look like I'll be adding to that quite yet. I suppose I could compliment the cakes.

It's not all been cakes and safety though. There's been plenty of assembling of tools, programming, downloading, disassembling, argonning, pressure testing, function testing, playing computer games, and all kinds of stuff that is better suited to official reports than regaling to my beloved audience here. My beloved grandchildren may not get off so lucky though. Currently, we're in the midst of delays, but these may be getting resolved soon, and the threat of work later in this shift looms. In truth, this is quite a big job, but a four-man team and a decent amount of time have made it very manageable.

So from A to Z, Aberdeen to Azerbaijan, a faux-Christian nation to a faux-Muslim nation, Scottish-style dourness to dourness in the way only ex-Soviets can manage, things are steady, if not exactly dramatic. Just another rig, to be honest. But with decent cakes.

Bonus Day

2009-03-23T22:07:00.002Z

Today has been a bonus day.

With my work, I am resigned for days to sometimes disappear. A classic example being on a job in Equatorial Guinea a couple of years back: after having spent many hours feeding a cable into a hole, it transpired that the test engineer - a backwards bumpkin called "Mallett" single-handedly responsible for the imposition of the accursed 11pm onshore curfew - had made a basic error of calculation, which meant we would have to spend many hours pulling the cable back out of the hole before putting it back in again. Running cable in and out of a hole for hours and hours, let me tell you, is not fun. Not at all. And Mallett's maths mistake resigned me and the rest of the crew on the job to another 24 hours of it. When this stupid, stupid, stupid mistake and its consequences were realised, I turned to Mr Calm, who was the job leader, and said, "I suppose the way to think about all this is that it's one more day on this rig, and therefore in a lifetime of finite duration, one less day of our lives to actually live." Mr Calm just nodded, slowly and quietly. "One less day," he said.

And such things often happen. Days disappear. Why, I remember being just 27 years old and starting in the glorious offshore world. What young and fresh days these were. Now I'm 30, life is whizzing past me, and I find myself jaded, and contorted with bitterness. My eager face has long since been mangled into a dour scowl. The days disappear, one by one, a clock ticking ever louder and ever closer to its final tock.

But sometimes, though it may be a trick of the mind, a bonus day comes along. Today was such. On Saturday, after I'd meandered down to a nearby antiques shop and bought a lovely rolltop antique desk, a lovely antique cutlery set, a lovely antique box, and a lovely antique book, I got a phonecall - the lovely sound of my boss. Guess what, he said, your freedom is ending and soon you will be stuck on a metal hell surrounded by angry men. I paraphrase, but that's the gist.

So, I was supposed to be going to Azerbaijan today, and thus I spent Sunday getting prepared. Packing takes me about 20 minutes, and so the rest of my day was spent indulging in my "last day" routine. This is a routine that has been developing in the last year, as I prepare myself for going away again. It involves drinking a bottle of port, eating some very strong cheese, often smoking a pipe or cigar, and pacing about and ranting. These are all some of my favourite hobbies. But then, midway into the bottle of port, a phonecall interrupted my Sunday evening. Because Azerbaijan is on a two week national holiday (I fully endore this concept) something or other couldn't happen and so something else had to be done (I'd drunk half a bottle of port so wasn't retaining the details here). Thus, my flight was delayed from 6.30am on Monday to 9.55am on Tuesday. Hurray!

So today has been a bonus day, unexpected and joyful. I met with Varwell in the morning, for a coffee, as we discussed all manners of highbrow topics, and he accidentally guffawed far too loudly at one point, disrupting the entire coffeeshop/bookstore. Then I took a gentle stroll, bought a brand new housecoat (the gentleman's speckled housecoat, I have called it), and had lunch at 10.30am. My afternoon was spent playing pool on my deluxe table, looking at the pounding rain outside and being glad I was inside and cosy with my new housecoat, reading Calvin and Hobbes, playing a silly computer game and later on viewing a flat (for my mother, not for me). Then it was time to finish the port and cheese: finished.

So a day of inconsequence and indulgence, an unexpected bonus. And it will likely be the last day of such indolence for some time, as the job in Azerbaijan looks to be a biggie. Tons and tons of equipment, and all sorts of fancy stuff being done with it. And thus lots and lots of hard, physical graft for me to supervise over as I sip coffee.

Yes, a frightening amount of work, but don't worry, if it gets too much I'll just "pull a Luanda" and set fire to my passport. I'll try not to burn down the main office this time though.

Some Statistics

2009-03-20T16:21:00.003Z

I've been home for a few days now, relishing the cool air and good beer. I popped into the office on Tuesday to do a tiny bit of paperwork but found myself sucked into a world of experiments and demos, that I hope will be ending today. Gosh, the regular working week is tough. However, my reason for writing is not to lament being dragged into the routine of the normal worker (which in fairness doesn't end at lunchtime as I manage to make it) but to force you, my dear reader, to enter into my world of statistics.

I had a bit of a stats binge last week, while sitting drinking beer in Johannesburg airport and while on the flight. I sat, supped beer, and thought "I wonder how many airports I've ever been to?" or "I wonder how many people I've met from the ex-Soviet nations?" Such vital subjects deserved much thought, so these and many others I worked out and I can now present to you here.

Total Number of Flights (excluding helicopter): 116.
I seriously think I can remember, if not each flight per se, but each occasion I had need to take a flight. It's not too difficult, just a matter of thinking of each holiday, or each place I've been to with work. Work constitutes 72 of these flights. There's a +/-1 error margin as I'm a little vague on the exact flights I took in Brazil. If helicopter flights were to be included then there'd be about another 40 added to this tally.

2007 had the most flights, with 45, and almost an entire week spent in the air.

Number of beds I've slept in this year: 12.
Alas, this has not been a first quarter of salacious mayhem. Work dominates, with three rig beds (including the 8-man container offshore Mozambique), five staffhouse beds, but only one hotel. I'm not counting overnight flights, of which there were four, as these seats hardly constitute sleeping units, especially as work persist in sending me on economy class. Me, economy! It's crazy, I know.

Total passports ever owned: 7.
In my youth, I had a passport that eventually expired after ten years of minimal usage. Since then I've had six and lost four through "mishaps". Currently I stand at two passports, but will be getting another after the unfortunate disintegration of Halliburton's main office in Angola.

Countries visited: 39
11 of these have been through work, although I've visited Egypt for recreation too. Some of the above total have only been for a few hours though, such as Luxembourg and Mozambique, and I'm not counting Taiwan or Barbados, which I only passed through in transit. I've only lived in two countries - the UK and Korea - though have probably spent an accumulative total of six months in Brazil.

Media appearances: 8.
This is, if you had somehow read every paper, magazine or comic, and watched every TV programme since my birth, how many times I would have appeared, to my knowledge. I'm not counting the internet, because it's a load of rubbish.
In no particular order, my moments of fame have been:

- Tema Magazine. The Bulgarian version of Time magazine in November 2001 featured a two page article about me and Simon, which included a full page photo of myself. This wasn't because of any inherent celebrity, but purely opportunistic as the magazine was doing an article about youth hostels in Sofia, and we happened to be the token foreigners there. As I recall to everyone when I regale this tale, the journalist was especially, achingly pretty, and gave me her phonenumber. It is of lasting regret that instead of phoning this young maiden I went to Romania.

- Dingwall Academy Magazine. This was an annual magazine produced by the school, on general sale in Dingwall and the surrounding area. I can't remember why I was in it one year, but I'm sure I did. Maybe I wrote a little poem or story.

- some TV programme on Channel 4. My father was featured on some Channel programme when I was about 13, so I was sneaked on for a few seconds depicting a "normal family scene", which was, for some reason, me playing chess with my father in the kitchen. This experience taught me that all TV is fake.

- the Press & Journal. About ten years ago, my mother won "mother of the year" in the Press & Journal, the newspaper for the north of Scotland. This was after having being nominated by my sister. As part of the article, I got a namecheck.

- Buster comic. When I was just a boy, I used to read comics voraciously. Not stupid stuff like Batman and Superman, that takes itself far too seriously for a bunch of cartoons, but cartoon strip-style comics like the Beano, Dandy, and my favourite, Buster, now defunct. I earned myself £2 by writing a very thoughtful letter into the letters page. This was something like 1988, so £2 then was worth a hell of a lot. Two weeks wages, in fact.

- Moray Firth Radio. I'm sure when I was about ten I was in the broadcasting part of the local radio station, along with a handful of other boys, for some reason that now eludes me. I recall it being on live, and the DJ - inevitably local DJ sensation "Titch McCooey" who seemed to be on 18 hours a day - asking us questions. But I'm not sure if I said much, or anything, so my subtle, understated eyebrow movements may have been wasted on radio.

- Israeli TV. While in Tel Aviv with Simon, in the youth hostel, an Israeli satellite TV broadcaster took a few shots of us on the hostel roof at sunset. I can't remember what the programme was called, but I do remember that every Israeli I asked about it had never heard of it before.

- TV. There was a football game on at Pittodrie a few years back between Scotland and the Faroe Islands, Scotland winning 2-0, and I was standing next to a piper. Upon seeing the highlights, there was a shot of the piper and surrounding area for a couple of seconds. Blink and you miss it - but there I was.

Number of fingers: 10

Number of jobs: 12.
This covers any paid employment, and I'm including my first ever job here, which was potato picking in a local field. I was only about ten, and got paid £1/day for 8 hours work, or was able to opt for a bag of potatoes instead. This seems so unlikely that I feel I must have mis-remembered. Other jobs have included Wimpy chef (and dressing up as Mr Wimpy once), old folks' hospital cleaner, dishwasher, glass collector, door-to-door salesman (didn't last very long), English teacher, and my current position as pioneering acoustical engineering specialist, or something like that. I'm not counting being a property baron here, though I suppose it brings in more revenue than a bag of potatoes a day.

Number of ex-Soviet nations from which I've met a citizen: 5.
A disappointing tally, to be honest. I've wracked my brain, but I can't recall meeting a single Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian or even Georgian. I mean, you don't expect to meet many Tajikstanis or Turkmenistanis, but you think I'd have met a Georgian by now. Anyway, I've met the following:

- Uzbekistan. A couple of lovely 19-year-olds when I was in Korea. Gosh, they were lovely. I had such wicked intentions, but they were far too sensible.

- Kazakhstan. Also in Korea, I met a mental, tough-looking guy with gold teeth while waiting at a fountain. He was surely a gangster.

-Russia. I've surely met many Russians, but the ones that spring to mind are the two room salon girls that Matt befriended, and introduced to me very late one night. All very civilised, I'll have you know, I treat women like actual real people. One was called Linda, and was from Vladivostock, and was lovely, but no stunner, the other... oh, hang on, I think the other was another Uzbek. She was quite pretty, but a total maniac. Not even Matt would touch her - and that's saying something.

-Ukraine. While in a Tel Aviv hostel, a different one from the one that televised me, I befriended a Ukranian guy, surely called Vlad. He was a nice guy, but couldn't drink alcohol due to a road accident. He offered to buy my passport off me if I ever shaved my beard, as we would look alike. I said ok, but alas have still not shaved my beard.

-Moldova. I think Moldova used to be Soviet. Or did it break off from Romania? Anyway, on the overnight train from Bucharest to Sofia, a Moldovan called Antony joined us in the compartment and let us have some of his meat. No, really, he had some meat in a bag that he generously offered us. I never questioned what type of meat it was, and never, ever, would.

Goals scored in international football: 0

Number of football stadiums visited: 18.
Seven of these have been in Scotland, with Ross County's theatre of dreams, Victoria Park, notching up multiple visits. I've been to some seriously obscure foreign ones, like Slovenian "4th division" SK Piran's field with an embankment for the 50 fans and castle walls overlooking the pitch for those who didn't want to pay the £1 entry. Toftir's mountain-top stadium in the Faroes is probably the most scenic stadium, and the biggest is probably the main stadium in Seoul, although I was only there for a visit, not a game.

Homes I've lived in: 16
The first six homes were before the age of five, my gypsy-like family evidently being hounded from town to town. From then, the next thirteen years were in the same place in Dingwall. Since 2001, I've averaged a new home every year, although I'm quite settled in my current dwellings (though the hookers outside have dried up... I mean, that is, that there aren't really any hookers there any more)

Airports visited: 47 or 48.
Do you want the full list? No?

Vehicles owned: 6.
The accumulative value of my first five cars was £870; the Ford Transit at £750 was a real budget-breaker. You'll be unsurprised to hear that all six vehicles no longer exist except as scrap metal, and that I was the last driver of each.

Number of national pub quiz victories: 2.
In 2000, I won Scottish (student) pub quiz finals, and trips to both New York and Cairo. The New York victory was pretty much deserved, but the Cairo one is a dirty tale of cunning and dastardliness. I also won a pub quiz in Mauritania a couple of years ago - as the rest of the country is Muslim and doesn't go much in for the pubs, I'll warrant that I was probably national champion back then.

Number of words written so far in this blog entry: 1849.
And that's quite enough.

Luanda Getaway

2009-03-13T16:03:00.002Z

It seems somewhat counter-intuitive to fly for three hours in the wrong direction, then wait for six hours before finally getting a flight in the right direction. But I don’t mind so much. For one thing, I’ve managed to get out of Luanda: armed with my backup passport, photocopies of my old passport and visa, and an agency guy to do all the smooth talking, I was able to slide gracefully through customs and escape with a mere $300 fine – which Halliburton pay anyway. Quick, painless, no bribes or anal rape in dark rooms required. I then flew for three hours to Johannesburg, where I am now, waiting and poised to have some more beers to smooth the passage of waiting.

The airport in Johannesburg is pretty nice too. Luanda’s international airport doesn’t really tingle the pleasure senses, unless you’re a fan of os interios drab, but Johannesburg has a really quite pleasant departure lounge area, with shops, space, bright lights, clear signage, and bars – though it could do with a few more. It’s laid out well, and doesn’t feel like an endurance test like most African airports, or the godawful Charles de Gaul.

I’ll be on a flight in a few hours, and by tomorrow morning touching down in the lovely city of Aberdeen. I say that only semi-facetiously. After the sweaty, intense, unremittingly unattractive megaslum that is Luanda, being back in a cool, calm and architecturally good-looking city will be a pleasure. Being allowed to go out at dark and not fear for my life or laptop will be a relief. Insane and idiotic traffic turning a fifteen minute drive into a two hour ordeal makes Aberdeen's rush hour seem like a petty complaint. Not having bored guards hovering listlessly outside every residence (in the “good” part of the city, at least) won’t be missed. Aberdeen may have a touch of the dour, and have its fair share of whingers, but I hope not to be one of these: I like Aberdeen, and its qualities shine when compared to some of the depressing pits of this Earth.

So, two more flights and 17 more hours. And many more beers, I expect.

Passport Up In Flames

2009-03-10T20:15:00.003Z

Well, it looks like my passport perished. As the main office disappeared into flames, so did my hopes of escape from Angola.

I had the last three days at leisure. Drinking beers in the evening sun and enjoying crisply barbecued food in the staffhouse. Nothing really happened, and I barely strayed beyond our guarded gates. Luanda has a bit of a reputation for badness, something not assuaged by the presence of four (armed?) guards at the nearby cornershop, and although I wouldn't have been worried about a daytime stroll through the city, it was just too hot, and there's nothing to see anyway. Really, Luanda is not a pretty place. Everything's falling apart, dust and car fumes fill the air, and more attention has to be paid into not walking into a pothole than enjoying what sights may be on offer.

I was back in the yard today and got my first viewing of what used to be the main office. Yup, it's pretty much levelled. The actual office building, three storeys I believe, is now a pile of charred rubble. It's believed an electrical fault on the third floor was the likely culprit. The office was attached to a covered yard, the metal roof of which has buckled and collapsed. The whole scene was like a small slice of the apocalypse. It still smells of burning and ash. There was a meeting at 8am, in which a man jumped on the back of a pick-up and spoke Portuguese for fifteen minutes; the English translation lasted thirty seconds.

And somewhere in the devastation lay my passport, or at least a bunch of dust that once constituted it. I do have a spare passport with me, but it doesn't have the visa, and so isn't much use for getting out of the country if I hope not to get arrested at the airport and given a thorough physical overhauling by the gents at immigration in some grimy back room. One solution is to go to the British Embassy and get an emergency passport out of the country; another is to use the photocopies of my old passport and visa and maybe some help from Halliburton; and another is simply to live in Angola for the rest of my life.

We'll see. The pace of progress is not too speedy over here, but I can take some solace in the fact I'm getting paid pretty well for doing really very little indeed.

Incidentally, this is now the fourth passport I've lost in just over three years. At least this one isn't really my fault (I choose not to divulge the lapses of sense that led to the previous three going AWOL).

Fire

2009-03-07T06:16:00.009Z

I got to Luanda a few days ago. To my surprise, it is a clean, thoroughly modern, efficient and beautiful city. No, just joking. It's coated in a thick layer of dirt, dead animals lie by the side of the road, and buildings rest in states of very obvious collapse. The smell changes every ten metres.

I get an extra half hour in bed too, as the bus leaves at 6.15am as compared to Malongo's 5.45am. Saturdays and Sundays too, so I was up this morning and over to have breakfast, in preparation for another day of hard graft (98% internet surfing). The dining room seemed suspiciously quiet though. Perhaps, I thought, Saturday is a late start - curse my unnecessary early rise! I munched my deeply unappetising cold beans and bread alone. A few people meandered by and poked about the breakfast spread, but the mood was quiet.

A guy appeared then, whom I met yesterday at the base and who was extremely helpful in showing me around. In fact, all the Halliburton guys I met yesterday were very friendly and helpful towards me. He said good morning, and I replied likewise.

Then he said: "Oh, did you hear the Halliburton base burnt down?"

"What?" I replied, for there's no other response.

"The Halliburton office burnt down last night. There was a big fire, and it burnt completely to the ground."

"Are you joking?"

"No, I'm dead serious."

"Oh."

And so it seems that the main Halliburton building in Luanda's Halliburton yard burnt down entirely last night. This was the building with all the admin, HR, managerial, travel logistics, and probably my passport too. It didn't contain my company's equipment, and the building where I've been mostly based seems fine, but for the core building for Halliburton in Angola to be razed to the ground is causing, as one may imagine, some ripples.

There's some good news. First, it looks like I'll be getting today off. Secondly, due to it happening it the middle of the night, I don't think there were any casualties, including, I hope, the many stray cats that hung around.

But mostly it's bad news. This will cause all sorts of disruptions, and worse will seriously damage the business, and in this economic climate could lead to job losses. And from my own perspective, it's very possible my passport was in that building, in which case I'm trapped in Angola forever. Or at least, a little longer than initially planned.

So I guess I better get comfortable in this modern metropolis of delight. And more pertinently, I better find a good supply of beer. Because ironically, Halliburton have a barbecue planned this weekend.

Funeral Fundraising

2009-03-04T09:19:00.000Z

It turns out that these street highwaymen that block the roads to politely request money, while brandishing sticks and machetes, are actually funeral mourners. Really. To raise the costs for burial, after having mourned and drunk all night, they gather by the roads, block them, and ask the passing drivers for a contribution.

You'll be pleased to hear that I sourced some beer (a supermarket on the way back to the staffhouse) and so bought 48. Not all for me, I've allowed some of the other boys to have a little drink too. I had a big discussion with the Fox News supporter, instigated by him. It was a less a discussion and more of a stand up rant by him complaining about the liberal media. He was, you may not be entirely surprised, a big Sarah Palin fan. Everything I may have heard about her, it seems, is liberal propaganda.

But he's ok actually, as are the Halliburton bunch I seem to be lumped with. We're all in the same boat of hanging about the Halliburton yard all day with little to do, before cramming into a minibus at the end of the day so we can drink cheap Turkish beer in a distant staffhouse.

Tomorrow it's going to change though. Cabinda, and the army camp that is Malongo, are a mere toedip into Angola; tomorrow I get pushed right in as I fly to its congested, infested, infected, unrested capital Luanda. Which so far, I've heard not one good word about yet.

Base Camp Malongo

2009-03-02T11:41:00.000Z

As many of you may know, it was always a great ambition of mine to join the army. It wasn't so much the combat fatigues, or the giant guns, or even the killing of civilians, but it was the regimented existence of barrack dwelling and stupidly early morning starts that appealed. That, and the total lack of independent thought or action, and the handing over of my own personal freedom to a greater power. Yes, the army was my dream, and what a terrific soldier I would have made! So I find myself overcome with joy at the circumstances I find myself in here in Angola.

Because it's just like being in the Army, except with less napalm or overt homosexuality. I'm awake by 5am to get my bus from the staffhouse to the world-of-men that is Malongo, then I march in line through the security checkpoint where they search my bag for grenades, and then it's to a safety meeting. Whoo yeah! And then, I get to sit about for hours and hours and hours doing nothing at all.

I've been here in sunny Angola for a week now, although days 2-5 were spent offshore, on the wonderfully named "Gorilla 7". I've been on a fair number of rigs in my three years as a glamorous oil exploration pioneer and most of them haven't been too adventurous in their nomenclature. I mean, if I built a rig, I would take some time to give it a memorable name, something that would stand out among the P5s and the SS-54s of this world. Why spent millions building a rig only to call it something generic like Sedco 700 or the sublime Sedco 701? I despair. I don't know what I would call a rig of my own, for it would take some deep thought, but it would almost certainly involve owls or the number 360. Perhaps "Giant Oil Owl Mania Platform" or "Super Wonder 360 Megaship", but those might be better saved for a Nintendo game. I certainly wouldn't throw it open to a committee, which seems to be responsible for the mundane names of offshore installations around the world. So I was very pleased to arrived on the Gorilla 7, my joy only dampened slightly by the helideck's lack of a big picture of a happy gorilla eating a banana. A wasted opportunity.

I was on the Gorilla 7 just to finish off a little job. It was a one man job, just pulling some gauges out of a hole and downloading them. I make this sound easy, and indeed to an experienced hand it should be, but ever since I screwed in the gauges upside down in Brazil last year, I've been a bit wary of easy jobs, so have learnt to view each with suspicion. I was replacing a colleague whose second visa extension was about to expire (the fine is apparently about $8000!) so I had one day with him on the rig as he gave me a quick overview of things, and then I got settled in for a couple of days doing nothing at all.

Apart from the good name, the Gorilla 7 was also one of the best rigs I've ever been on, if not the best, certainly in terms of space. Two-men rooms, various TV rooms and conference rooms, a huge and clean changing room, and a terrific helideck set away from the bulk of the rig, that didn't seem to attract any traffic at all (I like a quiet helideck free of bathers or walkers). I could have stayed here for some time with the greatest of contentment if not for the very average food, and the very limited internet access. But after a couple of days of gentle living, there came a spell of pretty tough work, as the equipment arrived out of hole and I had to break everything apart and rig it all down. This was about 12 hours of work, but it was overnight and I was feeling a little under the weather, so I'd like some sympathy please.

Back onshore then, where I appear to have rejoined the army. Beer is rationed - only six small cans a day, only after 6pm. It was to the barracks for the first night, and having to be up for 5.45am even on Sunday morning. The people I'm currently surrounded with, Halliburton people mostly from the rig I was on, are alright, and in the same boat as me in that they're just hanging about with little to do. Most of them are waiting for their passports back so they can leave the country, although I'm waiting for equipment to get back onshore. One of them, a definite hell-yeah American, noticed I was on the BBC website and said, "The BBC, goddamn. You like the BBC? I can't stand its liberal bias. I prefer Fox news myself, yeah!" I looked at him, thinking/hoping he was joking, before realising he was incapable of irony.

I've since been shifted from the barracks to the Halliburton staffhouse, which is a surreal kind of middle-American oasis in the middle of the filthy shantytown that is Cabinda. Arriving through some large gates, it's like entering a small street, with eight houses with immaculate lawns and stone-and-flower arrangements, plus a swimming pool. It's pretty nice to be honest, a definite step up from some of the places I've stayed. It could be argued it's not really representing the authentic Angolan experience, but I don't think that's going to be on the agenda on this trip. And judging by what I've seen, I'm not sure the authentic Angolan experience is something I'd voluntarily put myself into. This morning, still in complete darkness, on the 45 minute trip from the staffhouse to Malongo, we were stopped twice by gangs of kids who'd set up roadblocks, with oil drums and bits of string, demanding money to get through. This the driver took in his stride, as it's a pretty routine occurrence, though there being two separate stops raised an eyebrow. Recovering from decades of civil war, the place has no infrastructure and a corrupt government that use the oil wealth to entertain a lifestyle inconceivable for the majorty to imagine. People hang about the streets and laze outside their homes not due to indolence but because there's no education or work. Setting up a roadblock to demand money seems like quite a good initiative, if you ask me.

I'm protected from this outside existence while I remain in my little army bubble. Guards surround everywhere I stay, keeping Angola out. I should remain in Army Camp Malongo for a few more days, waiting for kit that I suspect will not arrive in time, then I'll fly down to the capital Luanda to spend more time in some pseudo-military surroundings. Then, although the future is always an uncertain beast, I may be off onto another Angolan rig. Until then, I'm going to see what damage I can do with my 6-can (1500ml) beer allowance. Hell yeah!

Angolan Welcome

2009-02-25T09:11:00.002Z

"Welcome to Angola."

That's something I've not yet heard, or sensed sentiments of, after having spent a day here now, the vast majority in a state of waiting. I'm sitting in Malongo's Halliburton base right now, waiting. I was supposed to get a chopper to the rig earlier this morning but that was cancelled, so now I've got to wait and see if there's an afternoon one.

At least now this wait can be spent in an air-conditioned room, with internet access, water, a comfortable chair, and a bevy of semi-clad women stroking my underthighs. Maybe not that last one, alas, but the conditions are fair-to-middling, which is a large step up from the welcome that greets all foreign travellers upon arrival to the airport in Luanda, the capital. After a packed flight, albeit not too long at about seven hours, wedged between two men that seemed to want to rest their heads in my direction, I was hoping against the odds that the customs and visa process might not be as onerous as I was expecting. They were worse. Angola has mastered the third world art of hopeless organisation, so upon two large planefuls of people arriving at the same time into a small hallway, it was a genius move to only have one little man stamping the entry cards to confirm yellow fever vaccination. Better still was to hide the entry cards, so that they only appeared in limited numbers at random locations, and you just had to hope you were in the right place at the right time. But the masterstroke was putting this little man - and he was little, completely invisible within the sea of taller people - at a desk in the middle of the hallway, but near the immigration desks, so that the room descended into absolute confusion between people queueing for their yellow fever stamps, those queueing for their entry stamps and those still looking for an entry card to fill in. Nobody knew where anything was, and the only information about the system was through word of mouth - airport officials quickly made themselves scarce upon seeing the madness descend. Or perhaps just seeing that they might have to work.

After about two hours, I made it to the front desk, disrupting the lady's more important duty of fanning herself, and had my passport taken away so they could process it for the fifteen day visa. Now I had to wait in a small room with a hundred or more guys in my situation, although this time I was lucky enough to find a seat. But like the arrival hallway, their was no air-conditioning, or water, and I was feeling a tad fatigued by now. Every fifteen minutes a man would appear with a handful of passports and attempt to read the names, failing to pronounce a single one even remotely correct. After about two or three hours, he finally got to mine - "Nee Crig" - and I was free to go. But where?

Fortunately, I made the right choice. I knew I was supposed to be going to Malongo but had absolutely no details on flights or times or anything. I would usually have wandered into arrivals, hoping there would be a meet-and-greet, but after several hours in the airport I suspected that if this was the case then my meet-and-greet would have given up, or they would already have found their way in and met-and-gret me. My phone isn't getting a signal here so I didn't fancy wandering around Luanda airport and the reputed clusters of touts, trying to figure out my next move. And so I decided to wander through a door. I'd seen a few people wander through this door during my hours of waiting, and now and again an offical would ask them "Malongo?" Well, I knew that I was ultimately heading to Malongo, and so thought I'd try this. It seemed to work. I showed my passport to perhaps the most apathetic man I've encountered in some time, and he gave me a boarding card. A different man seemed to check off my name on a list, but not in a way that made me confident it was my name. Nobody knew when the flight would be leaving, so I just sat and read a book. This room was air-conditioned, mercifully.

Eventually the plane appeared, and me and about twenty others hopped on for the 50 minute flight north to Cabinda. Even on this flight I still had a suspicion I was only on it erroneously, and that some poor meet-and-greet was standing forlornly outside Luanda airport with my mis-spelt name on a card, but knew that Malongo was ultimate destination, and that a key rule of travelling is that if in doubt just get as close to your destination as possible. And at Cabinda airport there was a man who had my name. My name was buried in about the seventh page on a list of hundreds, but I was still heartened by the acknowledgement of existance. A bus bumped through a half hour of dusty tracks and crumbling buildings until we left the poverty of the native land - which obviously the oil workers don't want to associate with - and entered a truly vast guarded compound, safe from poor people. Here, my existence wasn't known about, and it took several phonecalls until someone realised who I was and found a room for me to stay in.

The compound I'm in is very odd. It reminds me very strongly of an army base, right down to the accommodation which looks like just a US army barracks. And lots and lots of men. There's one giant dining hall for everyone, which you must sign in for (don't want a poor person getting free food, do we?) and eating can only be done during set times. How I wish the breakfast set times weren't 4am to 6am: I confidently predict I will never eat breakfast here. There are recreational areas, and even a golf course for those so inclined, and identikit white Ford trucks leaving trails of dust second only to the giant US-style buses that roam, mostly empty. The whole place seems very artificial and hollow, a giant edifice for isolation and money-making; a run-down holiday camp. Imagine living here, in ths fake village, removed entirely from the world around you, eating and drinking at set hours in giant halls with hundreds of others, driving a hired jeep identical to your neighbours'. Sometimes taking the bus to the airport and hoping the dust it churns up obscures you from the black faces, and vice versa, you pass in the decrepit town, with your daily bonus being more than their annual income, with your food and shelter free too. I can imagine that for certain people this could be a pretty comfortable existence, but I think any extended time spent here would see me developing a prisoner mentality.

I suppose that things, now in the base, are a little more orderly, and I don't have to expect the complete shambles that was working in Nigeria, which the dust, dirt and poverty here reminds me most closely of. My accommodation is decent enough, and I was able to watch the football last night. And it's all pretty easy - the Halliburton coordinator is a phonecall or a few doors away and can answer any question, so there's no struggle or uncertainty, unlike the mountain that needed to be climbed for information in places like Brazil. And I should be offshore either later today, or tomorrow, for a different kind of prison experience.

Off To Angola

2009-02-23T15:15:00.001Z

Well, I got back from Mozambique three weeks ago, and have spent the time trying (and succeeding) to regain the stone in weight I lost on that job, by means of a rigorous regime of alcohol and absolute inaction. But now I've been summoned from my atrophy, and in a matter of hours will be Angola bound. But I'm not going to this enchanting, earthly paradise for a holiday, oh no; instead I'll be once again hanging about big chunk of metal with lots and lots of men, getting sweaty and talking about big lengths of pipe. I do wonder where my life is heading sometimes.

Reel Bad

2009-01-29T18:16:00.000Z

The last seven days have not been much fun.

Lord Of The Flies

2009-01-23T00:11:00.004Z

Anyone unfortunate enough to have lived with me during my student years would likely be aware of the "TV teen drama" I devised, called "The Creak". Now isn't the time to go into the many convoluted storylines and settings I (and others, namely Green and the deviant himself, H) came up with, but one of the primary features was owls. Over the twelve one-hour episode series, I planned for owls to appear increasingly in the foreground, so that by the second last episode there would be so many owls that it was difficult to keep up with the onscreen events (by now the funeral of the "Dr Nev" character, killed one episode earlier by a jumping blue whale, while on his yacht, all set to music). By the very final episode, owls would be so utterly flooding the screen that absolutely nothing of the story could be seen whatsoever, aside from the occasional briefest of glimpses or snatched sound. Saturation by owls would be complete, and one of the biggest cliffhangers of TV would remain unresolved because of them.

This increasing influx of owls is currently something I'm experiencing, only with flies instead. About a week ago, Glen, the long-haired Rangers-supporter that shares the unit with us started complaining about a "damn fly". I noticed it too, in between bouts of coffee - a little chap, meandering about in the air.

The next day Glen boasted of having killed him, but I noticed the cheeky chap was still there... and with a friend? Still, of no great annoyance, except to Glen, who was getting more perturbed by the pest. He killed another, and then I killed another, and surely there could be no more. One of the advantages of offshore is that flies don't usually stray so far from land.

But now, a week on, our unit is infested. It's as though for each one we kill, another two appear, like the heads of the Greek Hydra. I drink a coffee and they dive into my brew, I set a cake on the desk and they're ready to pounce. I feel my skin randomly itch and I know they're biting me, because when I piledrive one they burst into a bloody splodge. Glen arrived today with an arsenal of weaponry - oils and sprays - but to little effect (if anything, they just pushed the crowd over from his side of the unit to ours). Flies, damn flies, are the bane of my life.

However, let's not pretend life is too accursed right now. Despite some genuine hassles and stresses over the last week, often exacerbated by the blinkered arrogance of the well test engineer in charge, right now things are plodding on without too many bumps. The biggest crinkles and wrinkles have been ironed out, and the biggest worries of last week seem to be over. From my side, at least - the job itself for the rig is going pretty poorly: tons of delays and no end result. For some, the lack of efficiency is driving them crazy, but hey, I've worked for Petrobras in Brazil, so this is nothing.

So, if I can just survive the flies, hopefully the rest of the hitch can be trouble-free. About ten or so days more, I expect.

Promotion

2009-01-16T12:29:00.000Z

I've been promoted.

The last few days have been pretty tough. Not bad, just tough. Two 26 hour shifts in a row, with just a few hours sleep in between, much of it on the exposed pipedeck with the seering African sun burning my neck quite painfully. There's been lifting, pulling, torquing, reeling, tying, taping, bipping and bapping, while drenched in sweat that transforms my coveralls into a cold and soggy rag the moment I step into an air-conditioned space. My contact lenses have become hard crusts on my dried-up eyeballs, and somehow I've acquired a massive tear in the thigh of one pair of my coveralls - very fetching, and it allows for a pleasing, cooling breeze. There have been many admiring glances from the roughnecks.

Despite the physical demands - and it has been one of the more physically tough of the jobs I've done - it's turned out quite satisfying. It's the Hamiltonian's first job of this nature in charge, and he's paranoid about any glitch; as a result, we've been quite comprehensively checking and re-checking, and we now have a nicely ticking system in the hole. Our working unit is spacious and I have my kettle rigged up. Biff seems quite keen on learning chess so I get to beat him several times a day. The next few days are clear, except for coffee drinking and watching data lines move about on my computer, and I can rest my weary flesh in preparation for the further punishments that will follow after the weekend.

But best of all is my promotion. Throughout the last week and half, my reward for my sweaty ardures toils has been a bed in a tiny container with seven others, where I can't even stretch out, with an unsubtle air-con, broken lights, leaking windows, and out-of-action bathroom. But today, as I woke from my slumber into a day mostly clear of suffering, I was greeted with the news that myself and the Hamiltonian (Biff is going onshore for a few days) have been shifted into different beds.

And so now I'm in a spacious four-man room, with working lights and a toilet shared only by the neighbouring four-man room. Luxury! Usually I'd not be so excited by such conditions, indeed they'd be at the lower end of what I expect, but after the squeeze I've just gone through, this is now like a hotel. I've even got a UK plug socket next to my bed.

So, the first of two tests is now in-hole and almost ready to go. Depending on who you believe, by next Friday we may have finished both tests, which would be a remarkable change in pace and one I can't see happening. I'd quite like a little more time just to rest and drink coffee to be honest, rather than more hours spent feeding cable into a hole, or chucking spanners about on a pipe deck. But now I've got my promotion and five-star sleeping quarters, I can handle anything.

Junior's Legacy

2009-01-07T18:28:00.000Z

In July 1996, when businessman C. Kirk Rhein Jr stepped onto his Paris bound flight at New York’s JFK airport, he could have had no inkling of what was to come. A short circuit in the centre wing fuel tank ignited the fuel-air mixture causing a small explosion, setting off a chain reaction leading to a fireball. In the midst of this airborne furnace, a changing of the centre of gravity and loss of aircraft saw the plane pitch up before plunging to its complete destruction in the North Atlantic. If death wasn’t by fire, it was by impact. A bad day all round: flight TWA Flight 800 was an unfortunate choice.

What he surely couldn’t have also guessed was that his legacy would be remembered in the form of a rusting metal scrapheap bearing his name. I never knew C. Kirk Rhein Jr personally, and no doubt he preferred giant grinding hulks to pretty flower gardens or benches with plaques by means of memorial, but should his ghost have drifted from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar, I cannot help but think he would have hoped for something better. Built in 1976 in Norway and revamped and renamed in 1997, the C. Kirk Rhein Jr semi-submersible oil platform is a wretched haunt for any man, living or dead, as it binds a rag-tag bunch of reluctant foreigners together united in misery and the common goal of making money.

It is here, you may have guessed, that I find myself now. I left the crisp chill of Aberdeen on Sunday morning, arriving in baking Johannesberg just under a day later. Famed for its lawlessness, the sprawl of this vibrant, menacing city welcomed me with a snarl, or perhaps it was a smile, as my plane landed (without catastrophe, you’ll be glad to hear) and I promptly spent the day relaxing in an international hotel right next to the airport – my entire South African experience.

My Mozambique experience was even less adventurous. Arriving the following afternoon, myself and my two colleagues, The Hamiltonian and Biff, had our visas processed and sipped soft drinks on the airport roof, admiring the endless stretch of straw hut homes around us, until it was time for our chopper to swoop down, grab us and then deposit us on the memorial turf of Mr Rhein Jr. A minimal and an unenthusiastic induction was given, then we were free to enjoy our new home for the next month: an 8-bed leaking portacabin right next to the helideck.

Yes, our sleeping quarters are quite spectacularly awful. Without adequate bedspace in the main body of the rig, we’ve been shoved in some makeshift portacabin. The eight beds are crammed in tight, all of them too small for a grown man to lie down straight in. The room has no light, and only four of the eight bed lights work. Mine isn’t one. There is air conditioning, mercifully, but not exactly waterproofing: there are two windows to outside, which leak and have covered the adjacent top bunk beds in mold. This morning a pool of water was on the floor. I need not say that the toilet is entirely out of action – I instead have to make my way into the main quarters to rest my sorry ass on a choice of two toilets (the third is broken). Toilet paper appears only sporadically.

Being nightshift, which will be starting tonight upon the arrival of our equipment, I can look forward to helicopters landing up to three times a day during my sleep. You may imagine this is not an event you can readily sleep through. However, it seems unlikely I’ll be sleeping anyway, as the two windows in the cabin don’t have curtains and the light streams through. Maybe I’ll try stacking duvets and pillows in front of them. Fortunately, so far only four of the eight beds are taken, so this is possible. I’m not looking forward to the other four beds filling up, as they inevitably will, and this room becoming even more congested.

That’s my moan of the day, anyway, partially justified as this is about the worst accommodation I’ve ever seen on a rig. Not the worst ever, as Big Fat Prick and the six man room on the P5 in Brazil with the blaring TV was less tolerable, though in that the case it was more the company I had to share with than the room itself, which was moderately comfortable. So in fact this room, with the neighbouring helicopter, the broken lights, the leaking and curtainless windows, the lack of toilet and the tiny beds takes the accolade of worst living quarters I’ve experienced on a rig.

The rest of the rig is still a piece of junk, but not quite as bad. The catering crew are Indian, so I’ve been enjoying daily Indian meals quite a bit. There’s internet – just – but when we move into our working unit tomorrow we should have regular access, and our working unit is spacious and well-positioned. Getting to the stiflingly hot gym involves a treacherous ladder, but it is well equipped. But really, that’s about it – this rig is crap, frankly. C. Kirk Rhein Jr must have been a right prick to have earned this legacy.