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Slinger Woods
My day? Blimey. Okay, here goes.
`Slinger' Woods
I’ve always been a bloke of ‘routines’. A bit nerdy, if you like. My alarm goes off at 0645, which is fifteen minutes before ‘Call The Hands’, when the rest of the ship wakes up. It gives me time to get sorted, have a shave and dhobey before breakfast. Then it’s downstairs to get the day started. Breakfast is a blissful joy of human interaction; you confront people at the toaster who either plainly hate you (because your bread is in front of theirs) or who are infuriatingly too cheerful for the situation. No-one strikes a balance … you have people asking you too many questions or just ignoring you. This theme continues at the table in the Senior Rates Mess, where it is possible to sit through cereal, toast and coffee without uttering as much as a murmur to your fellow diners, such is the milk of early-morning, human loathing.
Anyway, I hurriedly finish breakfast for fear of breaking the law and openly communicating with my fellow shipmates and scarper back to my cabin. The television is on and sucking in the latest headlines from back home and I see that because the awesome spectacle of Liz Hurley’s wedding occupies my screen, things can’t be too bad back at the base. It’s a slow-news day. I sit and sip my coffee, safe in the knowledge that here in my citadel, no one can reach me. I open my notebook computer and check if anyone has tried to reach me overnight via cyberspace. I can do so much more via the powers of electronics than I can eating my first meal of the day. It’s the way of the world, they tell us – and I kinda agree. There are three emails. One is from my wife who has been awake three hours now and there are a couple from people I may have ignored down in the Dining Room.
`Slinger' on his rounds
At 0755, I give up trying to get anything meaningful from the television and decide to begin work. I don my white overalls, grab my trusty clip-pad and venture into Planet Endurance. My first port of call will be the Engine Control Room, where people have been awake all night looking after the guts of the ship. Others congregate there prior to the day starting. A ribald conversation strikes up, and people are at last starting to acknowledge the existence of each other. I skirt round this primeval ceremony and leaf through the Departmental Defect Log, getting bossy with one or two people regarding their attention to the contents. Then it’s out into the Engine Room, my ears shielded from the hammering noise of the ships two Bergen eight cylinder engines I pull out my torch and tour the space, finding small problems and defects here and there and providing an extra set of eyes with twenty-eight years of experience to the effort of keeping the government’s Ice Patrol Vessel at sea and doing her stuff. Today, the space is oily; grubby in areas and looks unloved. There’s a rag stuffed here and there’s something wrong here … this is leaking and over here I find some lights out. I tour some of the satellite machinery spaces and find similar problems. These are all forwarded to the relevant section heads for rectification. We have the small issue of Flotilla Staff and Flag Officer Sea Training Staff coming soon, and they take no prisoners. We’d best get our act together.
Post all this excitement, I visit the Boss, Lt Johnny Ball up in his sumptuous but weather-trashed cabin. There, in amongst the paper strewn floor I download my findings and thoughts on him and he flags up the day’s business to me. It’s a good business relationship between two blokes who have known each other almost twenty years yet one ended up working for the other one. It doesn’t bother me at all. Someone has to do his job and someone mine and that’s the way it is. We chat at great length about a multitude of things, using our experience to formulate solutions to things as trivial as cleaning the machinery spaces to our upcoming programme, both short and long term. Everything has a common thread of ‘time’ knitted through it, and sometimes our tempos are out of sync. I leave his cabin with fresh perspective on one or two issues and as I walk, I am figuring out ways to sort some of the most pressing matters out. Some of them I will leave until bedtime and use as bait for sleep. Meanwhile, I am en route to my spiritual home in the aft part of the ship – the Technical Office.
`Slinger’ with CMEM Pete Morewood
In the Tech Office, I find two or three member of the senior staff congregated around my computer. One of them, CPOMEA Daz Cass is compiling a Form s340 Work Request for our upcoming Fleet Time Support Period in June when we get home. We discuss what needs to be done to a particular piece of equipment and after interjection from my fellow office conspirator, CMEM Pete Morewood, a way ahead is made. I also chat with the Technical Office Writer, Joe Otchere, a tall, well spoken Ghanaian who is starting to impress us with his stirling performance underpinning the Department’s administrative tasks. Without him, we would struggle.
Come 0930, I have had enough of the Officer of the Watch using the stern thruster as some kind of kick-tail to spin the ship on it’s axis for the umpteenth time. The vibration of its use is driving me daft so I slink through into the Dining Hall and make myself a coffee. I will conduct more work in my cabin, out of the way of the quiet chaos that can sometimes turn the Tech Office into an arena of annoyance.
Snug in my cabin, I stick on the telly to keep me company while I work. Today I have to finish off work appraisals for my Leading Hands prior to their submissions, finish work on design proposals within the ship, answer emails as the pop up from many quarters, write Temporary Memoranda and collate the many s340s submitted for the FTSP. It will be a busy day. I also have some or other meeting at 1130. In the background as I work, Loose Women yammers away with niff-naff and trivia and I find myself disagreeing with Carole Malone as I process an s340 into the bank which will involve the flightdeck being ‘tented’ for the FTSP.
Lunch is a quickly grabbed affair, usually involving a superbly made baton roll and hopefully some seafood like tuna. Again, this is eaten in my cabin as I continue work and I look forward to another stroll out in the fresh air in the afternoon, this time to check on the condition of the machinery on the upper deck. It takes a real pasting from the elements and needs constant attention. This seems to be the case and I pass on kindly words and advice to a very receptive and well-meaning Leading Hand of the Forecastle. I know he will do his best but it is an uphill, thankless task.
In between all of this I will tour the ship and show my face. Occasionally I am stopped for conversation and mirth – the ship has long since cast away it’s reluctance to communicate and everyone has something to say. I may pop on up to the bridge as well, just to have a nosey at what we are doing and let them know that I haven’t died or something. It’s very much like touring one’s constituency and meeting the voters, except these voters want to know why the shower water smells of Patagonian Toothfish, not if we can have a new hospital wing.
`Slinger’ singing in Endurance’s band The Growlers
During the dogwatches, I am still drip feeding my work. I may intersperse this with extra curricular work such as the latest project – the Ship Idol competition, where I will seek out my collaborator, Lt Lee Vessey, the Navigator. We have much to do – the final is next month and no doubt a whole article for this site will follow. Dinner is coming so it’s a dhobey and clean into night clothing for me and as I queue, I see that CPOMEA John Sargeant has pulled it out of the bag for the ships’ company and fixed the deep fat fryer. Ladies and Gentlemen, after three long months of agony and deprivation, we have chips tonight. There is a small celebration and some sort of ritual sacrifice going on.
After scran, I am back in my cabin and on my own personal notebook. I open Cakewalk’s Sonar sequencing programme and am actively programming and mastering songs ready for my band back at home, where I am in a duet which performs 1980s synthpop classics – anything from Duran Duran through Spandau Ballet to Erasure. We have been together for five or so years and have quite a following in the Portsmouth and Gosport areas, performing to large audiences fed up with Pub Rock and samey-old Blues guitar twiddlers. Check out our website on www.allharddrive.com.
Bed for me is sometime after midnight. I’ll recall all those issues from earlier to help me sleep.
WO2(MEA) `Slinger’ Woods
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