Getting British boys to know their left from their right was always a
challenge. They don't do mutiny, but they do silent, truculent
disobedience quite well. I know, I was a "Leading Seaman" in the Sea
Cadet Corps. The only thing I could really do was tie knots and splice
(my grandfather taught me). Navigation was dead easy for me because
the maths was a breeze. I could also tell my left from my right, which
was my main attribute. As for the rest of it. Umm. I couldn't organise
a piss-up in a brewery. Or swim, or sail. I had no leadership
qualities whatsoever, I was small and weedy and most of the cadets I
"led" were a damn sight larger than me. Luckily, *my* mate was larger
than all of them. Mind you, I almost electrocuted him whilst we were
doing up our hut.

I am also a coward when it comes to fighting so entering the Royal
Navy would be a bad idea, right? I failed the Dartmouth boards *twice*
and anyways Dartmouth would have killed me. So I went into the
Merchant Navy where I *almost* wrecked 4 ships, by steering within a
hairsbreadth of a group of 3 ships. It was night and you could see the
into the other bridge, and this other officer waving frantically. I
also successfully demolished one tiny fishing boat, and had a hand in
destroying 3 wooden berths in various parts of the world.

My best exploit was alongside in Panama. I was told to clean the
bridge. On each wing of the bridge are two life-belts with lights and
smoke canisters attached. A wooden-peg holds them in, and they're
ready to roll, lights blinking, smoke going off. So I went to check
each life-belt, so I pulls the wooden-peg, and I forgot to hold the
life-belt. Umm. Cargo operations have to stop because of the ensuing
huge billowing, orange-smoke. Boy, I was popular.

Christ in a bucket, I was stupid.

Roger

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 12:22 AM, Tina Bass <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> British boys don't do that.
> They probably should though.
> The world might be a slightly better place.
>
> G'night
>

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