Diary of a deckbitch…

Oh nooooooo (wonk)

Major crisis on the farm!

Bruce the goose, the very rare Cape Barren Goose all the way from Australia…..is……….a Sheila. Carolyn bought “him” thinking he was half of a pair of geese, Google being his partner, but as it seemingly turned out we had two males who hated eachother.

But as a rare breed sale approached and the need to just check came around, so Bruce was womanhandled and Vent Sexed, which involves basically having a look. Well, i have to admit it was the first time i have seen a gooses most intimate (and feathery) parts, and to me one would probably look very much like another, but the book says Bruce is a girl.

So…..Carolyn went to the sale to buy a boyfriend for Bruce and myself and Hazel set about calling her Kylie (although this went down like the proverbial lead rubbery thing), so Bruce will always be Bruce. Carolyn looked up some alternatives, but i really dont think they would work. She thinks her name is “*uck off Bruce” anyway.

So now we have lots of posh geese, none of which i can remember the breeds of. Big buggers….thats about as far as i know. Oh and several more Cape Barrens, a pair and a single male, who promptly paired off with Google while Bruce tried desperatley to attack everything in sight. *sigh*. I swear she thinks she is a person so wouldnt be interested in another goose anyway…its like that joke - two cows chatting about mad cow disease, one says to the other “what do i need to worry about it for? im a canary”.

Ohh and we got some chickens too, which once again me and Hazel promptly names Paxo, Jalfrezi, Korma, Tikka and Coronation. :D i tell you what, if the cockrell (Paxo) crows at dawn his life expectancy will go down to about 3 minutes as he is right outside Hazels bedroom window mwhahahaha.

March 26th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Don’t bite the hand that feeds

There was an article in the diving press the other day basically having a go at internet forums for divers. Now this forum has a go at the diving press fairly often, but then in this respect it is pretty much a free press. You can rant as much as you like abotu how much a magazine is a waste of paper and ink and it will appear for all to see. Write the same to the magazine in question and it will be filed in the “nutter” pile more quickly than Cat Deeley is losing weight. So, getting a slagging in the internet fora is possibly more something to take notice of, rather than to make fun of. The general point was that someone very inexperienced could get all sorts of advice and ideas from the internet. Well good for them, if they are stupid enough to take advice from a forum on the net and then use it, they diserve all that comes their way. What is different than taking the advice from a diving magazine? The main one is we have a right to reply which is more or less uncensored by the people making the point. Andy and Jay post very little, more the pity.

What the journo misses in his article is that many of the “YD Mafia” actually know each other, we are *real* people. We dive together, shock horror, in the sea, with real wrecks, currents, boats and everything. So i know when Garf posts something on Ratio Deco it is more than likely correct as he sees it, because Garf is a real person, i feel i know him - we have met a few times, chatted a lot - i know the training he has done and *know* that because he has passed he is of that standard, not simply bought a qualification in the Red Sea because i also know the people who did his training. Small world really.

Sigh. Shut up and dive.

March 24th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Argh 10,000 things to do!

Ok, so maybe not 10,000, maybe that is an exaggeration…..its only 9,999. Only a few of these things are important, the rest are tweekings which can wait, but i spent my day painting the shower, a rather small space all of which needed a pristine coat of the white eggshell paint we seem to have lots of. Hazel spent the day playing with bits of pipe, and then got annoyed when i couldnt understand what she was doing with them all (”what? its not for the onboard Jaccuzi in the crew quarters……”).

Slowly lowering myself down the ladder into the accomodation i feel pain. Now this is the kind of pain which bypasses your brain and goes straight for the voicebox. Halfway down a ladder which i know will be even more painfull if i fall off, i am paralysed, emitting a strange kind of “gnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” noise. The click of the door tells me Hazel has come into the room, and suddenly i have her above me saying in her ” HELEN tell me now otherwise i will make it sooo much worse…once i have patched you up” voice what i have done, but i know fine well if i open my mouth i am going to cry. I manage to say “elbow”, and a couple of tears leak out, falling into the dark oblivion below. Slowly the world stops spinning and throbbing and being centred solely on a square inch of my elbow and i climb the last few steps into the accomodation. You know, its so damned dissapointing whn something hurts this much and doesnt even leave a mark. God dammit i want a refund!

March 21st, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Practice makes perfect

It feels strange to be cruising down the flow in the new boat, the ghost of the Stormdrift seems to linger, but the warmth and space and pure solid feeling the Valkyrie has exorcises this from my mind. The chop on the waves would have made life uncomfortable on the Stormdrift, for us now we hardly notice it.

We have decided to go down to Lyness to practice coming in alongside the pier. It is always a good plan to try these things, but as we get closer we can see the Hoy Head in alongside the pier much reducing the amount of room we have to play with. Out on deck i tie the leader - a thin rope - to the very heavy spring (the rope attached from the bow which is the first one to go onto the pier - once this is around the stout black bollard we can manoever with ease) and get ready as we inch closer. The wind howls around the empty deck, catching the tiny balls of snow and racing them around in mini tornadoes over my frozen feet. Closer and closer we edge, i can feel the tension rising, this is not going to be easy, there is a fair chop, a bad wind and not much room. The increase in engine noise lowers my blood pressure - we slowly make our way out of the quay and back into gutter sound. Today was not the day for trying to get along a pier in a new boat. Lets walk before we try to run, neither of us has sufficient ego to risk our boat for this.

Snow on the deck

Clearing it - we have stripped the deck back to allow us to paint it, so it may well leak if we let the snow lie, hence the sweeping.

The Hamnavoe

Girl Mina and the Radiant Queen

The Jean Elaine leaving with divers - note Ronnie in full floatation suit :D just ask him what colour Andy’s wheelhouse is now…..and Kev’s

On our way out of Stromness

Hoy hills with a covering of snow

Over the upper deck looking towards Graemsay and Hoy High lighthouse.

View from the office window

Ok ok, so i have to stand on something to see over the whaleback……

Me at the wheel

Bloody hell, someone has let the plug out! Very very low tide.

Sunset

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Looooooooook, new toys! Hazel gets it started….

Out of the shed…….

Loaded up and ready to rock and roll…..

Out of focus……nothing at all to do with the fact i have just gone whizzing past at full throttle teehee…honest!

Disappearing off into the….urm……mud, being chased by a goose.

March 20th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | one comment

After the storm

I cower under the duvet on the sofa as the wind pummels the window, unseen hands desperate to find a way in and wreak havoc in my warm cocoon. The lights flicker and i dash around to the spare room to check the new incubator has survived the dip in power - it would be a disaster if it stops turning the eggs. Eggs have to be kept moving and at a certain temperature and humidity to hatch - Carolyn got a spanky new incubator which keeps all of these things just right, so hopefully in a few weeks we will have some nice new feathery things to annoy Bruce the goose.

The silver blue light of morning wakes me, and i venture out of my safe place to peer out of the window. A duck house which i could just about move on my own has been blown to smithereens - simply planks scattered on the grass and a yellowed patch where it once sat. The chicken wire run which went with it is over 50m away, totally unharmed, the small plastic bowl attached to the wire simply by L shaped hooks is still there. It seems the wind was choosy about what it took. The yard is more or less intact, a few things have moved, been turned over, but that is all. Not bad when you consider we had winds recorded at 109mph.

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For those of you who asked - the person who was slipping has stopped. He has found a foothold, grasped a thin tether of hope in the dark and is gaining the confidence to face the future and climb back up that slope. Just for the record, please dont ask who it is. I can assure you it is no-one you know.

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March 18th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Its going to get a bit breezy

Fat fluffy white flakes splat against the window and slowly slide down leaving a snail trail of water in their passing. The wind rattles anything that is loose, like a teenager with an ASBO and a hooded top, looking to destroy anything it can. Its going to get worse too - forecast to get to an 11 tomorrow. Now that sounds ok, but when you consider one step away is 12 - hurricane force wind, you get that sort of dry mouth that normally presents itself when you stand on the edge of a rather long drop. Hmmm.

Mum sent me a little parcel the other day - this is what i love about my mum, must have taken her ages :D

March 16th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Slipping away like sand between my fingers

Sometimes you want to hold something so tight, it is precious to you beyond anything else and you grip so hard it hurts. But the tighter you grip, the bigger the gaps between your fingers and just like the sand on a beach, the grains run out to be lost in the breeze.

Someone i care about deeply is slipping away and the harder i grip, the faster they go.

Utterly helpless, totally useless. Impotent and alone i sit here and pray that the phonecall i never want to get will not be flashing up on that little screen tomorrow. The call to say that all the sand is gone and to say goodbye, they they have lost the fragile grip on the world and want out.

Sometimes words simply are not enough and i wish i could email a hug.

Stay strong.

March 13th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

The dive show

Apparently there are 17 million people in London. You can tell.

The last minute panic seemed to be taking forever, actually starting the night before, making sure we had everything packed into our two bags, the sudden thought in the queue about the weight limit seemed a tad late. Fortunatley both bags were under the 20kg limit, despite the thousands of leaflets, freebies and of course the clothes we needed for the weekend. I did, however, get my bag opened as they had no idea what the large opaque mass was in the bottom - 2000 leaflets was the answer!

The tiny plane left Kirkwall Airport and climbed through the clouds, over the Pentland Firth and south to Edinburgh where we changed to an even smaller plane to get us to the City of London Airport, right in the heart of things and hardly any distance at all from the Excel centre. On our approach i was so supprised to see green fields so close to the city centre.

Grabbing a taxi to the excel, we start to set up as best we can, getting the stand completed when Rob arrives with the rest of it, him being a star and going to B&Q and getting us a paste table and a dust sheet to complete things. After much faffing and changing things around we are finally happy about how things look and retire to the bar for a well earned beer.

The x-scooter…white cloth to soak up the dribble.

The first thing that struck me was that people were smoking in a bar. Disgusting, i wanted to leave within 10 seconds of getting through the door. In all honesty i had totally forgotten it even happened, what with it being illegal in Scotland now. The balance between being frozen sitting near the door, or choking on other peoples exhaled poisonous gasses was so fine, it was unreal. My clothes, hair and skin stank of smoke so much i had to shower as soon as we got back to the hotel. The sooner they ban it in England the better.

Rob looking…..well…..like Rob

The second thing that struck me was how the water tastes. I know that they recycle water in London, filter it, clean it etc and send it back through the pipes as it makes some sort of environmnental sense, but fuck meeeee you cant half tell. But now i can see why bottled water is so popular down there. I guess you get used to water that might have fallen in the same field as a sheep, let alone having been through one.

Maybe i got a duff glass, a raindrop which had fallen via a big cloud of pollution, through a couple of farts and then onto a tramps armpit, then been down a drain, widdled in by a rat, recycled, used to make some of that shandy stuff drunk south of the border, widdled out again, recycled again and then finally piped to the Travelodge by the airport. Ho hum.

Our peedie stand.

The show goes like clockwork, all of us feeling exhausted by the end of the day having spent the whole time on our feet talking to people about scapa flow and the boat. However…..i did get to kiss Monty Halls but only as part of a dastardly plan to prove to the male half of YD that he isnt actually gay.

Mmmmmmmmmmonty Halls

Lots of interest in the scooter, Rob doing endless demonstrations to hoards of people on how they work - hopefully the x-scooters will prove a big sucess on the boat - i cant wait to have a go. I did ask the BSAC try-dive people if i could play in their pool, but the woman i spoke to had left her sense of humour in the same place as her smile and welcoming attitude and told me to sod off.

What it all breaks down to at the end of the day.

The tiny airport and weeny plane.

So now im off to bed, im soooo knackered its unreal. How does sitting on your fat ass in an aluminium tube for a few hours make you feel like you have just walked from sodding London? Ho hum.

March 12th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments

Endangered species my arse….

You know you sometimes get woken up from the warm arms of sleep by a random noise, spend a few seconds going “what the living feathery fook was that?”…….well i now seem to find that it is a feathery fook pecking the door to ask for a fuss at 7.30am! I think i might start to chase him with a packet of paxo……that bird gets more and more endangered every sodding day.

Its bloody windy up here at the moment (and no i dont mean me….), force 9 the other day, so i spent the night on the sofa….which is ok, as i cant hear the goose from there hehe.

Our commercial ewes have started to lamb, the phrase “fook me, this one is the size of a rat” was used and lo and behold, 500g of prime lamb basted in snot and afterbirth came into being - when you take into account that some of the Suffolks are 5kg birth weight you get the idea, looks like someone washed it on the wrong cycle and it shrank. 10/10 on the cuteness scale though.

March 6th, 2007 Posted by helen | Uncategorized | no comments