Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Sep 16, 2004
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
The Queue
It was a wet and windy night; in fact the weather was so bad we almost didn't go ashore in the first place. The fact was that we had just finished a six week work up down in Portland, and this was our first night away from the ship in weeks.
As I mentioned in an earlier Snippet, the work up was basically six weeks of action stations, living on corned beef sandwiches and lime juice, and going without sleep. All in all it was not a pleasant experience to go through at all, especially knowing that if we failed to pass at any stage of it we would have to start all over again.
As both my mate and I were not on duty that night we decided to go ashore and have a few pints followed by a well earned fish supper - a welcome change from the corned beef sandwiches! In fact about everyone who was off duty that night had the same idea, so the first bus into town was crowded to say the least. There we all were, in uniform, soaking wet after the long walk to the bus stop and really looking forward to a night away from the ship, despite the weather. The pubs in town were well used to seeing bus loads of sailors going into town, as Portland was the only place where these work ups were carried out. They were also used to the behaviour that went along with a whole ships company that had been under so much stress for so long, unwinding. Not that our behaviour was all that bad, but even the shore patrol who were always on duty, gave us a little lee-way, but then again, not too much!
It was towards the end of the evening that we decided to go for our fish supper, before we missed the last bus back to the dockyard. There was already a long queue outside Tonys (the local chip shop) by the time we got there, so my mate decided to go and look for a taxi in case we missed the last bus, while I stayed in the queue. The rain was still lashing down and I was ever so glad when I eventually made my way inside the shop. Tony, who was doing his best to cope with this sudden rush of customers along with his staff, had already had to calm the situation down with folk trying to jump the queue. My mate came in to tell me that there was not a taxi to be found anywhere and to give me his order for his meal. This upset some of the folk who were behind me, as well as Tony. So I told my mate to wait outside in case the situation got out of hand.
He was not away for long before he came back in, crashing through the plate glass window and landed on the floor right in front of the counter, much too poor old Tony's surprise. What had actually happened was that he saw the bus coming and went out into the street to flag it down. The driver, however, had not seen him due to the poor visibility and had hit him with the corner of the bus sending him flying through the window! After he had landed on the floor there was a long silence, probably due to total disbelief of the situation. This was broken by Tony as he leaned over the counter to say:
'I told you earlier about jumping the queue!'
My mate slowly picked himself up from all the broken glass and had to defend himself from abusive comments made by some of the others in the queue.
'All right, all right!' he said, 'I just came in to tell you all that the last bus has just gone past.'
Luckily he was not hurt too badly after his confrontation with the bus. He was too drunk to feel any pain at the time and we had a long walk back to the dockyard. Still we had our fish supper while we walked and that seemed to make it all worth while, despite the rain and the fact that he could not walk very fast due to his bruises. The next day, however, he woke to find that he was bruised all down one side of his body and had to visit the medic for pain killers.
The window? Ah! Well, when the bill came in for that, we all had a whip round - the ones who were in the queue at the time. After all, it was great entertainment to watch and it did brighten up what would have been a dull wet and windy night in Portland.
