Maritime emergencies
OH DEAR, what can the matter be? The captain he is locked in the lavatory ...
A Finnish ferry ran aground, according to this news snippet, when the skipper paid a visit to the toilet (or the "heads", as we seafaring types call it) and the lock jammed.
While he hammered at the door and yelled, a crew member managed to slow the vessel down. But either he was unable to properly read the charts or he felt he lacked the authority to alter course, because next thing the island-hopping tourist ferry ran onto a rock near the shoreline of Helsinki. It didn't sink but some of the 54 passengers suffered bruises and a lot of table crockery was broken.
The Finnish coastguard is now investigating whether the captain's call of nature amounted to criminal endangerment.
I hope they're lenient. These things can happen at sea. They come out of nowhere.
A friend was once a junior deck officer on an ancient freighter. To amuse himself on watch he would sometimes blow the whistle on the communication tube from the bridge to the engine room. Then he would roll a marble down it to hit the engineer in the earhole as he listened for instructions. Time drags on the graveyard watch.
Then one day the marble got stuck. Then, a couple of days later, they were taking the ship up the Thames estuary. The skipper was an eccentric old devil who objected to small pleasure boats being out on the water. When he encountered them he would order a short burst of speed to set up a bow wave and teach them a lesson.
Pleasure boats hove into view. "Full ahead!" the skipper ordered. My friend shifted the bridge telegraph to "full ahead". Then the telegraph handle came off in his hand.
They were going at full speed up the Thames estuary. The bridge telegraph was out of order. And he knew there was a marble stuck in the speaking tube.
He still had the telegraph in his hand when he burst into the engine room. Yes, these maritime emergencies come out of absolutely nowhere.
Silly season
ANIMAL rights activists in Germany have engaged the services of a sexy bull and an "animal psychic" to track down a dairy cow who has broken out of her paddock and gone on the run.
The cow - somewhat bizarrely named Yvonne – broke through an electric fence at Zangberg, perhaps sensing that her owners were preparing her to be slaughtered.
The activists now want to come to her rescue. They've got hold of a bull with a "deep baritone moo", which they hope will attract her. The animal psychic says she's already spoken to Yvonne through telepathy. "I spoke to her yesterday. She was fine but didn't feel ready to come out of hiding."
Late summer in Europe is known as the silly season.
ICE HOCKEY you could understand. Bar brawls are known often to degenerate into ice hockey matches. It's a very rough game.
But basketball? How on earth did a "friendly" in Shanghai between an American side, the Georgetown Hoyas, and a Chinese outfit, the Bayi Military Rockets, turn into a brawl? But it happened, the crowd joining in by throwing chairs and bottles of water.
One asks because I've never understood how anyone can get worked up over basketball. It's played in short bursts of seconds, it's totally repetitive and there's little or no body contact.
I once saw the Harlem Globetrotters in an exhibition game. They were skillful, they fooled round a lot and actually were very funny. But I still don't get the point of the game. I can't imagine anyone getting into a punch-up over it.
Yet it happened and, embarrassingly, it was just as US vice-president Joe Biden was having talks in Beijing with Chinese government officials. But the Chinese state media ignored the incident and censors removed chatter about it from all blogs.
But I say publish and be damned!
Tailpiece
TWO RABBITS escape from a laboratory. For three glorious days they are out in the fields, chomping carrots, cabbages and lettuce and having their way with the lady rabbits. Then one morning one of them says: "I'm going back to the lab."
"What? Here we've got food, freedom, sex!"
"Yeah. But I'm dying for a fag."
Last word
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
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