"Allatsea", on the road with Britain's most popular marine warranty surveyor.

No, not here, not now, at my time of crisis?

The European Union Commissioners have announced (it says here) that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications. German was the other possibility but that has been ruled out.

 

As part of the negotiations, HMG conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phased plan for what will be known as Euro-english, Euro for short.In the first year the 's' will be used instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy,

 

Also the hard 'c' will be replaced with 'k'. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome ph will be replased by 'f'. This will make words like 'fotograf' 20% shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanseof the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komlikated shanges are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double leters whish have ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

 

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' by 'z' and 'w' by 'v'. During the ze fifz year, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and similar shanges vud of kors be aplid to ozer combinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten style. Zer vil be no more trubils or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

Red red red and very quiet

Prior to our trip to Canterbury on saturday morning I rather foolishly logged onto my 'portfolio' site to see how the markets and more importantly, my tiny bit of them, had faired at the close of business on Friday. Being met by a widescreen sea of RED followed by row after row of minus signs didn't do much for a general sense of bon-homie and generousness but...... ' guided by the hopelessly optimistic guidance that a loss isn't a loss until you sell, I dimissed the tangible malaise that was attempting to take over and set forth to Canters in the faithful red (whoops, dodgy colour) Nissan.

We'd set out early to try and avoid the christmas crowds and nightmare traffic jams that the City, despite its highy successful park and ride schemes (all three of them are excellent), are infamous for. We needn't have worried. Even by lunchtime, it was, in relative terms, almost like a ghost town. There must be more to this here credit crunch milarkey than I thought. Blimey. Come noon we'd got the lot (the shopping business) sorted and were on our way home. Deciding to cook gawjis grub to eat at home rather than in one of Canterbury's numerous but overpriced restaurants.

Back on the Isle of Fannit we stopped at North Foreland to look out to the North East and see if the jackup 'Sea Jack' had arrived offshore for the start of jacking trials. Indeed she had and was sitting seemingly quite happily, a few feet above the waves. Her escort/tow tug Arctic Stevns being some mile or so away from its maritime charge suggested there were no concerns out there.

Sea Jack will install all 100 monopiles and the transition pieces for the Thanet Wind Farm, which is now, fingers crossed, touch wood, stop whistling etc etc, back on the front  burner. Each location will have unique seabed characteristics as well as sharing a lot of similarities. The trials seek to prove their suitability for supporting the jackup at all locations. Better to find out now rather than when it's got a thousand tonnes of monopiles on board and a full project team at eye watering day rates.

Next week, possibly on the 9th or 10th I'll go out and visit her for a few days and see how they're getting on. Bet they can't wait to see me:o) Hang on, I'll just rehearse my opening audit line. Ahem, cough cough, clear throat, head back for projection, "Have you got a certificate for that?" followed by, "You can see my house from here"

If I were you...

What, with the banks squeezing the already stinge-ily modest interest rates paid to savers, is a chap to do as far as saving for the future is concerned? Cooo it's a puzzle.

Well allatsea has decided to throw the lessons of the past into the bin, ignore current advice, put his head into the sand of groundless optimism and buy some (more) shares.

The following publicly quoted firms have today had the benefit of exchanging a microscopic bit of their equity for some of my hard earned wonga.

Royal Bank of Scotland (yeppy yes, seriously folks!!)

Premier Foods, owners of such culinary yum yums  as Fray Bentos steak puddings and Sharwoods chutney.

UK Coal, er .......coal miners.

Aberdeen Asset Managers (always trust a Scotsman to keep hold of money)

New Britain Palm Oil, why I don't know but it sounded quite exciting.

ITIS Holdings, because we  need as much help as possible driving on our  clogged roads.

Trafficmaster, ditto

and finally Fortune Oil, because after 11 years of holding shares and never receiving a dividend, things are bound to change (please God)

None of the above are recommendations for anyone else out there to buy them too, judging from my previous forays into the world of capitalism, quite the opposite applies.

Cigar anyone?

Dear grub and travels to the Ivory Coast

Back from a busy week. Busy but nice. Six days away  (I know I know, that's not quite a week but hey ho, let's not be constrained by petty protocols :o)) and a different bed every night. Come to think of it, I'm not sure it was all that nice, bit of a pain really.

Anyway, I digress. Rotterdam and the trip to the semi sub was very interesting. Goodness me they're huge (pause here for a melodramatic Franky Howerd type moment, ooh er madam) when you see them in a dry dock. Basically it's an old rig that's being converted, from the bottom up, at the cost of hundreds of millions, into a super dooper deepwater modern thing. It's been in the yard a couple of years and should have been finished in February. It wasn't, but will be soon. Allegedly.

Meetings and visits completed there it was on to the choo choo from Rotterdam to Schipol airport and a quick flight to CDG. Into the airport Hilton, very pleasant but not worth the goldcard melting rates that they charge. Eye watering. 'Chokka block full too' the divinely formed receptionist informed me in an accent that made me wish I was twenty years younger, 30 kilos lighter and a whole lot less clumsily gauche. Sigh.

The Air Chance trip to Abidjan was pleasant and hitch free. The ordeal through immigration formalities without a visa in my pasport, wasn't one and the town looked positively 'well ordered' and functional by West African standards. Returned to Blighty on Tuesday (without luggage but otherwise after a hassle free trip) and was saddened but somehow not surprised to read that riots on the day after  I left Abidjan had resulted in shootings by police and many arrests. The poorer peope of the city were protesting about the ever escalating costs of food. Grains cereals and cooking oil have doubled in price over the last year or so and hunger is becoming an issue for more and more of the population. The really crap thing about that issue is that our beloved, short termist, bandwagon jumping on, ego centric, self preserving, buffoon-like politicos in the west are demanding, legislating in fact, that vast tonnages (millions of tonnes) of food is grown not to eat, but to put into our motor cars, ships, planes and generators as fuel!!! All so that some poor African can't afford to buy his dinner ...... oh sorry....  I mean that the politicos can be seen to be doing something about global warming. Hmmm. Well I think that most of us can see through that bollocks.

The words 'crime', 'humanity' and 'against' spring to mind.

On the subject of global warming, I'm doing my bit on saturday. Off to Ulan in Korea. I'm not walking or cycling there either. To be honest though, my trip is jolly important and can't be avoided. I'm going there because there's a 4 day HAZID to attend.

HANG ON.

Four days to sit round a table and talk about, er,  hazids. Now that does make it worth a couple of hectares of rapeseed or millet. Sorry Mr Ogwanna and family, my need is greater than yours.

Byeeeeee

Tabernacle Street

Back from the lovely (ahem) Congo on the saturday, unpack the trusty Nobby Dee holdall and settle by the fireside for a weeklend of NW European culture. Thirty zillion hours of TV'd Premier League footy later (well all day sunday anyway) and it wwas time to re-pack the trusty Nobby Dee bag again.

Monday morning up to Gatwick and a Sterling Air flight to Billund before brekky. When that airline decided on the seat pitch they must have thought that the average passenger had a thigh bone of around 8 inches. I challenge anyone taller than 4 feet six to sit in their seats with any degree of comfort. What an absolute shower they are and, seemingly, without any competitors on that route. They can and do, get away with murder.

I digress, landing late and running for a taxi I join the the long and forlorn taxi queue struggling to keep warm in the biting and I have to admit, unexpected Jutland wind. In a dozen trips to this souless part of the world I've never had to wait for a cab. I've never planned to go straight from the airport to a meeting either, normally overnighting first. Silly stupid and naive boy.

Bouncing into a MOG hosted HAZID an hour late isn't the best way of keeping the contract free from litigious issues but my cheery " Christ, what a shitty country this is" seemed to diffuse any animosity there may have been and we got straight to the business in hand.

Two hours of midline buoys and anchor line to pipeline clearance issues later all was done and it was time to repeat the day's earlier experiences, only backwards. This time there were no taxi delays and following a couple of very fine pints of Danish real ale in an Esbjerg town centre pub it was back to Billund and a cramped Sterling flight back to Sussex. The return flight didn't seem quite so claustrophobic but |i feel this had more to do with the appalling newborn in the row behind me who seemed to determined to prove that a SPL of around 160 Db can cause permanent hearing damage. Remarkably its doting but I can only guess, deaf, mother seemed extremely proud of her offspring's ability to really piss 162 people off for a full hour and twenty minutes. Surely there should be a law against taking such vunerable little mites aboard noisy, smelly, carbon footprinting aeroplanes until they're at any age where they can deal with the trauma (and not inflict it on others)? A suitable age? Around 27 sounds about right, but then only if they're middle class and know how to behave!! I jest of course.

Back home at around 2230 after a 4 AM start and I worked out my expenditure for the day. £422 on taxis and £163 on flights.

Funny old world it surely is, and Tabernacle Street on wednesday. I fear a sleepless night :o)