On watch

At work in the middle of the night, when normal people lie in their beds, most likely sleeping. That's my thing these days as we got a blown up computer in the engine dept. on the ship. Just need to step in and double up the manning a few days until we can get the electronic junk sorted, that's all. That's life on board a ship. For now, anyway. 

Watch, and drills... of course. Drills all the time, and they most likely go on when I was supposed to sleep. That's just because the captain and chief officer is sleeping at opposite hours from me. They decide when drills are to be done, and believe it or not, they will be done during daytime. I feel fine though! Fine, but tired... most of the time.

Enough about work, for now. I've been a little bit around a few weeks ago. Summer hollidays and things, as you probably know by now if you have read the words written a few days ago. I kind of travelled back in time, to the days when I was more or less a kid. Out to the island where my grandparents lived, way out west in the North Sea on the norwegian coastline. Nothing much had changed out here, but the ammount of caravan cars and german tourists is just insane these days. Can't get away from it, even out here in this hidden paradise from my youth. Well, we got away eventually when we started to think like the locals and choose the right places where no one ever thread... or hardly ever thread, as we did.

You probably had no idea, but at some point in time in the quite early 1900's they built a church on one of the outposts of this island. Quite a big one as well, when you take a look at the area around. Not a soul living here these days, except a lot of wild geese as we found out by stepping around in the area sliding in their, well... things left behind. No one probably lived here back in the days either, but the very small islands west of this place was inhabited back then. That's why they built this church, I believe. People had to row in from all around, in their small boats and what do I know. Lot's of struggle to go to church those days, and you better go if the weather was even close to good enough. To go to the service back then was probably something else than it is these days, for all I know. It was serious business, all the same.

As I am in the middle of the process of boring you guys to death anyway, I put in a snap from even further west as well. This is not Norway, as you might quickly figure out from the architecture things going on inside the picture. And maybe even from the text on the shops. It's from the big city in Shetland, of course, where I wander from time to time when I get the chance. As I did this day, a couple of months ago, or something like that. I like the smaller islands scattered around Scotland. Just had to say.

And now, more coffee!