A Bit of a Do

I was wandering round Big Tescos in Haverfordwest thinking "why did I come here" when my phone rang. It was Nicole. She wanted to know if Noel and I wanted to go to a posh do at the new Bluestone holiday village......TONIGHT!

A quick call to Noel and we decided that we will go. The slightly awkward thing is that the dinner is being held by the firm I work for Milford Haven Port Authority and it is because they have been hosting the British Ports Association AGM at Bluestone all week... will be interesting to see managements face when I roll up tonight!!

Dashed home from Tescos, defuzzed legs, packed overnight case and am now waiting for Nicole to come and pick me up as we are going over early to make use of the pool facilities for the afternoon. We will also be staying overnight at the holiday village so it will be a good opportunity to see what it is like.

Full report tomorrow.... maybe with pics.

Indian Summer

Today has been a truely glorious day here in sunny Pembrokeshire. The sun has shone and it was actually quite warm. I dragged myself out of bed at the normal time (6.45am) and took Erin to school when she finally got herself ready (8.45am... I could could have had a bloody lie in!!). I filled in the spare 2 hours with a mixture of egg hunting and watching CSI Miami. I have been slack and lost my 3rd place in Wales... I shall have to try harder.

When I got back from the school run I came over all domesticated and b'aked a cake! A lovely chocolate victoria sandwich which probably won't last very long once the rest of the family get home.

As it was such a lovely day and I had a lunch date with Nicole I decided to be very good and walk over to Milford. I am seriously unfit.. the hill up from my house to the main road nearly killed me. My legs felt like they were on fire and I was incredibly out of breath. Once I had tackled the incline though it was a lovely walk along the front and down to the Marina.

I met Nicole at the Lilac Tree and we had a very pleasant lunch (I had a really nice steak baguette and a couple of glasses of wine). We then sat outside in the sun for a while and caught up on all the gossip... and there was lots!! I then strolled home a nice steady pace and got back just in time to go and fetch Erin from school.

Again as it was such a lovely afternoon I decided to take my book and a glass of wine and have an hour soaking in the hot tub, if anything it was a bit too hot out there. All in all it has been a lovely relaxed day.

I shall leave you with another Simon's Cat video which I love.

Simon's Cat 'TV Dinner'

14 Days Off - What Shall I Do With Myself

Believe it or not but it is 5 weeks since I got back from my holiday. I finally finished the "Holiday Blog" this morning (copied and pasted from AOL onto a new blog here). I wanted to keep it as a record of a brilliant holiday and that blog will now be used for any holidays/short breaks we take in the future.

Yesterday I could have slept all day I was so tired after my night watches but I got up at about 2pm. Of course I egg hunted.. I am now 4th in Wales with over 1,000 eggs.. but I wont bore you with the details.

So I now have 14 days off and as always am determined to be productive and do things instead of just wasting days but as usual I am not being very successful. So far today I have managed to put some ironing away, go to St. Tescos and make some Spag Bol for tea.

Some of the things I want to get done are:-

1. get my hair cut (I missed my last appointment... but I have made one for Friday.

2. Have lunch with Nicole (organised for 12.30pm tomorrow),

3. Take my Mum out for the day... probably sometime next week.

4. Get Derek round to do stuff in the garden if the weather improves, I want to plant some Daffs.
5. Do some proper home cooking and baking

6. Not egg hunt quite so much

That list should do for now. Anyway thats it for now I will leave you with a brilliant little video Dian put me on to... if you have a cat you will understand lol.

Nights

Well after all the excitment of getting out of the Ivory Tower on Friday and spending the day afloat, life has returned to its humdrum boring normality.

Went out with Noel and Meurig on Friday night for a couple of drinks and an Indian (meal... not brave!!). We went to the Nelson and the Torch and within ten minutes I remembered why I don't usually bother going out with them. The conversation was garden sheds.. highly interesting (not). But it was nice to get out of the house. I really am becoming a couch potato and spend all my time sat on the settee with my laptop looking for bloody eggs!!

Saturday I sat on the settee with my laptop and looked for eggs... see I told you! However, I am now ranked 8th in Wales with a grand total of 506 eggs since 1st October. Of course this feat is nothing compared with the queen of the egg hunt (she knows who she is.... just ask her how many she has!).

I had my usual pre-night shift sleep Saturday afternoon followed by a very long, fairly busy night shift. I thought it was going to be really quiet because of the bad weather but it wasnt. I got home at 7am this morning and fell into bed with the intention of sleeping most of the day. This however, was not to be. My darling youngest daughter decided to have a very noisy shower at about 11.30am and woke me up with a mixture of loud music and door slamming. I tried in vain to get back to sleep but it was not good, so I ended up getting up at about 12.30.

I looked for more eggs!

I watched X Factor recorded from the night before (on Sky+... not video tape.. we are more advanced than that thank you Mr. Gogs!)

About 4pm my friend Natalie called in. She is home visiting her family before she goes off to start her new job on Sunday. She has got a job working for a Jewellry store on cruise ships. Her first ship is the CELEBRITY SOLSTICE which she is joining at shipyard in Rotterdam as it is brand spanking new. She then has 4 weeks a the ship yard setting up the shop, 2 weeks sea trials in the Altantic before heading to Miami for the naming ceremony followded by 5 months cruising around the Carribean... nice for some eh? The money is pretty poor (£160 a week) but she gets all her meals and accommodation on the ship. She promised to keep in touch and let me know how she is getting on.

Tonight's watch is really dragging at the moment, I can't believe it is only 1am, it feels like I have been here days. Nevermind there are still lots of eggs out there I am sure.

Tug and Tow

Days like yesterday remind me of why I love my job. I escaped from the Ivory Tower again. Thats the Ivory tower there and I work in the bit at the top with the black windows (they aren't really black, we can see out of them).

Anyway I digress... as I said I escaped again and this time I decided to go out on one of the Harbour tugs on what is known as an escort towage job. Basically, when a large tanker comes into the port loaded they send a tug out to sea to meet it, the tug then "makes fast" (attaches a tow rope) to the tanker and comes in behind it. They do this so that if something were to go wrong with the tanker i.e. if it should lose its engines then the tug is already there and able to help stop and steer it.

I made a couple of phone calls to the tug company and with the help of my mate Nicole (who works for them.... and yes dear you can now comment on this new blog so make yourself know to everyone!) I arranged to join the tug and go out to sea with them. First of all I went on the "HAKIN" which is one of our pilot boats and took a couple of pilots off ships and put them on other ships then we went and found the MILLGARTH (the tug.. see pic) and I transferred from the pilot boat to the tug.. that was a bit hairy having to step across from one to the other but I was fully equiped with PPE (float coat, lifejacket and hard hat ... and there are no pictures thank god because I looked a right gonk!!).

Safely onboard the tug I met the skipper (Gerald) and the trainee skipper (Paul) and the deck hand (Richard) and then we set off to the first job which was to assist the tanker PEMBROKE FISHER off the berth, she just needed us to pull her aft end off the berth because of the strong wind.

That done successfully we headed out to sea to escort the tanker AKTEA. It was a pretty windy day and it was quite rough once we got out. If you watch the horizon in the video you can see how much we were rolling about.

We finally met the ship about four miles out to sea
and once the pilots got onboard (see pic of pilot climbing ladder)we went round the stern and started to follow her in. It was a bit too rough to make fast at first but once we got closer to the entrance to the Haven we were able to. While we were making fast the tug went very very close to the stern of the ship which was quite spook (see pic of how close we got) We then followed her all the way in.

Once we got to the Angle buoy we met the other two tugs who also made fast and then we all accompanied the ship to the berth where the pilot gave each tug instructions on how to push the ship onto the berth.

Once the MILLGARTH was released from the job I went back on board the HAKIN and then ashore. All in all I was out on the water from about 9.45am to 3.45pm and it was absolutely great.

Last night Noel and I went out with Meurig for a few drinks to the Nelson, the Torch Theatre and finally the indian... yesterday really was a good day!!

Welcome Welcome Welcome

Normal service has been resumed... not that it was ever really interrupted but from now on this is going to be the new home of Kaz's Komments. AOL have really cocked up this time I think and will lose a lot of people eventually.

Anyway it will take a bit of getting used to I'm sure, but so far so good. The biggest pain has been trying to copy and paste two year's worth of the old blog as I (like JoJo) do not want to lose a record of that time.

Anyway not much to report, I've been feeling a bit down lately but I seem to be coming out of it slowly.

Last night I went out to my very first real life Pub Quiz, with real live people!! It was a the Ferry Inn (where Ffion works). I am on the 'B' team and there are four of us. Blodwyn (I have changed names to protect the innocent) who is a widow in her early 60s who appears to suffer from an advanced case of verbal diarrhoea and talks continually about anything and everything, Then there are Ianto and Mywanwy, a married couple in their late 50s, both white settlers, he is a retired biology teacher and I never actually found out what she does.

Our first match was against the Ferry Inn A team so it was a bit of a local derby. We are playing in the local Neyland league and there are 9 teams. Each week one team act as Question Masters and they supply 80 questions split into 10 categories which they take to the four venues (they are the same 80 questions for each venue). Each individual gets one question in each round. The scoring is 3 points if the individual gets the correct answer, 2 if it is thrown open to the whole team and 1 if it goes to the opposition and they get it right.

WE WON!!..... my first attempt and we beat the A team \0/. We had 91 to their 88 and I don't think they were very amused. Our team seem to have a pretty broad range of knowledge and I must admit I knew most of the answers. Apparently the ones to beat in the league are the Sir Charles Whetham who according to the others are "awesome"... we shall see!!

So enough for this first entry. Feel free to comment but please have the curtesy to tell me who you are... who knows I may acquire some new readers.