Fanfare

…An event that I cannot yet place in the right time.
On which boat was it and who was the Chief engineer to be relieved in Dakar?
Should it have happened on the ‘Jacob van Heemskerck’?
That was again not the case with our ‘assistant engineer’ who was lying drunk on his bunk.

Because he was the only one who received a post, a love letter.
That made him so happy that he became totally incompetent.

But with him I sailed to the ‘Gelderland’ and the reliever was now called Chief Schotanus?
Was it then that we were bunkering together with the ‘Groningen’ in that African port?
Where again a former neighbour boy sailed on.

I can’t reconcile it yet.
But this event stayed with me.
If you’ve been at sea for a while, you’re going to do more and more strange things!
Strange in the eyes of the outsiders, not for ourselves.
For example, we had a self-conceived dog with which some people walked through the ship.
The bridge was the favourite spot.
Even the cook sometimes came to bring a boned bone.

In those days I always lugged music, a cheerful tune for the road.

First with colossal tape recorders and the many tapes, then cassette recorders and the accompanying cassettes.
That took up less space.
As the third engineer you had the smallest cabin on board, but because of the music everyone liked to sit there.
They even sat on your cage board, while you were sleeping yourself before you went on watch.

Favourite at that time were The Who with ‘Heinz Baked Beans’ from their LP ‘The Who Sell Out’.
A short instrumental number that is always accompanied by an instrument.
Then we walked through the corridor in goosepass, imitated the instruments and yelled along.

Fanfare of hunger and thirst.

I see that Chief engineer still sitting in his cabin, very surprised and thinking: should I go out to sea with those people?