Omni-Shift!!

You'll have to forgive me if I seem less coherent than usual today, I've just come in off the plant after completing our de-rig and backload for another successful job plus I'm being distracted by the sound of a cat in a cement mixer style noise eminating from the TV lounge as Xfactor is on.  Why would such a simple task send one quite so loopy I hear you ask (Great! I'm hearing things now!)?  Well I'll tell you (and now I'm talking to myself).

This trip has been one of the most frustrating that I have been on, which - given my employment history is surely saying something.  In historical terms I've been messed about with more than a 50 year old Land Rover on a working farm.
We came on board nearly 3 weeks ago now and thus far have worked somewhere in the region of 20 hours total.  I have spent more time watching telly than Gary Bushell and Harry Hill combined (I really miss 'TV Burp!).  Due to scheduling errors, weather delays and sheer stupidity (luckily on the part of the client, it has to be said) we have been within a hair's breadth of being sent home many times over.  Indeed, we have actually been on the flight list some three or four times now.

But, at last, on Thursday afternoon, it looked like we were finally going to go ahead with our work scope.  Even this good news was severely tempered when we heard that, due to lack of rigger cover we would be doing the rig a massive favour if we were prepared to work over and stay on until '10 or 11 o'clock'

Both myself and the one op that was left on board with me were more than happy to oblige in this scenario as we were both fed up with the Discovery Channel and Sky News.  After all a couple of hours over is nothing in the grand scheme of things and it meant we would be a day closer to home.  That was if it was going to be a couple of hours of course!

The problem with such a request only appears when you realise that it is gone 3 in the afternoon and so it is completely pointless to go back to your room for a quick 'safety snooze'.  This problem was made worse as the time went further and further into the evening and through lunch (midnight meal) and on into the next day...

We got the call around 2.30AM by which time we were both past caring for our own sleeplessness.  As it happened, we had both managed to grab a little sleep in the TV lounges as they were not too busy that evening.  And as it turned out we were correct in our assumption that the work would only be the matter of a couple of hours.  This presented us with another worry, now that we had worked through until what was essentially shift change, we were now on Night shift.

 So we went to our beds, safe in the knowledge that the rigging work would be completed during the day and we could drop straight onto our next work scope on nights.  Plus, this part of the job would be so short that we could get done by lunch.  So one 24 hour shift followed by a full 12 hours off (all be it on a different shift) was followed by a part shift and another case of trying to turn around before we could de-rig.

This is where we are now, my colleague and I have de-rigged and packed away today and we are more than ready for our chopper tomorrow.  Needless to say the chopper tomorrow is a late one whereas the chopper we were booked on but got scrubbed from was here before tea-break!!

If anyone could advise me as to what time of what day we are on, I';d be hugely grateful...

Neil Hannon Rocks!!

Simon Cowell Killed My Dream...

The death of the 'variety show' was a dreadful loss to the British TV industry.  As anyone who looks at it seriously would know, the variety show didn't die of natural causes, no, it was murdered by television Exec's seeming obsession with dancers and their continuing (and rather baffling) love affair with Simon Cowell.

One of my favourite acts that you always used to see on such shows was the plate spinner, the guys who basically did just that (I suppose the term 'variety' can only stretch so far), they spun plates.  The thrill was very much in the imminent and innate danger that it would all come crashing down around their ears at any time.  It always would of course but that was often turned into some kind of finale and even though exactly what you thought would happen did happen, you were left satisfied (almost the exact opposite of a magic trick) especially as you got to see loads of crockery get smashed - they were simpler times!

Up until yesterday on this job we were smack bang in the middle of our act, we had all our plates spinning easily and steady, although given the simplicity of the job we are here to perform we may as well have only 1 plate spinning on 1 pole.  For all the progress we are making it may as well have been glued there.

In fact, we were preparing to jump ship and go home for a few days as this job was at a standstill.  That was the old crew's plan at least (That crew being the one who arrived when we did).  That crew were on their way home having completed their trip, it is indeed, alright for some...

So we were watching our plate, preparing to knock it into our hand and take our applause when we were invited to meet the new Ops Super.  As happens so many times, a new crew equals a new plan.

Let's not send you home, we need to assess the problems we're having, the ones causing the hold up, before we make that call...

We got the Tannoy around 3PM, we were staying on for the foreseeable future.  Oh the joys!
I'm not entirely sure if the cracking sound I heard after receiving this news was the metaphorical plate bypassing my outstretched hand and smashing into the floor or merely the sound of my heart and spirit finally breaking beyond repair...

Now, some of you may be saying that this only makes for one plate and so the original image of the variety act was a wee bit melodramatic.  To you I say, 'Calm down!  What is wrong with you people?!  This is a free site isn't it?!'
No, the pain is far from over...

This news alone would not have been enough to make me miss catching the plate (yes, I'm persisting with the metaphor) however, this was not the only tragedy to befall us yesterday.  I had been enjoying the rare and privileged position of using an empty office, the owner of said office had returned on the flight I should have been on.  So in one fell swoop, I had lost out on going home to see my family, I had a whole new crew to get used to, I lost my comfy seat in a lovely office with its very own Sky box and big telly.  I was cast out like a fallen angel, doomed to wander the netherworld of the public TV lounge where I could no longer watch what i want, when I want.

It was so bad that I couldn't even watch the current run of season 4 of 'Modern Family' on Sky One.  Not only this but there is now a distinct lack of available plug sockets and so we are reduced to a veritable timetable of charging for our various electrical devices (quite a pickle when your comrade in arms is using an iPad).

And so I sit here on the 'standby' table, relegated to a drafty corner (Crash!!) with an awkwardly positioned Laptop teetering near the edge of my desk (Smash!!), having to use a public phone (Bang!) which is never available (Boom!) and what's worse, where I am now sat, everyone can now see what I'm looking at online (Clang!!)!!

Great!  Wish I'd never mentioned plate spinning, now I've got 'Devil's Gallop' playing non-stop inside my head!
 

Neil Hannon Rocks!!

The Crew Change Fandango

There are some sights offshore that you never tire of seeing;  A fresh bundle of bedding lying on the floor outside your cabin door, your name on the subsequent flight list confirming your suspicion that you are going off (Not always guaranteed), a tray full of cooked steaks in the serving hatch, a 'speciality menu' in the galley indicating a theme night for your tea.  But as we hurtle into week 3 of this 7 - 10 day job there is one which has cropped up a few times...'The Crew Change Fandango'.

It is a very simple dance with only a few moves...1, 2 and Heli Admin, 1,2 and TV Lounge, 1,2 and coffee machine and relax...
It is at this point that the dance becomes rather muddled and a bit of a free-for-all, if anything it changes from a poorly co-ordinated dance to something of a death march as 'comfortably' dressed men wander about the place like they are waiting to be called into an audition for a remake of 'Day Of The Dead'.

You can always tell when it's crew change day for the regulars as you start seeing people wearing polo shirts and jumpers when previously you'd only ever seen them in grubby tees and jogging bottoms .  Sometimes a collar can be a dead giveaway...

Most crew change flight passengers can be split into 2 demographics, mostly determined by their age. The older, more 'sensible' passengers are dressed like your Dad going to a barbecue/housewarming party at their sister's cousin's friend's house in the suburbs.  Almost in a way to show that they've recently had a trolley dash in a charity shop.  If London Fashion Week were ever to target middle-aged fathers I can let them have some numbers for models.

There are however some 'hip' young guys who feel it is their sole responsibility to prove that some offshore workers are willing to pay more than £10 for any single item of clothing.  It is a responsibility that some of them take way too far.

 There is a bewildering array of clothing people choose to wear while travelling offshore and back, some of their T-shirts can cost upwards of £30!  A £30 T-shirt seems like waste of money to me, especially when you consider the fashion for the 'distressed' look.  This has started to mean that the cheaper a shirt looks, the more likely it is to have cost a fortune.

I do not waste my time with such frivolities of course. I do dress with a certain 'Elan'
More accurately known as 'Mat - Elan'...
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The more observant of any regular readers (do I have regular readers?  Those poor wretches) will have noticed that I appear to still be offshore, despite having been placed on the flight list a number of times now. 
 I am on the list right now, it stares straight at me as I go to the Galley for my dinner!

We were told this morning that we were on our way home tomorrow.
Then they had their crew change.

This job has now been on again, off again more than Jordan's knickers.
We are currently 'On Hold' very much like a chopper that no-one trusts, we may be here for some time (and nobody is interested in checking out my undercarriage any time soon...).

My main concern though is for my crew mate, he was left here the other weekend when I managed to grab an almost complete day at home (almost) and as a result has had far more of the monotony that being stuck on a rig can offer than I have.  He was elated at the news this morning and is more than a little deflated now.

On the plus side, since we seem doomed to never set foot outside it makes it a little easier to be on 'suicide watch'.  The only real danger of being stuck indoors for hours on end on a rig like this (Wi-Fi abounds!) is spending money on eBay!!

Neil Hannon Rocks!!
You want proof?  Fine!
 

Even with terrible sound, the effortless charm and natural humour comes through...

What Does 'Accounted For...' Actually Mean?

I sat back after lunch today and had a think, I have had plenty of time for that on this job but this one was a particularly deep one, far deeper than my usual 'thinks' which normally end up with trying to work out which would win in a fight between a squirrel and a wasp (my money is on the wasp, always the wasp).  It was one of those 'thinks' that happens at a specific stage in a man's life/trip as I'd just passed the 2 week mark (plus I'm nearly 40).

It occurred to me during this time that I've never been as unproductive in any 2 week period in my time offshore as I have been in this.  We have literally been outside working for just over 4 hours (may I remind you, we've been here for 2 weeks!).  In purely monetary terms we are on about the same money as a mediocre premiership footballer at the moment (and I'm gonna be on 'uplift' in a couple of days) and I don't really foresee much changing in that respect.  Every time I ask the Ops guys out here how the Shutdown is going I get a rather black look and an exasperated exhalation of breath, I would spell it, 'Huffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff'.  This is usually accompanied by a shrug so Gallic that they should be wearing a protective Hard-Beret as part of their PPE.

So it was almost a minor relief last night when the GPA went off and we had a muster.  I had already played the Sunday night guessing game whereby you never know if you should shower.  Knowing full well that if you do get in the shower, that is when the muster will be sounded.
Now we had a whole other kind of guessing game, you know the sort, you are 2 levels below your Muster Point, you need to go past the level with your 'Grab Bag' on.  Do you go straight to muster, as you would if it was a genuine situation?  Or do you be a spod and grab said bag out of your room?

This question, like most offshore, has no correct answer.  Many times I've been caught out in both ways...I've been the only one stood with a giant luminous rucksack, which may as well have 'LOSER' written in letters that are actually bigger than the bag.  I've also been the only one who didn't have their bag slumped over one shoulder, which has pretty mush the same effect perversely!
This time I chose to bypass the room and head straight to muster which had the plus of allowing me to be amongst the first few to arrive and place our Vantage cards in the folder.  Not a great bonus you may think but you'd be wrong as being in the vanguard of the mustered we had our choice of recliners.  Recliners are something of a status symbol offshore and having your pick of them is a luxury a service operator has all too rarely!

I was relieved to see several guys who also favoured a direct route over the grabbing of bags and chose my seat for maximum visibility in case there was some kind of 'in' joke that would have been hilarious of course...Anyone who says that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit has clearly never been the victim of a practical joke. 

It was at this point that the evening fell apart.  Most rigs that we go onto tend to be running at around 100 - 150 personnel but this one is currently operating with 56 so you would think that accounting for such a number would pose very little problem.  How wrong can you be!
We started solidly enough, names were checked off, we even had a roll call.  It was quietly efficient.  Then the small clues that allow you to peek behind the curtain, the increased phone activity in the Heli-Admin office behind you, the continued alarm that really should have been silenced by now, the radio chatter with the smallest hint of panic to it, the distinct lack of calm in the OIM's voice as he makes the Tannoy announcement and then the killer, we had another roll call...OH NO!!!

I should've known...we had had a crew change chopper (which we should have been on knock-if-you-cant-go) and so the quiet calm that normally pervades such an occassion was missing this time.  So it was that we entered that marvellous realm of the muster-gone-wrong, a twilight zone style area where time ceases to have any real meaning and it is really nice to be in possession of a comfortable reclining chair!

This went on for about 90 minutes all-told and had various moments of the dark gallows humour in which the North Sea is dripping (or maybe it's just the spray from the ocean swell).  My personal favourite is when the Ops Super arrived for the second time (normally we wouldn't see his kind at a vendors' muster point) to speak to our muster checker.  At one point the Ops Super had the temerity to exclaim that,

'Everyone's accounted for, we just don't know where they all are'

I stopped short of asking him to define 'Accounted for' for me...

We survived this ordeal though and I feel that as a unit we are stronger for it.  Am tempted to offer some pointless platitude about 'pulling together' but I won't (there are plenty of those motivational posters to go around). So I can offer these 'De-Motivators'...Enjoy!

Neil Hannon Rocks!!

Knock If You Can't Go...

There are no words more likely to strike fear into an operator's heart than 'Operational Reasons'...That marvellous catch-all statement that covers a multitude of sins!!

This particular afternoon it means that I can put my bag back up into my room and unpack again.  Suppose I only have myself to blame, imagine believing them when they put my name on the flight list! boy is my face red!

This sort of thing happens more than you would think and far more often than is healthy, it is almost as if the planning of work in the offshore environment is dependent on so many various factors that it may as well be left up to chance!
Really, the slightest thing has been known to completely mess up both your plans and the plans of other, far more important people.
The weather, Helicopter inspections, the weather, airport restructuring, the weather, simply not being bothered enough to carry out extra work scopes, the weather and atmospheric conditions can all influence the schedule of jobs.

When it comes to working offshore we are all here until we are no longer needed and sometimes even longer than that... 

Am thinking of purchasing a pile of these, think they will come in very useful for my next trip...I am not a fan of de-rigging...





Neil Hannon Rocks!!

Where did I put my lighter?

As any Mycologist would tell you, should be lucky enough to know one, mushrooms and Fungi are terrific things.  They provide medicinal remedies, are used in the brewing of beer and can get you hallucinating, they're wonderful things, not nice to eat but wonderful nevertheless.  They're easy to grow as well, you can do so no problem in your house (as all students know, you just need an old cereal bowl and a dark corner).  They grow best in dark conditions and enjoy a good diet of waste matter.

This is where we get to the nub of the matter, like most of my offshore bretheren I am a barely functioning alcoholic but like ALL those personnel who work for a service company I am definitely a 'mushroom'.  We are the bottom rung of any rig and always the last to know of any plans, even when those plans involve us directly.  We are left in the dark and fed a constant supply of shite!

As this current job dawdles along with weather delays, scheduling problems and a general air of not knowing what the hell is going on we are dropping further and further down the pecking order. Which continued until at some point yesterday afternoon when  we were informed (through 'Smoking Room' gossip) that we may be sent home again.  I was mildy excited and couldn't help myself from looking at the flying schedule for the next day.  This optimism was of course dampened when, upon the posting of the flight list a couple of hours later we saw that our names were not on it.

Never mind, we had the TV and a functioning computer to use and after all we had been stuck here for a while now.  I decided that the best course of action was to settle myself into the routine of getting up and passing time, surely this was the only way to postpone boredom as much as you could.  Then the revised list went up.

Having a smoker on a crew can be burdensome when you need to just finish off a couple of small jobs or are close to starting a test.  You become skilled at scheduling small 'smoke-breaks' into the working day and after all, often it is prudent for the whole crew to have a 'smoke-break' whether they actually smoke or not...On occassions like this though, where we are almost entirely indoors and sedentary a smoker can be your own spy in the house.

Every offshore worker knows that if you want to find something out, you head to the 'smokers' that is where the best gossip and all the useful flight info can be found.

We were indeed to be down-manned tomorrow.  Where did I put my lighter?

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Minor TV ad irritations

There are a few ads at the moment that really grate.  Whereas during my normal day-to-day life I can ignore such things, when you are offshore (and more particularly, offshore doing nothing) thay tend to intrude.  You simply cannot get away from them, they surround you like footballers around a referee or flies round s**t (much the same thing).

I only wish to highlight a couple as of now because otherwise I shall become too angry to type.

British Airways...Could you be more pompous and self important with your new Hobbit-length ad??!!

LV...why are we told that that woman is a safe driver when she swerves into another lane without ever looking in her mirror?!  The first time she even considers those who may be behind her is after she cuts them up and leaves them stuck behind a big penguin which they wouldn't be stuck behind had she not driven too close to that van and swerved in front of them!!!! 
She has a no claims bonus because she's lucky, not safe!

As you can tell, am now a little annoyed (my own fault)

LV are being dicks and not letting me find their ad on the viewer for Google+...I reckon they know I don't like em!!
You've all seen it and next time it's on, you'll be annoyed as me (I hope!)






Neil Hannon Rocks!!

Cleanliness is next to Godliness...But not in the Dictionary

There are many reasons for changing your overalls at 8.30AM offshore (Deluge system going off in the Separator Area, slipping in a pile of 'Copperslip', a chemical spill of minor proportions, a cavalier attitude to painting or even working in a dirty environment right from the very start of shift) not all of which have occurred to me.  Perhaps the most unedifying and least worthy of having some kind of epic poem written about it must surely be sitting at your laptop in an Ops office and knocking your coffee into your lap.

Fortunately the beverage was ready for consumption (i.e. NOT boiling hot) and I didn't have to do some weird and slightly racist Native American war dance (replete with 'Hoo Hoo Woo' noises!) and as a result very few, if any, Ops guys actually saw the whole sorry debacle.

I do hope they don't follow this blog...


Neil Hannon Rocks!!