Monet Painting Goes under the hammer for 80 million US

Monet Painting Goes under the hammer for 80 million US (about 42 Million Pounds or summat)?

You gorra be kidding mate! Whar a waste of money! Pssst, I think you've been conned kiddo!

I can imagine the wife will not be happy when he comes home with that wrapped in brown paper! And there, darn it all, she had been planning on giving that money to help those starving orphans in Somalia!

Drat and double drat! Never mind, they can hang it in the kitchen and argue under it every so often! Or put it in the garage and never look at it for 80 or so years - just like the last guy who owned it did!

Claudia C in the Port of Caronte, France

Ages ago I posted a picture of the Claudia C in Malaga as she entered the harbour! Well here's another as she strains at the bit to leave the Port of Caronte in France! Maybe she felt slighted amongst the yuppie yachts and expressions of wealth that zoomed past all day on the Canal de Caronte!

Next Port Fos Sur Mer!

Martigues and Marseilles, Wenlsydale or Processed

A Shop in Martigues – No McDonald's Here

Way down south, nestled on the northern shores of the Mediterranean is the largish city of Marseilles, France and just a few kilometers west is Martigues, two typically French habitats that have nothing at all in common with each other! What a chunk of Wenslydale with Cranberries is to a pack of processed cheese slices – on a very expensive wooden platter! Marseilles being the cheap, chemically enhanced and often unavoidable choice when in a hurry at an airport cafe!


Sleeping rough in Marseilles? Or was that the market?

When I first visited Marseilles and after my first sojourn ashore I simply wanted to stay on the ship, no further inclination to investigate further after seeing what looked like an immigration holding camp near to the centre of town! Whole Algerian families, people of all ages from Tunisia to Afghanistan seemed to be camped out on street corners and under all available trees, blocking doorways, most with their hands out! A fight broke out behind me as I worked an ATM machine; seemingly three women were beating a larger bloke with their fists and tongues! I cancelled that transaction before any money came out (best not to take a chance) and moved onto the next machine around the corner! Again I was pushed into pressing the cancel button as some Nigerian looking lunatic drove his moped into the back of a very slow moving street cleaner!

Sundown on Martigues

Just along the coast is Martigue, a place of residence for the rich and wealthy, a tourist destination for those with large yachts and expensive tastes! Nobody lying around the streets here - far too busy making money or spending it! Muslim families run outdoor café’s, a series of ‘posh’ looking Vietnamese Restaurants, an Irish Pub and some street bars compliment the leisure activities around; the rowing boats, the fishing, the sunbathing and yacht polishing!

Marseilles reeks of cheapness, dirty and litter ridden streets all leading to neglected churches and corners that give no hope to the tourist! The feeling obtained is of narrowness and a lack of caring as doorways peel and roads crumble! People cannot see as they shuffle along with eyes down, shop assistants serve customers as if they are a nuisance and dogs meander along without leash and inclination to give way to a human!

Enjoying an evening of relaxation in Martigues

Back on the brighter side, Martigue prides itself on fanciful flower baskets swinging from pretty little bridges, streets arranged like a model town with overhanging trees giving colourful expression to orderliness! Bronzed men with skimpy clad dolls with large tits on one arm and a cooler of beer on the other stroll along trying to outdo each other! Musicians play, breathing soul and life into tourists and locals alike; all nationalities getting along amicably in the never ending race to either spend or earn!

But looking deeper - the two towns are really the same despite the presentation; one may come pleasantly wrapped for the connoisseur the other slapped hastily between two buns and on-top of the still-pink burger but they are both of the same ingredient! In both places French is the common language, both suffer from an influx of immigrants to the demise of a French population (I have no idea where the French live) and trying to get anything done is nigh on impossible!

Strange looking guy marching along under the scorching midday sun! Marseilles or Martigues – they both have them!

Both places have strange looking guys who walk around with their heads covered (in 35 degree heat) and with unpleasant looking dogs on a leash!

In both places I had to stand in a shop for ten minutes whilst the assistant finished a phone call, in both places everything shuts on a weekend and in both places I never saw a pretty French girl, dolled up, made-up, plasticized and glued to the eye-balls, yes, but pretty I must say no!

Maybe all the pretty girls live in Paris, a ‘large mature round of Camembert’ of places to stay I’ve been told!

My New Careeer As a Ship Owner in Martigues

I was waiting for my ship to come in! Luckily I was twiddling my thumbs in the Mediterranean town of Martigues (referred to by the locals as the Venise de Provence - a little hopefully perhaps), 30 degrees of luxury sun and nothing else to do except enjoy it!

As I was battling along in the midday sun, probably suffering from premature sunstroke with the shock of displacing myself from the cold of Edinburgh and whilst gasping for some much needed water I suddenly espied my new life ahead of me!

I am now a proud ship manager/boat owner with my first vessel on my books - be it as it may that I am owner, captain, chief, cook and bottle washer! I admit, it is not the best of boats, it is more under water than out and look as if it has been like that for some time now! I doth fear that should I pump the water I will find no bottom remaining, that should I leave it lying there till market rates rise I might come back one day to find that it is no longer and I fear that I may have been overcharged for what looks like a piece of drift wood but ....... well, at least I can say that I own a boat!

Gee, I'm extremely dehydrated! Another beer please waitress!

Merci!

I'm own a boat you know! Although I must admit, the bedraggled guy that sold it too me rushed off pretty fast with my fifty Euro! He looked as if he had just fallen out of a tree!

The Ventura - P&O's latest and largest addition!

I was sitting in Southampton airport twiddling my thumbs and minding my own business when I noticed that I was being swamped by people who were certainly double my age, if not more! Some were scraping skin off my knees in clumsy airport style wheelchairs, others prodded my feet blindly with a variety of walking sticks (how they got those lethal weapons through airport security is beyond me) whilst other simply used my body as a point from which to bounce off whilst finding a chair to sit on!

After some grunts and groans they settled down and I couldn't help but over hear their conversations! One jovial man told the whole airport "I wouldn't be surprised if there is a bus outside to take us all back to Edinburgh, just like P&O to get it wrong again"! He even told this to a Flybe girl who was walking past, she smiled politely, even chuckled in suitable response but I could see it in her eyes, she hadn't a clue as to what he was talking about

An old lady with her face scraping the floor complained about queues, a queue for the toilet (hopefully not in her cabin), a queue for an orange juice, a queue for this and a queue for that, two hours to get onto the chair lift in Gibraltar! Another old caricature of wrinkles who probably made queues form behind him whilst getting from A to B simply said "I hate queues".

One old man, obviously not short of a penny or two compared life to a whore house, cheap and nasty with everybody selling something! Not sure where he was going with that one! Not short of a penny but a couple of screws perhaps? But many wizened jowls nodded in agreement to his words, "hairdressers; shops; pubs; self-service crap; all money and no essence" they harmonized!

One wise looking soul said "....and everybody I talked to told me that they would never, ever, ever, go on a cruise again, and neither will I" she added for good measure! Another monument to a bad diet agreed (I think he was her husband) but then added "after the cruise I've booked from Miami in November that is"!

These conversations and the many others, including those about how everybody had to wash their hands and feet ten times a day (something to do with some outbreak or other) had me wandering about these new megalith cruise liners! Have they gone a step to far? Have these floating towns simply shifted the hectic lifestyle of ashore to the sea, something that maybe cruise goers don't actually want? Certainly, to make money these cruise liners sell everything they can and unfortunately this might have retracted from the romance and the relaxation, the pomp and ceremony, the glitter and the glamor that was once all that was behind taking a cruise in the first place!`

It seems so or was this simply a group of typical old age pensioners doing what they usually do - complain!

International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS)

A Typical Spanish Port where no security exists and probably never will!


A culture of security practice onboard the average cargo vessel is a relatively new part of a ‘life-at-sea’ whilst onboard an all-singing all-dancing passenger ship it has been part of the culture since the keel was first laid! On oil and gas tankers it has been thought about on dredgers a mere passing joke!

Security awareness sprung out of the woodwork with a vengeance after the bombing of the twin towers in New York (9th November 2001) but was the culmination of a series of events before and after that came to a head with the USS Cole being targeted in Yemen (12 October 2000) and the final nail in the coffin being the MV Limburg in the Arabian Sea in October 2002.

Both the USS Cole and the Limburg highlighted the glaring openness of vessels and ships to terrorist attack or of them being used to promote terrorist activity. With America pushing wholeheartedly at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) a new amendment was adopted in the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) 1974 to enhance the security of ships and port facilities the world over. The end result was a resolution designed to deter terrorists from being able to use ships in their planning or if they did plan to use a vessel that the new security measures in place would prevent them from finishing the job!

Well, enough background! What in effect the world community has today is a whole lot of package that all signatory and contracting governments have signed up to, something that has basically changed ‘life-at-sea’ for most seafarers forever! Most seafarers would agree that the change has not been for the better!

In effect the new laws state that all port facilities, merchant cargo vessels over 500grt, vessels engaged on international voyages and all passenger carrying vessels and their companies are now responsible for onboard security at all times! This ‘security’ covers everything from the constantly suggested and alarming terrorist attack, piracy and bomb threats to the simpler and more common categories of unauthorised access, stowaways, theft, vandalism and organisations that like to shock, e.g. Greenpeace. The new laws put in place systems and procedures to enhance this regime through greater co-operation between the contracting governments, to establish roles and responsibilities of all parties and persons involved, to exchange security related information in an efficient manner and to provide confidence that sufficient security measures are in place.

At the very blunt end of all this law-making, procedural paper compilation and job-creation is the vessel, the same old lump of steel that plied the seas for twenty years without hiccup and that must now comply to these rules without argument or question – and to do this without extra crew or idea as to ‘why’ they were okay before and not now!

To backtrack a little: the USS Cole was a military vessel which is exempt from ISPS rules anyway, the Limburg was a tanker in the Arabian Sea in what was basically a war zone and the twin towers were large land-based structures attacked by airplanes! Common sense has somewhere been mislaid and forgotten about during the creation of the ISPS code! A little general cargo vessel plying a trade between Leith Docks in Edinburgh, Scotland to Stavanger in Norway has about as much chance of being boarded by terrorists or visited by a suicide bomber as they have of sailing to the moon! A large American flagged passenger ship visiting Beirut might possibly be mentioned over a cup of Glenmorangie at the local terrorist cave!

The basis behind the ISPS code is to provide a structure through which individual vessels become secure enterprises. The two main actions on the part of the crew to achieve this are to lock down their vessels using a variety of padlocks and keypads, to secure the accommodation and to increase vigilance and awareness by providing airport style security checks to all and sundry who visit or depart the vessel! These security measures include 24hr gangway watches whilst in port, identification checks to all who visit and bag and body searches as and when deemed necessary!

There are many failings with the ISPS code structure and its current implementation! No extra crew suddenly arrived onboard the ships to fulfil this new security-based work and for the most part the ports (the other participative half of the code) have failed to enter into the agreement with the same enforced gusto that the vessels had to! The Port of Felixstowe in the UK might be one of the most secure ports in the world with cameras glued to every lamppost and mean looking security guards treating everybody with undue suspicion but over in the Port of Marseilles there are no cameras and the lone security guard reads porn to pass the time!

The Unsecured and Unsafe Access point on the Mississipi

America, with the US Coast guard leading the way has pushed ISPS through alongside its own rules and regulations, they have created paperwork and officialdom that has gone allot further than the code itself! America has been the leading International voice behind ISPS yet ‘back home’ glaring loopholes exist! I recently had cause to travel to the States and to the Port of Houston, Texas to visit a vessel. I travelled initially to Miami where I was subjected a couple of hours of typical American enforced bonhomie, snaking queues and ‘guilty’ style questions at security checks! I then managed to get on the domestic flight to Houston from where I was whisked away to my hotel. From there onward and for the next two weeks my passport was never once checked, I was never subjected to a security check or control point, despite the fact that I entered port facilities on numerous occasions, that I went ashore from the vessel and got drunk, that I returned to the vessel by boat instead of by road and that the vessel was berthed next to a military vessel and in a military port with tanks, armoured cars and weapons on the same berth! I could have also departed with the vessel when she sailed to Venezuela without US immigration having a whiff as to my departure!

The ISPS code has ably proved that the ships are once again at the blunt end of the food chain, they have no Unions, no voice to speak for them and certainly no understanding from those ashore. Equally so, ISPS has re-empowered many ashore to fulfil positions of authority, it has created jobs for thousands of paper-pushers, training establishments and governments officials who board vessels with clipboard and arrogant attitudes and it has created another misery for those at sea!

Admittedly ‘Rome was not built in a day’ and that it makes sense in this day and age to be more aware and to treat security as a matter of daily life! The ISPS code may therefore have base merit! It must though be applied with common sense, based upon area of work and the type of vessel under consideration, it must be remembered that seafarers were never designed to become security guards (why go to sea in the first place) and that if the vessels are to be “accused of failing to comply” then so should the 99% of port facilities that have no security in place at all!

A Sunny Day in Edinburgh

The Sun came out properly for the first time in two years! Thankfully it was on a Saturday so for the most part offices were closed and most people did not have to look at the weather from behind a desk!

The sun came out, people came out and the smiles came out (some seemed to be grimacing but that might have just been a lack of practice)!

Lots of wobbly people around; white pasty shaped lumps of dough who looked as if they had spent two years indoors and on the couch, perhaps the occasional trip to MacDonald’s or simply a choice between the take-away menus that conveniently flopped through the letterbox - and hey, bingo next the door bell rings and a pizza or a Chinese is there!

The sun brought people out of the dark on Saturday, like bears after hibernation it took them the whole day to see that it was for real, that the skies were not going to darken, that the heavens were not going to open and let what might be the whole Amazon river down onto the city of Edinburgh!

It was difficult for many, they struggled through the whole day in a variety of coats and scarves, umbrellas at the ready to spring into action should the expected happen! On the buses people perspired profusely, a muggy atmosphere that required immediate odor treatment but nobody wanted or even thought to open the windows, perhaps they were seized solid from lack of use anyway! An old lady, resplendent with head scarf, fur boots and a knee length fur coat on complained to anybody who would listen. “It’s too hot”, she said!

In town the brave enjoyed, those who had recently returned from a holiday proudly showed their burned bodies, those whose whiteness would have blinded kept to the shadows with their cardigans and coverings still buttoned up to the chin! A man fainted at the bus stop, middle-aged perhaps, the tie and the suit, the long coat and hat – need to loosen up sir!

On the beach in Portobello the often seen sand was no longer visible as families, groups of children with new found fun learned what a spade and bucket was used for, loners and couples piled on with tents (presents from last Christmas perhaps), sandwiches and balls! Little children put on bathing suits, ran into the calm sea to cool off in what was probably a new experience for most. Flabby white parents sat back for the first time in months and allowed their children to play, calm in the storm of parenthood!

The ice-cream vans came out, possibly looking at making the profit for the year from this single day as did the beach-front chip shop who had all but given up hope! The music gathered the people and then the ice-cream ran out – unprepared for the occasion the supermarkets were raided for more! People laughed and people joked, smiles were shared and passed around freely – a forgotten experience in the City of Edinburgh!

Today is Sunday and the beach will be empty again. The weather is back to normal: "dark clouds, low temperatures with the prospect of heavy rain"! Not to worry, nobody in Edinburgh had time to adjust to the day of sun, nobody had time to take their coats off and to put the boots away! So all is not lost, an easy return to hibernation for another year perhaps!