Member Info for adoubleuk

Jiffy,

"Have you seen any meteor's tonight?"

If anyone has, they might just be Ellon Musk's new bunch of satellites.

Jiffy,

I know your message was for Johnpwh, but it strikes a nerve with me.

"You are dreaming, get back into hibernation, awake in Sept"

Do you have the recipe for something which would enable someone to do that? Or does it come in pill form? If that's the case, I'll have three, please. One for now, one for after I've come back from playing poker in Spain, and one to overdose myself with if I wake up to find that the casino hasn't opened up after all.

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

Etc...

Longwait,

"We were made to live in the natural world, not in boxes."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUwUp-D_VV0

By rights for a petrolhead like myself, poo at a dollar a barrel ought to be good news. Because fuel prices at the pump must surely go down. But I'm not allowed to drive my car for 'non-essential' reasons. And although I personally feel it's pretty essential to drive 100 miles to cut the grass at a family home, it's about 100% certain that a traffic cop wouldn't agree with me. Plus I can't do my normal 500 km a week to a couple of casinos, 'cos they're closed under 'orders' from the government. Even if playing poker is what pays my rent.

Frankly I hope that CV19 mutates like crazy, creating any number of varieties. Hopefully including one which specifically targets politicians.

Doesn't anyone find it strange that the only european country not to have imposed a lockdown is Sweden, where a certain 'environmental activist' lives? She's certainly achieved her aims, what with no aeroplanes in the sky, hardly any vehicles on the roads, and so on.

DC,

"It was a post by ttt and as Longwait advised his account has been terminated "

Thanks for your post (and Longwait's).

That leaves just two names on my 'filter list', but the page still shows some 'green boxes'. So I guess Brigitte Bardot (or someone with similar initials) is still around...

Mr Zarniwoop,

"Are you able to tell us where the website frequented by Biffa is?"

I'm sorry, but I'm considered persona non grata by the 'owner' of that site (to the extent that I can no longer access it), publicising it might get me into trouble, and anyway if I posted the URL here, I suspect LSE's moderators (or the site's owner, or somebody else) would remove the link pretty dam quick.

Not being deliberately awkward, that's just the way it is. Apologies.

"A total of 12 people who travelled with the worker are now self-isolating on the installation."

Typical BP! (A company I'm inordinately proud to have NEVER worked for.) Doing things completely wrong and wasting money, as usual. Why not just chopper all 12 people back to town, and then let them 'isolate'? A hotel room costs a lot less than having someone sitting in their cabin on an offshore installation (probably going crazy from boredom), and being paid 'offshore rate') while doing nothing, and touching all sort of things (knives and forks, for instance) which other people will no doubt touch before they're put into the washing-machine.

Plus of course, what are those people supposed to do if there's a lifeboat drill? Or the real thing?

As usual, BP is showing they couldn't risk-assess their way out of a paper bag.

Jiffy,

"JayKay
BiffaDog
Albi
& Wellwell

Have they sold out and run?"

Dunno.

Wellwell has said he's stopping contributing to this BB. Didn't mention his holding, though.

Albi1 said she'd made a big sell, but still posts occasionally, which is good, because she seems like a nice person.

JayKay seems to have disappeared. Likewise BiffaDog. But maybe onto a different website, run by someone we haven't heard from here for a long time.

Jiffy,

"Interesting, so am I correct in thinking, that you have actually worked as a Derrickman in your career to date?"

Yes. Pardon my Greek, but dam sure I did!

Having left university with an arts degree, deciding that Teaching wasnt my thing, and after a couple of years farming, took my beaten-up old Fiat 118 convertable from southern France up to Aberdeen (requiring two changes of brake-pads), dossed in the broom-cupboard of an old hippy friend of mine, drove into town five times a week banging on various drilling company doors, and finally got offered a job as a miserable thing called a 'maintenance roustabout'.

And then worked my way up to the top of the tree , 'operationally speaking' , through hard work and enjoying that hard work, though occasionally taking office-based 'managemental' positions. Which I enjoyed less.

Despite all of that, and my highly-paid work as a Consultant before 'retirement', I still feel my best work and enjoyment was as Driller, 'in charge' with 'my crew', in assorted countries and with people of all sorts of different nationalities. Fun days.

Jiffy,

"H&S I know drives the average Joe Nuts. When I worked at the Shell offices in Aberdeen you could get fired if you were caught walking down stairs not holding the F---n handrail, WTF, who would want to do that, given CV19, absolutely Bonkers!! "

That's apposite in the current climate.

The last time I worked on a TransOcean rig, a few years ago, their HSE department had invented a 'trailing hand' rule. In other words, when going down a staircase, you should drag your hand behind you on the handrail, rather than in front. Which at the time and still now strikes me as the most absurd bit of 'HSE' ever invented, the most counter-intuitive, especially coming from a company whose involvement in the worst oilfield disaster ever to have happened can't go unnoticed.

You mention CV19. I am now very interested in ongoing evidence that the thing can remain for quite a long time on 'surfaces'. So maybe the transmitability isn't simply through people meeting other people...

Jiffy,

No. No 'protection bar' at all. It defeats the object of the exercise. The whole thing is about being able to 'lean out' as far as possible from the 'monkey-board' to have as close contact with the stuff one's 'throwing about' as possible. Which is a whole lot of iron, weighing a lot. A 'stand' of drillpipe (average 93 foot) is more than half a ton, The elevators weigh about 270 lbs, and you've got to 'snap them shut' in a second. A sort of ballet-dance.

'Points could be scored' by how much yellow paint was acquired on your (then legal) aluminium hardhat by getting it bashed by the travelling-block assembly as it came past.

Of course, latching ' Hevi-Wate' drillpipe (which comprised shorter 'stands') was a different art, requiring complete understanding and co-ordination between the Driller and the Derrickman. Teamwork. Me, I used to like to 'kick 'em and bail'em', but not everyone understood that. Particulary an Ex-BP driller I had the misfortune to work with for a while, who seemed to think the slower things went, the safer they'd be. Which of course wasn't at all true.

Still got all ten of my fingers.

Jiffy,

Once again, the nightshift seems to be at work, we're writing at the same time.

Just looked at your latest link, or parts of it, quickly.

And yes, 'working derrick' was like that, back when I did it N.Sea.

And yes, it's mostly now automated. Which makes it slower, far more expensive, and no fun. Which seems to be the way the world is going these days..

Despite my age, put me on a 'traditional' rig with a National 1320 DE draworks and I could drive the thing blindfold. And 'pull pipe' using rope, as well. And make up pipe using spinning-chain also, if push came to shove.

But it would probably be against the law, now.

Jiffy,

"Was it like this?, looks somewhat hazardous to me"

Just looked at that link.

It's an Asian rig, with a 'protection bar' around the monkey-board, and going really f**ckin slow.

The 'real thing' back in the good old days was a lot scarier than that.

I miss it.

Jiffy,

"Poor derrickman have hard time IN MONKEY BOARD"

Not necessarily true. I enjoyed it.

One was the strongest man of the gang, and could pee on them from a high place if required.

Mind you, when one did that, the roughnecks could get their own back by putting pipe-dope on the elevator handles...

And anyway, using the 'tugger' to pull in 6-1/4" drillcollars was considered for sissies.

HSE? What was that? We were all out to kill each other. To get one step further up the ladder...

Thelagerkhan,

"Thanks for the rec on the Victoria Coren book, a great read I really enjoyed it.
Have you read-
Bringing Down the House - B3n Mezrich and
Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People.
Both great reads."

Of course. Both on my 'poker shelf', in the 'anecdotal' (rather than 'technical') section.

In return, I highly advise 'Devilfish', the autobiography of the man himself, by Dave Ulliott. Despite his criminal past and madcap ways, he was a very nice man. Met him once some years ago at the Horseshoe in Bayswater. I lost, of course. Turned out we'd both been at the Eric Clapton concert earlier on that evening at the RAH. (An annual pilgrimage of mine.) I was sad to learn of his death two or three years back. A real character, if there was one.

Daltry,

"A2UK - I reckon its because you did something bad in one of your past lives.... "

Please leave my past lives out of it. I've got a hard enough times coping with the bad things I've done in the present one, without revisiting all that old stuff.

Daltry,

"I would like to see HUR over 50p before I croak?.. Whaddyatink?"

I HAVE seen HUR over 50p. And being an effin' idiot, I just 'top-sliced' then, instead of doing a 95% 'sell-down'. Kept me in 'walking-around-money' at the time, but that's all. And of course hindsight is always 20/20. Won't make that mistake again? That might be wishful thinking. I might win poker-games three in a row, but I'd be a liar if I said I couldn't lose 'em three in a row as well.

What's utterly ridiculous is that I now have almost as many HUR shares as I did to start with! And 2016 was a real struggle. learning quicktime about trading, recouping my initial investment, and so on.

One of these days, I'll have to end my love affair with Hurricane and sell almost the lot. Might keep me in bog-rolls for my dotage. But that time has not come.

We live in interesting times, and I'm no fortune-teller, and don't know what lies at the end of the tunnel. We could go full steam ahead, seeing 'the light'. just to find there's been a terrible landslide just round the corner, which could derail the entire train.

The nice thing is being old enough to not really care, one way or another.

oldabutnowisa,

"the force of your argument is weakened by the manner you express your attitude to people living on small islands, which smells rather racist."

Not sure I agree with you about that. Is it 'racist' if you consider the inhabitants of Ventnor a generally old and fuddy-duddy sort of people?

Daltry,

"Superb lockdown advice! I’m going to send it everyone I know who’s still alive!"

That's why I posted it here. So I could come back to see if it had shown up on this BB, as circumstantial evidence that maybe I myself am still alive, and not just dreaming it. Because occasionally in these troubled times, I wonder about that. I'm not a religious person, but there's something about that 'purgatory' notion that feels oddly familiar at the moment.

Jiffy,

Yes, that's a bit weird. Though I think the article's got things slightly muddled. The FSR clearly shows PBLJ contracted to Hurricane for this year.

Thanks for bringing the article to our attention. I was quite amazed to see that old rustbuckets like the (ex-Sedco) 711 have only just recently gone to the big cutting-torch in the sky. Back in the early eighties, there was huge N.Sea rivalry between Sedco and Odeco crews. Could even lead to punch-ups in the pubs on crewchange days. Sedco people were terribly proud of their 'state-of-the-art' rigs, whereas we Odeco hands considered them a bunch of spoiled sissies, knowing that our units were notorious deathtraps. But everyone kept their distance from people who worked for Western Oceanic, because they were truly dangerous characters... The 'WO4' was famous for being the only semi in the N.Sea for NOT having wind protection around the derrickman's 'monkeyboard'.