I don't like Led Zep', or Winehouse, or The Beatles. Am I still allowed to read the mag?

I do like nearly all the stuff one the CD's though, am I redeemed?

Nearly 10 Weeks ago I posted my first entry in a blog, and told the world of Word readers about keeping sane when sailing about on a ship.

Well I've done it again, 5 weeks of work done, and 5 weeks of leave ahead of me. Sounds like a nice deal does it? My wife gets more work our of me than the company ever does. Some oil rigs just north of Darwin, Aus', have been kept in food, water, ice cream, and all manner of other complicated odds and ends, courtesy of the good ship Lady Melinda.

This time I braved the merciless baggage handling systems of Qantas and brought my guitar with me. It's an old, cheap, and certainly nothing to be proud of Squire Strat, for those that know these things. With a neat little headphone amp to keep my shipmates from making me walk the plank.

I am no virtuoso. And that is not some mis-placed modesty, I am actually quite crap. I can remember chords, that I will admit, but the order in which they are played? Beats me! So I'll strum along to the tab or chord patterns if they are written down. Thank goodness for sites that spread them around, mostly www.Chordie.com and www.Ultimate-Guitar.com.

There are a couple of other guys on the ship who play too, and who knows, sometime we may even form a band. But what to call ourselves? Suggestions in a reply? Here a picture of home from home.....

That's it, 5 weeks and I'm off home again. If this was a reality TV show, at least one of us would have had their effigy burned in the streets, a the rest of us wouldn't be able to stand the sight of each other.

But we're not like that, we are normal people doing a job that always needs a lot of explaining.

I get paid to be the Chief Mate on a charming little ship that supplies a few oil rigs with all they need to function. We work out of Darwin at the very top of Australia. We either sweat in the humid stickyness of The Wet, or sweat in the eyeball frying heat of The Dry.

A bit about the job just to get you started:

The ship is the Lady Melinda, wieghs 3000t, does about 11knots (15mph), and gets through about 10,000ltr of deisel each day. Sounds a massive amount, but do the sums and we beat the pants of anything with wheels!

We are blessed with an internet connection, which allows me to do things like this. And above it all, download that lovely weekly podcast from messers Hepworth and Ellen, and all their chums.

There 11 of us on the ship, all with our own cabins. Mercifully we all have a stereo, and the bridge of the ship, where I am most gainfully employed, has a computer that is networked to about a billion music files on the ships computers!

Music is the key to it all. 4 hours of uneventful watchkeeping are much more bearable when there's a tune filling the air. And 5 weeks of being onboard a 71m x 15m steel box pass with ease when we all have something to listen to.

I've done my time, said I'm sorry and they are letting me go. So back to the bosom of my family in New Zealnd I am now headed. In 5 more weeks I'll be back, sweating again.