Okay, I have to share!  I discovered this photo when I was decluttering.  It’s me – early 80s – complete with a red walkman and dyed red hair to match…  Eek!  And where am I?

Teenage kicks…

I’m somewhere in the North Sea, climbing the ‘rigging’ of…a sludge boat.  A boat that takes unmentionable gunk out to sea.  And dumps it.  Believe it or not, this trip on the sludge boat was a perk of my student job.  For three summers I worked at Edinburgh council’s Department of Water and Drainage (which is the slightly more palatable way of saying ‘sewage’).

The vessel bore the fantastic name SS Gardyloo.  Have you heard that expression before?  People in Edinburgh used to shout “Gardy loo!” (from the French ‘garde à l’eau’, ‘watch out for the water’) before throwing rubbish/slops/buckets of wee-wee out of their windows.  But that was, of course, hundreds of years ago 😉

Lunch on the high seas was part of the package and, as it turned out, the Captain of the Good Ship Gardyloo was also the Cook.  And a pretty fair cook at that.  After the main course (chicken, methinks) we were invited to go out on deck, where he ceremoniously shouted “Gardy loo!” before releasing the sludge into the sea (while we held our noses).  When we came back in, dessert was all ready and waiting for us…  Yep – you guessed it – chocolate mousse!  Ha!

Hope you have a terrific Tuesday! 🙂