The Wrong Money

As the ship did not anchor until midday, there was a cooking demo in the morning – chicken in cider and a cod dish made with dried Portuguese cod. As usual, the audience were shocked by the lack of hygiene, which they are always assured does not extend to the kitchens. A chicken was jointed, hands not washed properly and the board re-used for other tasks. But nobody died. Diva only tasted one boiled potato, which the chef said he had paid 15 euros per kilo for. It was very nice but not quite nice enough to justify the price.

The excursion in Guernsey did not start well. The bus arrived at the underground German military hospital and the doors were firmly closed. A nearby resident appeared to say that he would get the owner to open up as he only lived up the road. The decision was taken to visit the military occupation museum first. This turned out to be full of interesting items but it lacked the overall theme which a modern museum would be expected to have.  TSH and Diva learned something about the difficulties of the local population under German rule.  Back to the underground hospital, which was notable mainly for its sheer extent. It was built by slave labour, mostly brought in from Eastern Europe. Some guests think that the hospital was an attempt to invade the UK by underground tunnel.

The bus driver, who was also the guide, was a charming young man who tried hard but was totally out of his depth. He explained that since Guernsey has only two dairies to produce its milk and cream, each cow on the island was taken to one of the dairies twice a week to be milked. Now, Diva is a proud townie, but this did not sound right. Some people from farming communities queried this arrangement, but were assured that this was the Guernsey way. They would love to get higher yields by milking more often but this was not possible. A check with Google afterwards confirmed that there are two dairies but that the cows are milked twice a day (like everywhere else in the world) and the milk refrigerated for collection by the dairies. This collection is probably what happens twice a week.

One interesting piece of information is that there is no road tax but that drivers have to buy a number plate. These numbers start from 1 and go up to 5 or 6 digits. People pay more for the lower numbers, just to show that they are rich, and the numbers less than 100 are much prized. TSH and Diva saw number 21.

The ship’s doctor invited TSH and Diva to dine with him and he diagnosed Diva as OCD after about 5 minutes. How could she have given him an idea like that?

TSH is very experienced with money and it is one of his duties to issue the party with money before every visit ashore. It was only after returning to the Silver Wind that he realised he had issued euros instead of pounds. Fortunately, no money had been needed and he did have a credit card with him, although that would have been of little use to buy an ice cream.  He used some travel budget to take out an open booking for 2018.

Referendum: The ship’s doctor, who was from the US, thought that Obama had been wrong to say that the UK alone would be at the back of the queue for trade agreements. He thought that agreements between the UK and the US would be put in place in no time.