The Journey, Dailymailreading Moaners and the 8 Bells.

Aye Aye You frisky bunch of beauties, back on board again after a relatively uneventful trip out to Songklah via Southampton, Denmead (Portsmouth) Bridport, Lyme Regis, Somerton, Heathrow, Singapore, Hat Yai and finally Songklah and the an added hike to NST whihc is the chopper base three hours north along the coast form Songklah and then 5 different landings on platforms and rigs until arriving on the Champion.
Left the loving embrace of MrsB at 1200 (french time) on the 14th at Rennes airport and arrived on board at 1000 (french time) on the 18th.
The trip out included my annual offshore medical (which I passed with flying colours magnificent specimen etc ) I then had a evening sat outside the Harbour Inn in Lyme with an old mate piuttiong nthe world to rights for several hours. The next day was lunch at the wonderful LuLa's (used to be the cavity) in Bridport with my stunning daughter Pearl (who never fails to amaze me with her energy and enthusiasm for life and also her determination to live in a field in a van or wig wam,)  and my wonderful nephew Will (who I haven't seen for over year and who has retrained from being a plasterer and now is a well qualified specialist carpenter working on beautiful bespoke yachts in Ipswich.)
The only downside is that he now wont pick up his plastering tools any more so I have to remember what he showed me and take it from there on the re-build. My cunning plan is to get him over and say Oh will I was trying this and it doesn't come out right am I doing it properly? Que to Will taking over to show me and saying "I just as well do this bit in case you muck it up"
Ha a fiendish plan I know, but worth giving it shot I think.
Pearl is off down to St Tropez for the summer working for family as child minder on what sounds like bloody good terms. I wont see here now until she stops of on her way back to the UK in early September.
 Zak has been on an advanced  rope climbing course to enable him to get work filming at height and immediately landed a job filming from one of the high wires above the stage at this years Glastonbury. Sop the Bentley clan are in fine order. MrsB is continuing with creating the terrace and garden as well as emptying the house of all superfluous items into the small barn garage we built this time ready for the preparation work needed for the kitchen floor and the rest of the electrics when I get home again.
I expect to get a significant amount done not only to the first project but also the second which is need of some tlc and we intend to put a ring beam around it this year to protect whats there although my building guru has told me we need to cast a thicker lintel over the big opening french doors first.
All that work to do and yet in August and September we have quite a few of our favourite people stopping over for visits which we always enjoy. It is great to hear from them about the progress we have made as when you are in it doing it you can easily lose sight of what it looked like a year or more ago.
Also when you have people staying whose opinion you value and know you well enough to be honest about their view when asked, they can give you feedback about the lay out of the house and the flow through it. It is always refreshing to hear.            

I will spend some of the next 6 weeks entering into arguments with some of the dailymail reading (and all the right wing paranoia that reading that piece of shit invokes) retired types who populate a french forum I use. (frenchentree.com)
I shouldn't just highlight the mailreaders as there are some very good interesting people on the site with whom it is always enjoyable sharing opinions with (even with some of the mail readers who I would in real life avoid like the plague fall into that category). It is great fun and a good mental exercise  to test out ones own opinions in an arena that is often quite hostile to anything that comes from left wing bias.
It is a bad thing to find out just how insular, narrow minded and full of bitterness angst and in some cases abject disappointment with their own lives some people are but they are out there and they don't just exist on forums. I have met a few in real life lately and I having trouble staying civil in their company. I may just resort to "Is this conversation going to last much longer because to be honest I am loosing the fucking will to live"
Some people just don't ever find happiness, or even contentment in their lives, and as such seem to project that no-one else should either. Maybe they do have it fleetingly, but it slips through their grasp to be condemned as something they will never have again, and in most cases they are right.
That in itself is bad enough but when they seek to garner a glimmer of joy, they can only do so by reveling in others downfall or by deriding the achievement or happiness of others as some sort of fluke and nothing to be celebrated.
It is that sort of miserable bastard that I would prefer if they fucked of out of sight or hearing and wallowed alone in their own misery away form the rest of society and without trying to drag the rest of us down to their own sorry woeful level.

Cor Blimey guv'nor were did that little unloading rant com from eh?? Funny the things we bottle up for releasing at an appropriate stage eh??

Now I was going to go on to write about one of the happiest events I have been to in my life but I have to  do some work on the ship as we are about to move into 10 meters of one of the largest production platforms in the Gulf of Thailand so I had best be on my bestest most professionalist super concentrating, do what I am actually paid to do behaviour.
See you later for an insight into the 8 Bells reunion and what it meant to me.
Love and Peace
Bentley