It's The Sabbath

Wot’s all this then? Wot’s all this?” said Frank. I kept a perfectly straight face and said: “It’s the Sabbath”. It was 5 o’clock in the morning and we were both in the galley for breakfast. What was animating my supervisor was that I was dressed in a dark wool suit, a white shirt and a tartan tie. Frank and the rest of our crew were more casually dressed.

My choice of attire had been inspired by a talented story-teller from Arbroath. He had been the life and soul of the coffee-shop on another rig. One tale was of a ship crewed by hard-drinking blasphemers from the western isles. For six days and nights they would drink and swear with skill and enthusiasm. Then, on the sabbath, they would dress up in good quality suits and, Bible in hand, would reveal a hitherto unseen side of their character.

After breakfast we assembled in a Mechanic’s Workshop prior to going out on deck. It was here that I began my ministry, Bible in hand. The guys were still sleepy and no-one doubted my sincerity. It’s the way you tell them!

I was putting on my boots and hard-hat when Frank appeared to tell me that I had to wear a Company boilersuit. Frank was a good-guy and he was right. The Company had issued us with a little book of Company Gospel. I had forgotten in the excitement over my dramatic production that there was a Company Rule that said that everybody had to wear a Company boilersuit. I had to play by the rules if I was to have any hope of keeping my job. On with the boilersuit and out to take up my post in the pump-room.

There was no work to do. There had not been much to do during the five weeks since we started. This was the first time we had worked a day-shift but no-one was questioning my previous lack of commitment to Sabbath observance. I soon got bored in the pump-room and set out to find souls to save and gentiles to wind-up.

At the top of the stairs that led to the deck I met three of the senior honchos on the installation. The Oil Company Boss of Bosses, The Oil Company Drilling Boss and The Drilling Company Drilling Boss. They didn’t often visit the pump-room but I was smartly dressed in my Company boilersuit (thank you Frank). As I walked by with my ‘on-a-mission’ expression I said a cheerful “Good morning”. They looked a trifle confused.

I had decided to confine my missionary activities to the nerve-centre of the rig. Thus it came to pass that the Gospel and improvisations from the Book of Holy Willie were preached in the coffee-shop of The Chosen Floater. As the morning wore on it slowly began to dawn on the more astute ones that the sky had not fallen on my heid.

There was a sabbath of sorts on all rigs that operated through Aberdeen Heliport. Choppers on Sundays were exceedingly rare. That fact had been part of my calculation. Another part was the constitutional muddle that the Banksters had created to keep the Scots away from their oil. Nobody was really sure where I stood in law.

One of the Oil Company deck-crew came across me on deck in my Drilling Company boilersuit. He wanted to know if I really had a Bible. When I produced it he wanted to know what it said in there. I was able to assure him that it said: “The meek shall inherit the Earth; if it’s O.K. with everybody else.” You could see enlightenment dawning on his honest sonsie face.

One by one they came to realise that the great born-again-crusade was really a low-budget spoof. Life is full of little disappointments.