Previous – Book1 Page116 – Next
If people want butter, they buy it on the day that they need it, because ordinary homes have limited access to electricity and nobody has fridges. Hence Saturday is cake day. The traders use massive zeers to keep their butter cool, and there’s even a market stall which will happily sell shoppers a smaller zeer for use at home. The ancient Middle Eastern device will keep things cool for several hours, long enough to have all the cooking under control for the weekend.
In spite of her initial reluctance, SilverCloud doesn’t have a lot of choice. It’s MaxChaos or nothing! Good, able bodied seamen are in short supply and her crew is already operating at a skeleton level. Finding trustworthy support staff at the last minute is never easy. Especially on a Saturday.
Cargo ships are not pleasant places to live and work, so finding any staff for the merchant navy isn’t easy. The Garrison always has the best sailors, and it has the best galley staff. That’s because the pay is better. The Garrison pays even when there’s no active duty.
The merchant navy is different. Officers may have a full time salary, but everybody else is paid only for the work that they do.
And right now, at short notice, MaxChaos is the only person available for the week long trip calling at Amlwch, Conwy and Rhuddlan. He can turn his hand to anything, and he claims that he can cook. The crew is little more than a dozen people, that’s all, so how hard can it be?
He’ll miss “OpenMike Night” this evening, but that’s a minor issue when confronted with the prospect of one week’s paid work!
On Saturday evenings Mr Rafone hosts “OpenMike Night” in the Great Hall at the Noble Coliseum. He’s a volunteer who’s there regularly on Saturdays helping out generally, helping orphaned children with their school work, helping them with some fun stuff, and he’s somebody they can just talk to confidentially if they want to. In the absence of cinemas, and other old fashioned social entertainment “OpenMike Night” is the city’s biggest multi purpose event, a variety show, with
Previous – Book1 Page116 – Next