Out-and-Out Liars; Of Ice, Fur and Fire. Chapter 4, part 2)

 

                                                                                  2.

 

 

Mrs Sedgewick, England                                                         August 5^th 20-

 

Last Monday, (July 31^st) the ice surrounded and closed in on the ship from all sides, begrudging us barely the scant room necessary to keep The Sea Shepherd from continued passage and being crushed.  I am underplaying the perilous nature of our present plight for your sake Dear Mrs Sedgwick as the fact of writing to a married woman remains as impenetrable a mystery as the fog which since Monday has enshrouded us. We await a change in weather and rise in temperature to be able to navigate the narrow but shifting inky black lanes between the vast shelves of snow.

 

This morning, as the mist cleared away and on the deck of our ship we sighted coursing across the snow a sledge moving at tremendous speed over the tundra pulled by a dozen lunatics, passing on northwards, at a distance of less than half a mile. A being in the form of a miniature toy dog, apparently a Chihuahua, sat in the sledge, and guided it by goading the lunatics on with a sparkling necklace at the end of a fishing rod directly before and above the heads of the baying pack. We observed the rapid progress of the miniature canine through our telescopes, until all that could be seen was the occasional flash as the sun caught the precious stone-encrusted necklace pursued by the howls of the pack of lunatics until the vision disappeared and was swallowed up in distant configurations of ice.

  

From the window ledge of a port-hole Mitzi observed a party of inebriated bankers, who had inadvertently wandered onto the hold of the Sea Shepherd from a neighbouring party boat which was closing up for the night, distracted by over-bloated tales of over-bloated bonuses and champagne, the party were being regaled by the tale told by one their number about having pissed on a homeless person thus wasting the thousand pound Champagne quaffed, and then finding out it was his own brother. “State Schooled; the most expensive shower the fucker had ever had!” Came the punch-line to the dubious boast, as Captain Paul Watson and a skeleton crew received the news that the international injunction on the Sea Shepherd for ramming a Japanese whaling ship had been lifted as of midnight, and sealing the hold mechanically, sped off down the Thames to meet his latest urgent environmental deadline somewhere in the Arctic Circle with Mitzi and bankers fuelled by hubris, cocaine and a few crates of champers on board.

 

 

 Dear Mrs Sedge,

 

Several hours after witnessing the scene above we heard a sea with heavy swell and high waves and before nightfall the ice split and widened paths before us freeing our passage. However we decided to remain for fear of hitting icebergs in the darkness. I took a welcome rest from the near psychotic and pathologic urge to save the planet, that internal compulsive and nagging Ancient Mariner who is, sadly instrumental in making you, after a twenty-year wait, reconsider the terms of our relationship, giving me up as a hopeless cause. Is Mr Sedgewick still your butler?

 

In the morning, the vessel loosened of pack ice, I found the crew on the starboard side, staring at a sight ever more strange than that of the previous day; another sledge, but this time pulled by a fleet of disability buggies.  Perched high up on a stack of life-jackets sat a figure with a lop-sided beehive, a plate of ice above each eye; a powder blue nighty; the driver's five O'Clock shadow contrasted starkly against the general white-out. Our crew hailed the apparition, who signalled the senior gentlemen and gentlewomen drawing her carriage to a halt before our ship.

 

“Are you lost?”. We enquired.

 

“Have you seen a Chihuahua?!” The voice called back.

 

“Pulled by a pack of baying bankers in pursuit of a Swarovski necklace?... No!”.

 

“Okay, thank you!” returned the beehived apparition, and with that, Mrs Sedgewick dear, the passenger and her septuagenarian charioteers, some of whom had already  succumbed to frostbite, powered on.

 

Should fortune be on our side and I return to England, please remind me. Dear Mrs Sedgewick to make a necessary appointment with my physician on the serious matter of dementia.

 

The HMS England having several days previous stalled before the mass of ice, a drastic drop in temperature and a passenger list whose combined ages soared well into four-figures was proving a lethal mix. Ambling about the decks dressed in every stitch of clothing they could muster the passengers were fast discovering that their dream trip-of-a-lifetime might indeed be their last. All quibbles about monetary status seemed to melt away in the opposite direction of the general freeze.

 

Captain David Cameron, having an innate acute radar for, and dread of conflict of any kind, had cravenly jumped ship and was now several mile out to sea on his way to Jersey with the ship’s safe.

 

In the ensuing despair and hopelessness Mary Mary’s role as scapegoat had been subsumed in the general geriatric panic to that of leader. A tally was made of the disability buggies in the ship's hold, as it was suggested that movement was preferable to immobility; a research station was not far off, she promised with no certainty at all. Those left behind, the able-bodied, could make use of the copious amounts of alcohol and each other to keep warm. A sledge would be improvised from a lattice-work of loungers. The entertainment team would be offering bingo and line dancing to keep everyone’s minds off…well. death; she would be back in a few days with a range of polar fur.

 

The allusion to polar fur went over their collective bald pates and blue rinses as the mawkishly tanned entertainment team led them to the Crystal Lounge where Jane McDonald stood amid the ships entire supply of candles, greeting her audience with frightening effervescence.

 

Out on the snow, propelled by disability buggies, driven by pensioners fuelled by a steely-eyed will to survive, Mary Mary, looking back could still make out Jane McDonald in the Crystal Lounge amid a circle of fading candles and hear, above the motorized buggies, the strains of 'Que Sera, Sera!'

 

Some way out to sea, rounding the Faroe Isles, a Booze Cruise, The HMS Wetherspoons,- (Lidles , German-owned international and equally lacklustre supermarket chain had chartered this floating council estate),- received a distress call just before The HMS England lost power; it was totally ignored.