North Sea Tales

“Just play the fucking music you, arsehole”, he thought to himself, but somewhere in his mind he was acutely jealous that “some fuck” could make a living and pay the mortgage whilst sitting in a nice warm studio, pontificating about mindless shit, whilst he himself was about to be hundreds of metres above this good and safe earth hurtling blindly in the snow and gale force winds above the North Sea, a complete bastard of a place to be in the winter.

“Yes, who indeed was “the arsehole”, he mused to himself.

The sleet was by now driving hard and horizontally into the windshield of the taxi, making the wipers work hard to throw off the heavy almost frozen snowy wet stuff.

The Merc, threw a wave of slush over the low pavement at the drop off area for the Heliport

.Bart again wondered to himself, – “Are we really going to fly in this shit? When are you going to get a Proper Job you, fucking eedjit!”

This was half in jest, to subconsciously subdue the fear, that any sane person would have about flying in this weather, and half a mental note to himself, that he really needed to search for a better life, than this precarious career, of short contracts and mortgage payments, plus, what exactly and who more importantly was he doing all this for?

He passed the driver 20 pounds, and got the receipt, god help you if you didn’t get the receipts, you would have no luck getting your travel expenses back from the office, and looking at the weather these expenses could now just be starting to tot up.

The boot lid sprung open at the touch of one of the Mercs, beautifully finished switches on the console, and Bart knew that was his queue to leave, before his bag was soaked in snow.

The taxi driver said nothing, and again Bart closed the boot firmly but quietly, thinking, – “Just who, the fuck, was working for who, in this bloody charade, fucking taxi drivers!! 20 quid for 15 minutes!”

The taxi pulled away to rendezvous with their next victim, and doubtless it would be some hapless newcomer, ripe to be ripped off, freshly off a flight into Dyce Airport, which is Aberdeen Airport, a mere 10 minutes away.

The heliport adjoined the airport and shared its runways and facilities, but the helicopter operators had organically outgrown the joint reception and lounge facilities and security screening and had built their own infrastructure on the far side of the airport. It made sense for them to have aircraft hangers, workshops, and arrivals and departures facilities within their own tenure, plus they weren’t completely and utterly screwed by Aberdeen Airports Ltd, who had had them by the balls, up until recently, so to speak!

Bart trudged up the recently swept steps, and into the fluorescent lit entrance of the heliport, God how he hated those fluorescent tubes and the constant headache inducing hum, but for the next few weeks that’s all the light he would be seeing in these short dark winter North Sea days.

He glanced up and there they were, his crew change mates, who had all been hanging about from their earlier flights and train connections, as they were not “local” like him and had to make do with less civilised arrangements.

Dave was on his feet first, hand shoved out in front, with for once a ramrod straight posture and handshake delivered with maximum precision, a completely over the top display worthy of a parade ground sergeant major, which was frankly hilarious when delivered by this slight disheveled, chain smoking irreverent oik, who was obviously “just taking the piss”.

Bart: “Ok, thats enough ya, wee bastard, fuck off, or I will get you drug tested, and I don’t mean testing you to see if you have had enough of whatever you are presently on, I mean the piss in the styrofoam cup, kinda test!”

But he couldn’t keep his eyes from giving the game away, and in an instant, he was laughing at Dave’s antics just like the rest of them.