Teethmarks On The Clenching Bar ...

... is the working title for my autobiography. You need to know, of course, what a clenching bar is exactly to get the full impact. It's a piece of nautical equipment, a sloping bar or hand-hold, bolted to the bulkhead adjacent to the toilet bowl in a ship's toilet. It's there for when the ship is rolling or pitching violently and you need a little assistance in keeping your arse tight to the cludgie. But sailors have another function for it and that is for when one is afflicted by the trots, gippy tummy, Ghandi's revenge, the squirts, or whatever other fragrant name you wish to call it.

Thus - the clenching bar, there to grip tightly as you give your bowels that extra squeeze, hoping your arse is not about to fall off, while you sit there, eyes bulging and sweating like a rapist, resolving never to spend another night drinking Tiger beer and eating dodgy noodles on Bugis Street, before staggering back to the ship at half past three in the morning, just in time to go on watch at four o'clock. And then, just when your ring is scorched to a white heat by the passage of the undigested raw chillies you somehow thought were a good idea twelve hours ago, you stifle your screams by biting down on the clenching bar and you wonder - Why did I ever come to sea? And then you remember. It was for the uniform, the foreign travel and the chance to see exotic places, meet new people, the glamour. And then your travails for the time being are over and you hitch up your breeks and sweat-soaked boilersuit and head back down to the heat of the engine room.