Herbie Apprentice Selection

Rishi Sunak reckons we ought to have more apprenticeships and for once I agree with him. In fact we already agreed with him before he said it.  Of course Rishi is unlikely to have the opportunity to put his idea into practice after July 4 so we'll have to go ahead on our own.

So for our Herbie crew apprenticeship we have identified a short list of four young candidates.  Each has been given a temporary code name (or in one case, three alternative ones). Let me introduce you to them.

First is Nose (on account of his -or her white nose)

Next we have Smokey aka Grey

Then we have Collar on account of his/ her white collar (I hesitate to use the term Dog Collar for what I hope are obvious reasons)

and last but not least Chalky, Snowy or Snowdrop on account of being all black

Like all good interview candidates they are fighting for attention and showing some competitive spirit.

You can also see that we are doing our bit to help the poor and disadvantaged in that all four are currently living in a cardboard box in our Peter's flat in Cambridge. And like so many youngsters these days they are still living with their mother.

The selection process will take a few weeks, during which we will assess their physical health, their intelligence and personality and of course willingness to learn.  After all once trained and qualified the lucky winner will officially become Ships Cat - a responsible position.

Now observant readers will recall that we were supposed to have been cruising last weekend.  Well a tiny weeny thing stopped us.  Microscopic in fact. I'm not sure what it was but a good guess might be ecoli or something similar. Kath and I were laid low with,  - well I'll spare you the gory details.  Suffice it to say that we weren't up to running around locks and standing out for hours in the rain.  Having now recovered we hope to snatch a few days aboard in the coming days, before returning to Cambridge for a further check up on the apprentice candidates.

I hear the Crick show was somewhat muddy by the end.  We actually won two free tickets in an Aquavista moorers draw, but not being able to attend, we passed them back to be reallocated to some other lucky couple.  I hope they didn't get too wet.