the navy and the stig

I wake up this morning with man cold, except its better than having the cold back home as its not cold wet and miserable outside. In fact it is brilliant sunshine and the good people of western Australia seem to have come out of hibernation for the day. I am wearing my ?I am the stig t-shirt? which is relevant later in the story.

As planned we travel back to the dock at fremantle to visit the submarine. When we gets there we discover to our surprise that it is some sort of marine open day and the weather is gorgeous. The good men and women of the navy are there with a dirty great big battleship, another submarine, a tug boat, and a rescue rib speedboat. They are giving demonstrations using a dummy how they rescue a man in the water, however after seeing the rough treatment he gets, I think I would take my chances swimming for shore if I lose my footing on the deck of the boat.

They even have the navy cooks on display cooking up various different types of seafood and everybody looks all very smart in their sea camouflage uniforms, sea camouflage is dark grey with blue and black splodges, however I don?t really see the point of being camouflaged at sea, as the huge big battleship your in kind of gives it away every time.

Maybe its so the crew members can play hide and seek when they are bored now there is laws against the Roger the cabin boy game.

Bizarrely there is a Scottish pipe band playing so I ask the guy if anything is worn under the kilt. He replies with the old chestnut, ?no everything is in perfect working order?, wait while that tumbleweed blows by, or my sides stop splitting (not). He fails to answer the question, so I presume that he is probably wearing union jack pants under his grey tartan.

Moving swiftly on there is lots of people dressed up as pirates and dad successfully scares an innocent little girl who was dressed up, with a mad loud Pirate laugh. We also spot a mermaid and a man dressed like johnny depp in Charlie in the chocolate factory who was driving an old beaten up herse painted blue. There was also a lady dressed as batman, no robin though which is a shame as all her friends were dressed normally.

We go to the submarine and get served by a lady from Stirling who studied in Edinburgh and she lets us in for nothing on account that I have used the phrase ?dad, your patters rotten? and this amuses her as she hasn?t heard many Scottish phrases since she has been in the country. Co-incidently she is also dressed as a pirate.

Dad kicks me square in the face while climbing down the hatch into the submarine. In best Captain Jack voice "I probably deserved that" after trying to sell him to the Japanese yesterday

We tour the sub and discover that it was made in Greenock, however imagine this, below decks where the batteries get kept, no body lives or works down there the majority of the time. The head height down there is 7 feet (roughly), above deck on the main living and working compartments your lucky if there is 5 and a bit feet. You do the maths, someone in Greenock obviously didn?t. 63 guys live aboard judging by the space available you would have been pretty good chums.

All in all a rather Scottish day in australia really.

Having really enjoyed the submarine, dad wants to look around the museum which is mince apart from the rowing machine, so I work out on that for a minute or two. We go for lunch at a gorgeous little place that had chess sets on the table, so we have a quick game over lunch. I fall off the bench set because I was swinging on it, don?t try that one at home kids.

By this time, I need to pee and the lady behind the counter tells me to go out the door, turn right, turn right again, enter the back alley and the toilets are out the back of the bistro except the back door isn?t working.

It?s a prime location to get mugged down this back alley and the outside dunny is a disgrace to mankind, clearly Bruce hasn?t been here yet and he would be ashamed of such facilities.

However, outside we see these mad little vehicles, and todays picture was a toss up between the submarine and the vehicle. So what ive decided to do is put up the picture of the submarine and describe how to draw the mad little vehicle. I will award points when I get home for the best artists impression of how it looked.

Ok, step one, gets some paper and felt tip pens.

Starting at the bottom left corner of the page draw an egg shape with the other point of the egg going diagonally to the top right of the page.
Now at the bottom left part of the egg, draw a wheel.
Three quarters up the right hand side draw a rectangle coming out of the egg.
Between the rectangle and the egg draw a diagonal line (45 degree angle) out from the egg to the ground. Make this line quite thick
At the end of the line draw another wheel, but coming out of this wheel draw a stabiliser wheel like you get on kids bikes.
Ok, now inside the egg add a seat and some handlebars and a brake pedal.
The thing actually had 5 wheels, two at the front, one at the back, plus two stabilisers.

Naturally, I had to have a go and ask the women if it is stable, she replies of course its stable, its got five wheels.

So I take her word for this and hire one.

I manage to get it up to 50 km per hour and have it wide open when the thing goes bang, it appears that I have broken the accelerator cable while trying to pop wheelies.

So I have to push it back to base and get another one.

People are laughing and waving and taking pictures, and I notice the Japanese people from yesterday, who make me stop and take some snaps as they are done with the whales.

I try to drag race a ford mustang, but lose miserably, however I do manage to get it onto two wheels while going around a roundabout, so much for it being stable, I almost rolled it.

I have a great time on this, just whizzing about on the roads of fremantle until I realise that I have accidently gone half way up a one way street, so I use a little bit of the pavement. The aussies think this is funny and I get a ?good on ya mate, nice one?

Its time for dinner and we end up in Joes crab shack where the guy asks me if its really me. Of course its really me, who else would I be, I replied. I only realised moments later he was meaning ?the stig? so I played along and had him fairly convinced I was sacked ?black Uk? stig. He asks if he got a prize or something for spotting the stig.

I refrain from offering him my autograph. I go home assured that somewhere in western austalia they are missing their village idiot.