Life, love, multiple divorces, planes, trains and submersibles!!!!

[teamonkey]

Well, hello anyone and everyone who read these diaries, and has decided to have a quick peek into this one.

As a member of Blonde i have wanted to occasionally stake other members, however as i do not have the required magic number of posts, i had to recently resort to a PM to the one and only Mr Kendall to get approval for sending him to the WSOP 2013 ME (provided he gets enough support)

So, i've decided to start a diary, get my post count up, and fill in some of the time voids in my current career (more later on that one)



First things first of course, is the obligatory introduction:

My name is Michael (Mick) Kilby, i'm 39 years old (40 in June), have played poker for approximately 10 years now, am married to a fabulous woman, have 3 step children i consider my own and they feel the same way, 2 of my own who don't consider me their dad (more later), an English Springer Spaniel called Monty, and 12 goldfish (if non have died since i went to work 4 days ago)

The cliffs of my life so far are as follows:

Born in Hull (don't judge me), youngest of 3 boys, moved to Doncaster (i mean it, don't judge me) when i was 4, to Zimbabwe for 5 years when i was 8, back to Doncaster at 13, Newcastle university for 2 years (squandered oppertunity) and then joined the army and really started to travel!

2 ex wives (costly) and 1 current one, Moira, who is an amazing woman (i just wished she realised that as much as i know it)

Work was 14 years in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) as an Avionics Technician, 1 year as a software test engineer in a fire alarm company's R&D department, 4 year in the rail industry servicing various classes of trains/locomotives, and am now an ROV pilot/technician, currently floating in the North Sea to the south west of the Shetland Islands.

Cliffs on poker:

played some


So, in my next post i shall go into some details, starting out with my upbringing in Hull.

Can't post an HHs as not enough interwebbies in the sea to play pokers, consider it a blessing

Mick

[Redsgirl]

 

[teamonkey]

Not a great deal happening in the big ol N Sea right now, carrying out an endless task called "bubble watch" (not poker related) which basically means sat staring at a computer monitor displaying a sonar output of the wellhead, making sure no gas bubbles come out of it while the well drilling is going on.


So, onto the first real entry:

In the year of our lord 1973, on the 21st June, the longest day of the year, my mother felt a little bit of a tickle in her nose, sneezed, and i was born. It probably didn't happen exactly like that, but at least i have got the dates right. Oh yeah, i'm not religious so ignore the year of our lord bit.

Anyway,Kelvin Street, Hull, 21-06-1973, a little chubby fella popped into this world, got his first slap on his arse, cried a bit, and was named Michael Steven Kilby, they new baby brother to Richard and David, the new son of Anne and Ted, and possibly the reason my father had a vasectomy....

I don't remember much of my birth, or even the first 4 years of my life in Hull. We had a reasonably tight nit family, grandmas, aunties, uncles and cousins living in the same town, and often visiting each other for a cuppa tea and a natter, the usual thing that happened in the old days, all of 40 years ago, before my father was offered a new job in a power station in Doncaster. And we all moved there into a new build on a new housing estate, first visiting it when it was just some foundations and a 1 foot tall course of bricks, and being told that my bedroom would be just there etc etc.

I have in fact got only two memories of Hull and they are:

1 THE BIGGEST SNOWBALL EVER!!!!!!!! Ok, it obviously wasn't the biggest, it obviously wasn't a snowball, it was Hull in the 70s, it was a large ball of brown slush and ice, being pushed along my street by a "big kid" i didn't know, but to me, in my paisly shirt with overly large collars, green tank top, flared trousers and slightly built up shoes (i've seen a photo of myself in that outfit, but probably wasnt wearing it at the time) it was THE BIGGEST EVER!!!!!

and

2 My eldest brother Richard doing what all big brother's do best:

Me "Richard while you are out can i play with your actionmen please?" , i was brought up to be polite and ask for things, he had a nice little collection of actionmen, and as he was ten years older than me and allowed out to play on his own, so i would have been a bit bored (not sure where David was, he's 16 months older than me)
Richard"yes" can't remember the full wording of that, but he did definitely say i could
Me "thanks" cue dash to his room and into his box of actionmen to entertain myself in the world of action and adventure that kids wont be able to understand these days

2 hours or so later Richard returns, walks into his room, sees me, grins and shouts out "Mam, our Michael's been playing with my actionmen and i didn't say that he could!"

Cue something horrific happening to me, probably made to tidy it up, say sorry, and sit in a corner or something equally as bad. Whatever it was, it has scarred me for life, and i do like to mention it as often as possible to my brother, in the vain hope that one day he'll say sorry.

Anyway, we moved to Doncaster. My dad was working for the old CEGB, Central ELectricity Generating Board as it used to be, which is now a whole host of privately owned companies. and then came my 5th birthday......

By this time my brother had decided he didn't like actionman any more and i'd inherited them, including quite a rare one where he was a knight (but with no horse), and for my 5th birthday i opened up a huge box that had an actionaman jeep and trailer in it, WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

i went straight out onto the street outside to play with it in the cul-de-sac opposite out house, pushing it around with 2 men in the front seats and some bits n bobs in the trailer, having an awesome time, running over bad guys, winning the war etc etc, when my brother Richard turns up with his new best mate from the bottom of the road, kid called "jacko", who decided to use my new, bestest EVER toy as a skateboard, which promptly broke the rear axle and smashed the trailer part, causing me to run into the house, unconsoleable tears streaming down my face, as yet again i had been struck a mortal blow to my inner being by another actionman related incident.

I went off actionman shortly after that, i do wonder why??

But i did later get a new toy to play with, more on that soon

Mick

[teamonkey]

The new toy was my first ever bike!!!!

however, i come from Yorkshire, i think Hull was in Yorkshire then, it pops in and out at will, and although it was MY first ever bike, it wasn't new.

It was powder blue and rust coloured, it only had a front brake, the controls for which were very VERY old school, non of this new fangled cable technology, oh no, it had solid metal bars from the lever down to the calliper, and to finish it off it had unburstable tyres on it, due to the fact that they were solid rubber, real solid rubber. The thing probably weighed as much as i did, but it was first mode of transport, and i was proud as punch to have it, even if it did belong to my uncle, then his son, then me, probably had more miles on it than apollo 13 to be honest, and by the time i'd done with it and grown out of it, it'd done a whole lot more.

Onwards with life:

At about age 8 my dad had been offered a job abroad, still in power generation, but a contract to go out to Zimbabwe to help run a couple of power stations there and teach the nationals how to get the best out of their systems, bear in mind this was shortly after the Rhodesian civil war, when at the time Robert Mugabe was seen as a hero of the country and was wanting to develop it into a leading light of Africa, which i knew nothing about as an 8 year old, so i imagine my folks  had a big decision to make, but make it they did, and we packed up our stuff and set off to Africa.

Our first home in Zimbabwe was in a town called Umniati, we were provided with a nice bungalow, good sized garden, a sports club up the hill where the grown up would drink and the kids would swim, eat a burger and drink coke out of glass bottles. I learnt how to do a front somersault of a low springboard, i learnt that the local kids, both white and black didnt get on with new pasty white kids who had a funny accent, but i mostly learnt that the local kids didnt like pasty white kids, with a funny accent, who had learnt to do a front somersault AND WERE FAT!!!!!

now, i should really mention that i'm a bit of a chubber, not massively gross by any means, i dont need a special ambulance and crew to get me to a hospital, but i am, ahem, overweight, and i've always been overweight, chubby, podgy, whatever you want to call it, never been thin, and cant see myself as being so, so moving out to Zimbabwe, where everyone born there, of all colours, didnt have the food lifestyle i had, were all lean and fit, whereas i was fit, but fat. Imagine chunk out of the Goonies, that kind of thing, but able to swim and and play sports etc (i swam twice a week with my folks and did my first mile non stop aged 7).

So, i was a bit of an outsider, and as the younger (and fat) brother, it was just me and David who went out, by this time big brother Richard had moved out, of the two new kids, i was the wrong end of the teasing stick, and kids in them days were vicious*, and in a country like Zimbabwe there was no such thing as a play fight. I'm not condoning teasing fighting etc etc, but it did mean i grew a thick skin quickly and that meant as soon as i stopped reacting, they stopped attacking and moved on to other sports to entertain themsleves.

* kids these days are just a cruel, it's what kids do, but being told your Call of Duty screen name is lolbad and that you always get pwned isnt quite the same as being held down while a 7ich milipede is dropped on your face!!!

http://www.seattlebugsafari.com/Images/African-Millipede-Jason.jpg

more later, work calls!!!!!

[Mohican]

vicious-Deliberately cruel or violent.
viscous- Having a thick, sticky consistency between solid and liquid; having a high viscosity.

Nice thread by the way.

[teamonkey]

typo fixed, ty ty

[teamonkey]

Been busy at work so not had chance to write another essay.

Have got some photos of my office and the toy I play with there. Also a nice photo of a small dingy from the window of my onboard accommodation.  Just have to wait till this evening when I can transfer from my phone to my lappy and post them on here.


Finally, I got badly sunburnt a week ago after not realising how sunny it was. I'll post a picture of my skin peeling too, its a doozy!

Mick

Ps. Anyone has any questions or requests for info I'll be more than happy to answer them.

[RED-DOG]

Great diary. Well written, readability factor 9.

Fully subscribed, impatiently awaiting next instalment. 

[teamonkey]

ok, bit of work stuff if the rigs net will allow photos i'll put them up, failing that give me 3 weeks!!!!


My first real job was on a market stall when i was 14, getting up at 4am to be picked up by the chap who owned the stall was great for me, never had a problem getting up, and being paid 15 pounds for 3 mornings work was great for a lad my age, i even bought myself my first ever aftershave, some "old spice", hows that for a sign of success!!!!!

HOWEVER, 2 months after getting the job i had to leave it, my folks were initially concerned i would not be able to concentrate at school, however i proved them wrong by passing all my tests and getting good marks for any homework i had to do (the teenage rebel in me hadn't turned up yet, but it wasn't that far off), however my head master it turns out was an old friend of the stall owner and used to get his fruit and veg from there before he went into "work", and saw me there setting it up one morning, and lo and behold, later that day i was called to his office and told words to the effect of "too young, school more important, i'll stop it if you don't"

So i didn't

But 3 weeks later he did, he'd had a word with my boss, and my boss let me go, gutted was not a word used in them days, 1987 or so, but that's what i was.

And i didn't get another job for 3 more years, by this time my folks had moved to a village called "Thorpe-In-Balne" , pronounced thorpe-in-barn, which is a beautiful village, out in the countryside, peaceful, idealistic.

Well, for a middle aged couple with delusions of grandeur, picture hyacinth bucket, i mean they'd even named the house, not unusual in many villages that consist of a single road, 1 postbox, 1 telephone box, and an overly large percentage of millionaires per square mile, but they'd named it"imba huru", which i believe means "the great house" in one of the dialects of Zimbabwe. Now this always stuck me as slightly off for a couple of reasons, the firstly was that why did they have to give it a stupid name like that if they weren't being all "look at us" types, and secondly, most ridiculously, the actual house was one of the smallest in the village, certainly not "the greatest", in fact the solicitor whom my father used for various things, including dealing with the purchase of "the great house", during which i believe he was gazumped for about 15 grand (the house was meant to be 140k in 1989), also had a house in the village, but his garage was bigger than "imba huru", which says a lot about my folks, more specifically my mum, and even more about solicitors!!!!

Rambled a bit there, sorry,

Anyway, roll on 3 years from the market stall and i was itching for a job again, i needed cash, i needed it weekly, and mostly i needed to be able to put fuel in the car i was going to be able to drive out of that f%*^&ing village as often as possible, 3 buses a day, 3, THREE BUSES A DAY!!!!!!!! first at 10am, last at 3pm, and i was 17, and, i forgot to mention this, i lived in a village almost exactly the other side of Doncaster to where all my school mates lived, my travel options were :

1) go nowhere (we had 4 TV chanels, a betamax video player, and we werent considered rich enough by the other kids in the village to mix with us)

2) beg for a lift of my folks, quoting "we know it's a long way from your friends but we'll take you to the bus stop anytime you want to go out", that soon stopped happening, very very soon

3) get on my Falcon racer pushbike, no helmet, didnt need them back then as we were all too hard (read ignorant) to wear them, get to nearest village with a regular bus service and chose to either carry on the biking, or lock it up, catch a bus, get to Doncaster, catch another bus to where friends lived, see them, have fun, snog a girl or two, drink cider, lie about sexual conquests, get back on a bus to Doncaster, wait for bus, that ALWAYS left just as you were turning the corner on the way to the bus stop, get back to other village, unlock bike, cycle back to house.

option 3 was the usual thing to happen, the cycling didn't bother me, i was still fit and fat (if i was thinner i'd have been super fit!), besides it was good training for rugby (both codes before you ask) and kept my legs in action. Thinking back, if i didnt get all the exercise i did i might have been in the super massive giant special bed catagory, thank fook i liked my sports!

And for any youths out there reading this, we managed to do these things, plan them, turn up, get drunk, fool around with the ladies, without the use of a mobile phone (i'm 40 on 21st June, i'm allowed to say shit like that now), amazing how we lived with so little.

Anyway, my job....Turned out a town center pub was wanting glass collectors, and as i was just 17 at the time, i wasnt allowed to serve behind the bar, glass collecting was my only option. I applied for the job, had an interview, went back a week later to ask if he'd made his mind up, and the manager was so supprised i'd done that, showing my eagerness to serve lol, that he gave me the job, on the understanding that i could leave earlyish to make the last bus if i promised i'd be able to get myself home once i'd passed my test, which i was more than happy to agree with.

Now i've mentioned earlier that i used to play rugby, which i started at the age of 9 or 10, and coninued to till i was about 33 or so and couldnt continue to a head injury i got in the army (more later), and i played to a reasonably high level, representing south yorkshire at under 16s rugby union, had trials for north of england (didnt get selected), for my school on a saturday morning, for a Doncaster team on a saturday afternoon, and also rugby league for the Doncaster Donns u21s at the ripe old age of 17-18, then onto whatever unit i was serving with in my army career, including having the honour of being one of the few people to be sent off in the anual Senior Ranks vs Junior Ranks match at the School of Electrical and Aeronautical Engineering, Arborfield Garrison, in 1999, but between you and me, he was a twat and deserved the punch.

Slight distraction, sorry, back to glass collecting, a job i loved, i was out the house, by now i was turning into that teenage rebel, mixing with lots of different people, working next to some people i was closer to than my own brothers, getting paid to socialise, and i'd recomend it to anyone as a fantastic way to earn some money as a youth, and learn about life.

As soon as i was old enough i was put behind the bar, and that really was fun, chatting to people, drunk women of very low morals mixed with alcohol, meant i had a fantastic time, yet another reason to get out there and do it, especially if you arent very good at winning the monies at the pokers! I even met my first wife working in that bar, but again thats a story for another entry.

It's now getting late on the rig, gone 8pm ffs, and due to work routines i'll have to cut this short, but a quick cliff of my work life has been :

1) market stall fruit and veg variety
2) bar work
3) Army
4) software test engineer in fire alarm company's R&D department
4) rail industry
5) ROV pilot/technician      where hopefully the picture below (if it loads) might keep some viewers interested!


Mick

Stay tuned for more another day, i'm off to bed as i cant be at ISPT WEMBERLAYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!



EDIT!!!!! photo didnt want to load, on a less than 56k connection with limited up/download, so here's a link via google images :

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1181&bih=605&q=fugro+FCV+600&oq=fugro+FCV+600&gs_l=img.3..0i24.34.3635.0.4509.13.12.0.0.0.0.685.3451.1j2j1j1j1j3.9.0...0.0.0..1ac.1.15.img.NM_IVXOVPIg#facrc=_&imgrc=czmwlCO2CrbrrM%3A%3BMWee-C-iIaegmM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.fugro-rovtech.co.uk%252Fimages%252Ffcv-600d-172715-05400455.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.fugro-rovtech.co.uk%252Frov%252Fwork-class-rovs%252FFCV-600%3B539%3B454

i'll have to upload my own photo's when i'm back on the beach, as us offshore types say!!!

[teamonkey]

Critical uodate!

The oil rig net has been upgraded and I can now play poker.

However the speed is 50k max with a 1 Gig allowance per trip (3 weeks) so I might play a few stts in my offtime

Yay pokers!

[teamonkey]

My office for the next 3 weeks:

[teamonkey]

The big boy toy i get to play with:

[teamonkey]

my morning view:

[teamonkey]

and not forgetting the quality case of sunburn i came offshore with!!!!! (i dont need telling, i know i'm stupid)

[Redsgirl]

Great stuff! Keep it coming