EOG
Getting back to "Kitty Rules" we landed in Split to recover a body. Not a front line casualty but a reservist cook who died from a heart attack. The parade was the following morning so the crew was sent off down town to a pre glasnost flea pit called the Hotel Marjan. Matching brown wallpaper, curtains, towels and tapwater boded ill. It was then we discovered that the Croatian Kuna that very day had gone from lots per pound to eight.
Our redoubtable first officer stated that the best deal would be to pay everything from the imprest and sort it out later. The imprest then became the defacto kitty. We had a diminutive, irritating, bolshie, Scottish Loadie with us who said that he was entitled to a full dinner if he was on actuals. At a dockside café where the slight tang of untreated sewage wafted on the sea breeze, the rest of the crew nibbled on bread sticks while he ploughed his way triumphantly through his entitlement.
A very pleasant evening was then spent drinking pivo and plum brandy in a bar that once was Diocletian's palace whilst admiring the impossibly beautiful young Croatian women, all of whom chain smoked. Well the Bosnian War was not long over.
The next morning the hotel breakfast was a runny fried egg with a snotty white and a skin graft slice of "ham". More dried bread was the only alternative. Just before transport the Loadie arrived blending tastefully with the parchment décor. "Ah've been up aw night boakin' ma ring" he announced.
It would take a heart of stone not to smile at the sense of irony.
The kitty does not pay for food