Escort.

And we're off.

It was traumatic driving to Rosyth, we had allowed two hours spare for the journey but were parked for an hour of that time on the approach to The Road Bridge while the authorities cleared up an oil spillage. I have few vestigial finger nails on my left hand, the remainder have been chewed away.

Once safely on board, we were met by "our" stewardess, named Girlie; as you may guess, like most of the crew she's not from these parts and, while they all have an excellent ability to understand our English language as she is spoke, communication in the opposite direction can be difficult.

The first function, which was compulsory, was the safety demonstration, and it was obvious that any attempt to load the passengers into the lifeboats while they are wearing life-jackets would only achieve a low success rate. It shouldn't matter too much since, as one fellow inmate commented, the purpose of the life-jackets is to enable the rescue teams to find the bodies; my own understanding of the statistics is that the safety aids merely increase life expectancy while floating in The North Sea from ten minutes to twenty. There was a complaint that, since the boat set sail during this talk, we would miss the spectacle of sailing under the two and a half bridges; however, the torrential rain subsided and we were all on deck snapping away in plenty of time - including the gent with the very smart Canon DSLR using the on-camera flash - everyone knows that you need the flash off the camera to get decent modelling.

The blip is of what I assume is the pilot vessel escorting our boat out of British territorial waters, while the extra is The Forth Bridge from an angle that I haven't seen before.