Special Guest Blogger: Arthur John Priest

I was a common, down to earth salt of the earth worker and my language could get a bit fruity so Lucy has turned on the swearing filter which is bullshirt but what the fork, it's her blog.
I always said that death comes for us all but that doesn't mean you have to go out like a chump, just do what i did and look death in the face, give it the two finger salute and say 'Not today you son of a bench, try again later'.
I was a stoker and a forking good one, i would tend the furnace, the backbone of steam-powered ocean travel and i was in high demand and got assigned to the new fangled Titanic and let me tell you something about the Titanic, people forget that on the maiden voyage there were over 1000 miles of uneventful, very pleasurable cruising before it hit that forking great iceberg.
By the time i made it out of the boiler room, they were fresh out of rafts and life vests and i was hauled out the Atlantic by a life boat before i was turned into a human ice cube like most of the other poor barstools. My cigarettes were wet which really forked me off but i survived with only a bout of hypothermia and i completely lost my sense of taste and began listening to a lot of Jazz.
I went back to work on the merchant vessel Alcantara and, what do you know, it happened again after it had been commandeered into military service during WWI until it was sunk by the ash-hole Germans.
My next assignment was on the HMHS Asturias which sunk after being hit by another forking German torpedo, and then i was next on the HMHS Britannic which was kitted out to be a Hospital Ship and down that went after the shirt for brains captain steered us into a German mine.
The next ship i was moved onto was the SS Donegal which someone upstairs must have been watching over and then decided to fork with me by sinking it with another German torpedo.
After wringing out yet another pair of trousers i did begin to ponder if i had chosen the right career path so after some other further close calls and collisions, i decided almost five times was enough and finally quit while i was still alive which came as a great relief to every other sailor wishing to avoid sharing a boat with me.
I lived out the rest of my life on land and died of pneumonia but as my story got told i was often asked when i do finally die did i want my body to be donated for research but i'd say fork that, i want it to go to a scientist who is working on bringing dead bodies back to life.