Improvising / taking a liberty plank

Missing life on board ship?

Here‘s how to recapture the atmosphere of the old days and simulate living onboard ship.

• Build a shelf in the top of your wardrobe and sleep on it inside a smelly sleeping bag.



• Remove the wardrobe door and replace it with a curtain that’s too small.



• Wash your underwear in a bucket every night then hang it over the water pipes to dry.



• Four hours after you go to bed, have your wife whip open the curtains, shine a torch in your eyes, and say “sorry mate, wrong pit”.



• Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the centre of the bath and move the showerhead down to chest level.



• Store beer barrels in the shower enclosure.



• When you have a shower, remember to turn off the water whilst you soap.



• Every time there is a thunderstorm, sit on a wobbly rocking chair, and rock as hard as you can until you are sick.



• (Mandatory for engineering types) – Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day to re-create the proper noise levels.



• Have the paperboy give you a haircut.



• Once a week blow compressed air up your chimney. Ensure that the wind carries the soot over your neighbour’s house. When he complains, laugh at him.



• Store your rubbish in the other side of the bath for a month.



• Wake up at midnight every night and make a sandwich out of anything you can find, preferably using stale bread. Optional: cold soup or canned Ravioli, eaten out of the tin.



• Devise your family menus a week in advance without looking in the fridge or larder.



• Set your alarm to go off at random times throughout the night. When it goes off, leap out of bed, get dressed as fast as you can, put on a lifejacket and then run down into the cellar with the garden hose, a sledge hammer and wooden wedges (damage control kit). For good measure have someone throw thunderflashes in after you.



• Once a month, take every major household appliance apart completely then re-assemble (by candle light).



• Use 4 spoons of coffee and 6 sugars per cup then allow it to sit for 3 hours before drinking.



• Invite about 85 people (samll ship) who you don’t really like to come and live with you for a couple of months.



• Install a small fluorescent light under your coffee table and then lie under it to read books.



• Raise the thresholds and lower the tops of all your doors in the house. Now you will always hit your head or skin you shins when passing through.



• Whilst baking cakes prop one side of the cake tin while it is baking. When it has cooled, spread icing really thickly on one side to level it out again.



• Every so often throw your cat in the swimming pool, or bath and shout “man overboard”, then run into the kitchen and sweep all the dishes onto the floor while yelling at your wife for not having secured for sea properly.