Quip

…On the ‘Groningen’ we had B. v/d Velden as captain, a typical man with a sensitive heart.
A sociable person.

Captain B. v/d Velden.

While we were sailing through the Indian Ocean, he was sunbathing on the scaffold and almost burned alive.
Afterwards, that man looked like a boiled shrimp.
He was naturally a bit reddish, too..

Every Saturday morning he made his round through the ship, armed with a flashlight.
We called it the ‘quip’.
The man checked if it was all clean in the accommodations.
Then he sat for moment at your table in your hut and asked interested about your ups and downs and how it was at home.
Meanwhile he shyly looked at a picture of my wife.

But there was one thing that still took offense at him: the ‘Playboy’ fold-out pages.
That magazine was read/looked at to pieces on board, and many a cabin was wallpapered with these ladies.

I found the drawings by Alberto Vargas (1896-1983) in that magazine much more beautiful.

Nice drawing.

If you can draw the woman like that!

Colourful in black and white.

It was possibly against his faith and I just had to remove them.
When I argued that those pictures were ‘artistically’ justifiable.
That those ‘Playboy and Varga Girls’ brought some color into the otherwise gloomy little hut!

He hadn’t looked at it that way: they were allowed to stick around!