A ships Captain, eighty years if a day, retired and well-lubricated, the life of Silas Parks is laid bare to a series of dubious but interested listeners.

Silas can be found, on most days and for that matter most times of the day, propping up the bar of his local pub. From his perch on the bar stool, and with a frequently replenished glass of whatever is on offer his adventures flow.

Silas is a very decent sort of bloke, a salt of the sea, but if you haven’t got a couple of hours to spare, if you don’t have the ear for a racing sea adventure or two and if you begrudge an old codger a whisky or three then don’t sit down. Move on up the bar and let another sit for the ride.

From Venezuela, where he ended up in jail after over-dosing on baked-beans to Papua New Guinea where he upset the Commodore of the Royal Australian Navy and to Singapore for medical attention that was no longer necessary after the first beer, Silas navigates his way through his tales.

Silas can never quite see that the disastrous results of his many escapades - including the time his ship was apparently attacked by pirates in the middle of the Indian Ocean despite teaching the cook how to make Molotov cocktails, and not to mention that time near Morocco when his spick-and-span cruise ship unexpectedly hit some rough weather -are invariably due to his alcohol befuddled mind.

In fact, even in Taiwan, when he accidentally lost the crews football pool winnings, nor when he was chased by a machete-wielding local or indeed the time of that unfortunate incident of the misunderstood Christmas speech, he maintains total blindness to his instigator status. Whilst never quite placing blame for the outcomes on other crew-members he frequently and weirdly conveniently manages to imply that they might have been conspiring against him for one reason or another.

There is no hurry to buy him a drink. Silas might be old but he’s a solid fixture now and he drinks allot. But make sure you pop by.