Whatever happened to shirt tails? I was pondering on that sartorial deficiency the other day as I unbuckled my belt and adjusted my trousers for the third time that day in order to tuck in my shirt. Shirts just aren’t what they were. I can remember when shirt tails stretched halfway down your thighs, providingContinue reading “Blog 146. Egg Nog Anyone? Or Cheesecake Perhaps?”
Tag Archives: OLD NAVY
Blog 144. My Silver Coach Has Just Turned Into a Pumpkin
You know, there’s something about a steam cleaner. When you’ve started cleaning with it, you just can’t put it down. It’s a bit like when you use a pressure washer: you clean up a bit of the front drive and you think, “Wow, this is really good”, so you move on to pressure-wash the path;Continue reading “Blog 144. My Silver Coach Has Just Turned Into a Pumpkin”
Blog 142. The Burning Question
“It’s a long ship, this.”Thus spoke the memsahib as we sat outside on our patio in the shade, wallowing in the delight of a pleasingly hot day like hippopotami in the mud of the Rufiji River. I could not resist the thought that I had trained her well, for the phrase is Royal-Navy-Speak for, “MyContinue reading “Blog 142. The Burning Question”
Blog 141. The Great Alka-Seltzer Experiment
It would have been the year 1959, as I recall, that commercial television came to Tyneside. Before that we only had one television channel, the BBC, and that broadcasting in black and white only from 1700 to 2300. The hours for Independent Television (ITV) were the same as those for the BBC, but the channel,Continue reading “Blog 141. The Great Alka-Seltzer Experiment”
Blog 133. It’s Only Money
One thousand, seven hundred pounds. I simply couldn’t believe it as I walked away from my dentist’s surgery. I kept saying it over and over in my mind as I crossed the ancient pedestrian bridge over the picturesque river in our nearby Quaint Little Town, oblivious to the sunshine, the birdsong and the general promiseContinue reading “Blog 133. It’s Only Money”
Blog 129. Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree
I was ambushed last Sunday. No, not by deserters and footpads returning from the Duke of Monmouth’s Pitchfork Rebellion, but by Jane. I should have seen the warning signs: the request for a printout of our Christmas Card List, the purchase of what seemed like £100 worth of Second Class stamps…. However, like a fool,Continue reading “Blog 129. Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree”
Blog 128. Call me Sir
Mount Crushmore is back. Regular readers will recognise that this soubriquet was first attributed to the enormous pile of rubble left over from the demolition of the old Philips shipyard buildings at Noss Marina in Kingswear, where my boat is moored. Despite the pile being subjected, for over a year, to the attentions of anContinue reading “Blog 128. Call me Sir”
Blog 124. Just One of God’s Little Soldiers
Red meat went on ration on 13 March 2023. This was to be the beginning of the new diet imposed by the memsahib after my diagnosis of prostate cancer. I accepted the imposition philosophically, if not exactly ecstatically. It is, of course, written that if a person is sick in body, he must also beContinue reading “Blog 124. Just One of God’s Little Soldiers”
Blog 122. Suffering is Good for the Soul
Out of the impenetrable darkness, a disembodied voice spoke: “I can’t feel my nose.”though, to be more accurate, what it actually said was:“I garnt veel by doze”,the voice being Jane’s and she being afflicted with a stinking head cold.We were back on the boat – the first visit in 2023 – and we lay rigidlyContinue reading “Blog 122. Suffering is Good for the Soul”
Blog 115. The Man From Del Monte
It is quite simple really: I pay money to a private contractor, a water company in this case, to provide me with clean, potable water and to take away and treat the sewage and grey water that I produce. It is a contract. I don’t want to hear the contractor’s sob story of how itsContinue reading “Blog 115. The Man From Del Monte”
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 