The year was 1971 and I (Sarah) was 7 and a bit.
It was an important year in my emotional - if early - development, the year that I fell completely head over heels in love for the first time.
The recipient of my young love sang a touching song of love lost that reduced me to a weeping wreck as I lay on the floor, chin resting on my hands, glued to our black & white telly every Thursday night at 7:30pm on BBC 1
Perhaps it was a combination of not seeing my Grampee as often as I would have liked (we didn't have a car at that time & he lived 40 miles away in Aldershot) plus being a massive "Top of The Pops" fan, but whatever the reason I was utterly obsessed with the singer Roger Whittaker and "The Last Farewell"
For those of you that don't ... and those THAT DO remember this .... feast your ears on the link below:
Coming from a naval family & living near Portsmouth, my whole childhood - and indeed much of my adult life - in Hampshire has had a nautical theme running through it. I would travel (as now) on ferry's from Gosport to Portsmouth. we'd play on the shingly beaches at Hillhead and sandy beaches at Lee on Solent, and as twenty and thirty-something doing the regular "Booze Cruise" to France coming back with lots of smelly cheese and cheap red wine.
Years later years I trained for a week solid to get my Royal Yachting Association competent crew ticket, the proudest and scariest moment of which was being responsible for successfully navigating the yacht Dodico in the dark
up Southampton Water (I had to do a night sail) - only one of the busiest commercial shipping lanes in the world!
At times there was a mere 2m of water beneath the hull.
From being a nipper right up to leaving Portsmouth 9 years ago, I never tired of being a frequent visitor to Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard where the amazing HMS Victory lay in dry-dock.
It was just a couple of years before I moved North that I saw the Tall Ships in Portsmouths dockyard, what a brilliant weekend that was. With all the old buildings & cobbled roadways - and of course folk dressed up in costume - you felt like you'd stepped back to another era.
As for the old naval term some of use when the weather turns a bit chilly , it's enough to "freeze the balls off a brass monkey" ... well check out Wikipedia to see where the saying comes from!
Finally, in case you've forgotten about Shetlands imminent maritime visitors ... I can confirm that the Tall Ships have started to arrive in Lerwick
Looking forward to a very nautical and very musical week ahead =)
S & S xx
