Anyway, the tap on the shoulder. It came from one of my best mate's at school, and school would be the only time in my life I would have more than one mate, whose name was Llewellyn but as this was too hard for me to say, as I didn't speak Welsh, I called him Selwyn. So it was that Selwyn, who sat directly behind me in class, tapped me on my right shoulder during a lull in a maths lesson and we had lots of lulls in maths lessons did Selwyn and me. He said, and these were the words that changed my life forever and made Mam cry, "We're joining the Royal Navy."

We're joining the Royal Navy.

I never did find out where Selwyn got these words from. Whether he dreamed them, or discovered them while standing in goal for our school football team when he had nothing to do, which was quite often, he once went a whole season and only let in seven goals, or whether he fashioned them in his own mind. Had he done some research? Seen an advertisement? Heard something on the radio or seen something on his black and white television? I never discovered. I never asked. The words flooded through me and took me over.

We're joining the Royal Navy.

It was a fantastic idea.

I didn't know what I was going to do when I left school or whether I would be qualified to do anything at all. My exam results so far hadn't actually been things upon which great careers could be built. In fact, my results qualified me to work behind the counter at Woolworths and very little else. But now Selwyn had come to my aid. He and I would join the Royal Navy and travel the world together. We would do amazing things, enjoy wonderful sights, maybe even made the occasional young lady. The thought that Selwyn had just suggested joining an Armed Force didn't occur to me for many years. I never saw any violence in my future. I never envisaged wars or conflicts or anything like that. All I saw was calm blue seas under blue skies, empty sand beaches of a tropical kind, and half-naked beautiful young ladies dancing just for me. War? It never entered my head.

"Oh, yeah," I said to Selwyn, as I slewed in my chair and smiled at him, automatically leaning to one side just as a huge piece of chalk whizzed by. Selwyn caught it with both hands, a reflex action for any goalkeeper.

Of course, I didn't know the first thing about the Royal Navy. It was as foreign to me as Latin or Welsh. We had ships, didn't we? We'd had a Navy for years, hadn't we? Didn't I learn something about it in history, another subject that was beyond my capabilities. Yeah, it was coming back now. Jutland, Trafalgar, Nelson. The Navy had a glorious history.

I was overcome with emotion. Not only was I joining the Navy, but I was to be part of that history and of its historic battles. Oh, yes, here I come.

And yet, I still didn't equate battles with war. War was terrible and lots of people died, as I should know because I lost my Dad to the Second War, he's buried in Belgium. War was terrible, awful and your relatives died in it, but battles were glorious things, weren't they?

I was so carried away by my dreams of the Royal Navy that I almost didn't duck and weave and almost got hit square between the eyes by first a ruler then a duster, both of which Selwyn caught with his usual panache.