Page 11.

After we had stowed away all our gear, made our beds, written our letters and addressed our envelopes, we were gathered together and herded out of the mess, I wouldn't say marched out because I couldn't march, and we turned left along the length of the parade ground and proceeded towards a building that held a dining room. I was soon informed that it was the galley, where we had an evening meal, eighty of us all noisily chomping away, constantly being ordered to keep quiet. I sat next to Fergy because I knew him, he was my new friend, my only friend so far. He told everyone at the table that I had joined the Navy because I could swim and they all laughed. It seemed that I was the only one who hadn't been in some kind of quasi-military organisation as a boy. They had been Sea Scouts, or Boy Scouts, or Boy Soldiers, all kinds of things, but I was the one who would go down in history as the one who joined because he could swim. I tried to tell them that it wasn't just that, that I joined because Selwyn and me thought it was a great idea, but they wouldn't listen. We finished our meal and were herded back to the mess. We were ordered to shower and get into our pyjamas, and be in bed by nine. Nine! I had never been up that late in my life. At home I had to be in bed by eight or eight-thirty, even when I was fifteen. I had only recently got my first suit with long pants, bought for a wedding. Nine o'clock, hey. I knew I was going to enjoy this Navy. I pulled off my clothes and wandered down the middle of the mess totally naked with a towel over my shoulder. I'd grown up in the swimming baths, I'd been wandering around naked or semi-naked most of my life, with boys of my own age, in the cellar at the baths where there were cubicles in a long room which also included long benches. Nakedness had never bothered me. Off I went to the showers as the other boys looked on and slowly followed. I showered, dried off, returned to my bed, climbed into my pyjamas and sat on the bed, determined to stay awake until nine o'clock. I only just made it. It was the end of my first day as a sailor, the beginning of my career as a defender of the realm and considering I was a small town boy from Wales, a member of a close and extended family, I didn't have a single moment of home-sickness. Not one second. I didn't then, and I never have since. I slept like a brick.

The following morning we were awakened by the Petty Officer screaming and shouting and banging beds. There was a lot of moaning and groaning about the fact that it was six a.m., but I had been up at that time for years to get to my paper round, so wasn't bothered. We all had to wash and clean our teeth, then get dressed and back to the galley for breakfast. Once finished we were lined up and herded across to the other side of the parade ground where we queued to enter a low building. It was a store. Inside there was a long counter with loads of old Sailors behind it. As we walked in these sailors began to shout: "28 inch waste" - "30 inch chest" - "29 inch leg". Heavy blue denim trousers and shirts were piled up my arms, blue serge uniform, white square-necked, blue trimmed shirts, cap - "6 and seven-eights" - I never knew that, just as I never knew that my hat size would be the same today, fifty years later. Shoes, socks, underpants. The pile in my arms grew. Kit-bag. Training manual (I still have it, it still has my name stamped on the pages!). Shaving kit, toothbrush, needles, a ball of red silk. A gold-threaded black silk hat band with H.M.S. GANGES written in it. Eventually I staggered out carrying clothes and equipment from my knees to my eye-brows. Off I went across the parade ground, back to the mess, to my bed, onto which I dumped everything. I stood back and gazed at it all. There was so much uniform. I tried the round, flat, white hat on and it fitted like a glove, so to speak. I was getting quite excited about all this Navy stuff.

All the class came back from the stores and we all stood by our beds. How quickly we learned not to sit on them, without actually being told. The Petty Officer charged in. He always seemed to be charging around and shouting. "Right!" he shouted. "Stow all your civilian gear. On your first leave, which will be Christmas, take it all home with you and leave it there, along with any civilian suitcases. Try your uniforms on in a moment and if anything doesn't fit, and I shall be surprised if anything doesn't, take it back to stores and exchange it. Get to it!"

The whole mess burst out in noisy laughter and chatter as the long room was turned into a changing room for a short of small boy edition of a fashion show. I tried on the blue denim trousers and shirt. They fitted perfectly. As did the shoes. I tried on the rough serge, then the smooth serge and the white fronts. They all fitted too. There were bits of uniform I didn't know what to do with, a bit of string, a lanyard Fergy called it, and a large piece of black silk that apparently was to be worn around the neck when wearing the blue serge. There was nothing that didn't fit me perfectly and I don't remember anyone taking anything back to stores. What magicians worked in there? I wondered. They could the size of almost every part of the body simply by glancing at it. Surely only magicians could do that. Or undertakers.

"Put the cap band on your caps, boys, and be quick about it."

I picked up the band with H.M.S. GANGES on it, wrapped it around the hat and tied it on with a neat bow. Except it stuck out at ninety degrees and I was sure this wasn't right. I looked at Fergy's hat. The bow, on the right hand side, stood flush with the side of the cap. I undid mine and tried again. It still stuck out at ninety degrees. I glanced at Fergy with pleading on my face. He did my hat band in about thirty-seconds and the bow stood flush. I had found something I couldn't do. And I never improved. Everywhere I every went during my Naval career, every shorebase, every ship, I had to find someone to tie my hat band because it always stood at ninety degrees when I did it.

Bloody hat bands!

Page 10.

The bus I was on was alive with excitement. Boys moved around, though we had been told to sit in our seats, boys chattered, a Petty Officer sat down at the front with the driver, and I thought that those people who watched the bus pass must have just seen little blue balls of energy, so alive was everyone on board. All luggage was stored on the rack. It was early evening, just going dark, when the words went around the bus like electricty.

"Look out for the mast," the words went. "Look out for the mast."

Mast? I thought. What mast? And why should there be a mast on a shore base? I felt a little alone on the bus. All the other boys seemed to know where they going, what was waiting for them, what it was all about. I still had no idea what I was going to. The only information I had was gleaned from a book Mam had bought for me. Was there a photograph of a mast in it? There must have been, I supposed, but I didn't remember. In fact, I didn't remember anything about H.M.S. Ganges I had read in the book. Though my personal sense of excitement was as great as anyone else's, I suspected that mine was for different reasons. I had never been away from home before and what excited me was the sense of unknown. It didn't seem that way with the rest of them. They all seemed to know what it was they were going to.

Then a great surge from one side of the bus to the other, nearly turning the bloody thing over. And there it was. The Mast. A huge white thing pointing to heaven like a skeletal finger. All lit up. Massive. Wooden bits to either side reaching both right and left. It looked wonderful and dominated the countryside. But what was it for?

The boy next to me by the window whispered, "We have to climb it, you know."

I turned and looked at him. Was he mad. Climb it. You couldn't climb anything that big. It was huge. It was high. And I was frightened of heights. Climb it? Surely not. We were just small boys. We couldn't possibly be expected to climb something like that.

"Surely not," I said.

The boy turned to look at me and he had a maniacal smile on his face, "Oh, yes," he said. "We have to climb it. My brother was here last year and he had to climb it. All his class had to."

I looked away from his crazed expression. I still didn't believe him.

The mast grew and grew as we neared it, as all the boys on the bus stayed on the left side staring at it, until the Petty Officer shouted, "Back to your seats." There was a great scrambling as everyone moved around the bus to find their seats. "And be quiet!". Where we sat in silence.

The mast remained on the left side of the bus, but the bus itself turned right and passed through a barrier, pulling to a stop just inside. The other buses pulled alongside.

"Stand up!" the Petty Officer shouted. "Disembark in silence and in single file. Don't forget to take all your possessions with you."

I reached up and grabbed my little brown suitcase and pulled it down, then shuffled off the bus. I was standing on what appeared to a parade ground or some such, not that I had ever seen one before, it's just what it looked like. There were buildings on all four sides, some bigger than others. Other Petty Officers were gathered around and they began to shout. It seemed to me that they did a lot of shouting. But there were at least eighty boys to be organised. I found myself in a group that was being shuffled forward towards the first of the low buildings to the right of the parade ground, in through the door, past showers and toilets, up some steps, into a long long room with beds lockers and windows down either side. Immediately above us was a huge round speaker that was playing Jerry Keller's 'Here Comes Summer'. He sounded a lot like Cliff, but I loved the song.

I was ordered along until I was told to stop by a bed about half way down on the right side. On each bed were brown blankets, white sheets, a pillow and a pillow case. All boys were allocated beds and lockers and we were told to stand by them. I stood. Eventually the mess was full, all beds and lockers allocated. There were twenty of us, ten beds down each side, ten beds, ten lockers. A uniformed Petty Officer marched up the centre of the mess.

"Welcome to the annex of H.M.S. Ganges, where you will undergo some basic training. I am your instructor for the next four weeks," he said, loudly, as if we were in a building on the other side of the parade ground. "You will call me Sir at all times. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, Sir," we all shouted, emphasing the capital 'S' in his title.

"When I give an order it is to obeyed immediately," the Petty Officer continued. "When I tell you stop doing something, you will stop immediately. Do you understand?"

We continued with the 'Yes, Sir-ing" for several minutes, as he laid down the instructions we were to live by for the next four weeks. I thought I was doing pretty well for someone who had never before been asked to say 'Yes, Sir." Okay, I had said it quite a bit at school, even "Yes, miss," but it had always been with a small 's' or a small 'm'. I had never said it with a capital.

We were told to unpack our suitcases, stow (stow? the Navy was already teaching me a new language) away our gear, make our beds (which was a problem for me, I had never made a bed in my life - well, my Dad had been killed in the War and I was a bit spoiled), then after we had completed those tasks we were to make our way to the front of the mess where four desks, for chairs and a blackboard stood. On the blackboard written in white chalk were the words, 'Dear Mum, Dad, Brother, Sister, Granddad, Grandma, Aunt, Uncle, Cousin, Guardian. I have arrived safely and everything is well. I will be all right so do not worry about me'. It was something like that anyway.

I was trying to make my bed when the lad next to me spoke.

"Fergy," he said, holding out his hand.

I told him my name and we shook on it, then he said something unintelligible. I begged his pardon. He spoke again. I still couldn't understand what he was saying, but I realised that he was Scottish and I had never heard, or spoken to, a Scottish person in my life and I couldn't understand the accent. Eventually I worked out that he was asking me if I had been in the Sea Scouts. No, I said. Army Cadets? No. H.M.S. Aruthusa? What? It's a training ship for boys in Portsmouth Harbour. No. Boy Scouts? No. Fergy worked his way through every organisation every set up for boys. I had belonged to none of them. A look of puzzlement came over his face.

"Whae'r'yeer?" he asked.

I worked out that he had just asked me why I was here. I thought about my answer.

"Errr, because I can swim," I said at last, feeling proud of myself.

He looked in amazement. "Y'can'swim'an'thas'a'reason'fae'joinin'the'navy?"

I was also quite proud of the way I was beginning to understand him, not that I was very good at it (I still am not. Programmes on the television like 'Taggart' and 'Rab C. Nesbit' go right over my head because I can't understand what they are saying), but at least we were communicating. I told him that I joined because I wanted to but that I swam very well on the side, as a way of explaining what I was good at. Fergy had been in the Sea Scouts. He told me that he knew already how to march, salute, iron his uniform, wash his clothes, the morse code, semaphore, knots, all kinds of Naval things, and I did wonder what he was doing in a class with me, considering I didn't know how to do any of those things. To prove how good he was at doing things, he helped me make my bed when he saw that I didn't have a clue. I was going to like Fergy.

I made my way down to the front of the mess and sat at one of the desks. I picked up a pen and pulled a sheet of paper and an envelope towards me and began to write. Another boy sat at the desk next to me and he began to write too. I glanced over and he had written 'Dear Mum, Dad, Brother, Sister, Granddad, Grandma, Aunt, Uncle, Cousin, Guardian' along the top of the sheet of paper. I began to laugh loudly, a sound that was abruptly cut off by the knuckles that landed on the top of my head with enough force to loosen my teeth.

"What are you laughing at, boy?" the Petty Officer roared in my face.

"Nothing, Sir," I replied, not wanting to embarrass the boy at the desk next to me.

"Then you must be an idiot, boy, if you laugh aloud at nothing. Are you an idiot, boy?"

"No, Sir."

"What is your name, boy?"

I told him my surname only, I was sure he didn't want the full title.

"I will be watching you boy, you look to me like a trouble maker."

He had no idea of how prophetic his words were. And neither did I.

Page 9.

When I was twelve, Mam had a very serious breakdown. Dad came in off nights and found her ironing, with the dinner on. Shortly afterwards she was taken to the dreaded Deva Mental Hospital in Chester. It emerged that she had suffered the breakdown because she hadn't grieved properly for real Dad. There had been no time to grieve. There was a war on, there was me, only eleven months old. Thousands of people every month were suffering the same fate. No-one had time to grieve. But it caught up with Mam when I was twelve and she cracked. I didn't know how ill she was, I was only a kid and was kept out of the loop. Minor details only came out years later, with living Dad barely talking about it at all. He became a hero though, just like he'd been a hero during the War. One day he walked into Deva, picked Mam up, threw her over his shoulder and took her out. The hospital were getting ready to lobotomise her. When I read the novel 'One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest', at the end the anti-hero is lobotomised and I didn't know what it was, so I had to phone my father-in-law of the day. He told me what it was. A needle through the eye that kills part of the brain. Doctors, hey, the can up with great ideas and not so great ideas. German doctors during the war, they weren't so clever, and neither were the ones who wanted to lobotomise Mam. Anyway, Dad got her out of there and she recovered (well, almost!).

So I was a bit worried that me joining up might tip her over the edge again, but I needn't have worried. She had living Dad this time round, and my little brother. She just cried for three days.

Which was a waste really, for from the very beginning I had a great time.

At the Recruiting Centre we were fed, then given ten bob each and told to go and have one last night out before becoming sailors. Ten bob! All to myself. I could barely believe it. Out we went, led by the Scousers, who knew the area. We boarded the Ferry and went to fair that was on at New Brighton. The Scousers smoked and drank bottles of beer! Nash was quiet, as he always was, and I just wandered around with eyes that must have been as big as plates. I knew this was how it was going to be. I knew life was going to be exciting, different, well-paid (I had ten-bob). I was going to love it.

We almost spent up, saving just enough to get the Ferry back to Liverpool, and we were fed a supper and put to bed. All in the one room. The only time I had ever slept in a room with anyone else was when little brother was having nightmares and wanted to sleep with me. I cleaned my teeth, washed my face and climbed into a bottom bunk (that was what the bed was called) and I rolled over, gave a great big happy sigh, and fell instantly asleep. What a wonderful start to my Naval career.

The following morning up early, washed, dressed, teeth cleaned and fed breakfast. Then off to Lime Street Station, escorted by two Petty Officers, where a huge steam train was waiting for us. Not just us, you understand, but for lots of people including us. We were put in a carriage, all of us together, cases were stored in the rack, we were told to sit then given a lecture on our behaviour. We were members of the Royal Navy now, we were told. We represented the Queen, the Head Of The Nation. Our behaviour from now on must be immaculate at all times. We must be polite, quiet, sensible, proud, we must do nothing to upset other passengers and we would be checked up on at intervals by the train guard. We all sat side by side, facing each other in the carriage while the Petty Officer who lectured us stood in the doorway and the other stood in the corridor. When the lecture was over we were asked if we understood everything that had been said, we nodded and said that we did. Eventually, we were all given our tickets and the Petty Officers bade us farewell and good luck in our chosen career.

They had barely left before the Scouse kids brought out their bottles of beer and began to drink. Nash and me stared on in disbelief. They laughed and fought as the train pulled out and began our trip to Euston, black smoke billowing all around as I stood in the corridor with my head out of a window and watched Liverpool drift away. Pretty soon we were up to full speed at the train felt as it it was flying. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack. Now I really was beginning a new life.

Just past Rugby and there were empty beer bottles all over the place. Nash and me had declined the offer to try one, and the problem was how they were going to be disposed of. The Scouse kids came up with a great idea. Throw them out of the window. But not just throw them at any old time, throw them out when there was a train coming in the other direction. Oh, what a laugh! What a scream! What a bloody good idea! They thought.

With one looking out for trains, the chuckers ready themselves. Here was one, throw the bottle, huge celebration. A direct hit, apparently. Nash and me were frozen in fear of these kids, they seemed to be from another plant completely. Another train, another bottle. Oh, yes, got it. Another celebration. And so it went until all the bottles were gone. The Scouse kids settled down in their seats again, occasionally laughing at their own brilliance.

When we arrived at Euston, not only were the Navy waiting but the police were too.

One day I had been in the Navy and already I was in trouble.

Each of us was taken to a separate room and interviewed about the bottles that had been thrown at trains, causing some damage. I think I was probably quaking in my shoes. The only time I had ever had anything to do with the police was when I was caught scrumping and got a clip round the ear from the local plod. Now I was being interviewed about criminal damage. I convinced them it wasn't me or Nash, mainly by telling them who it was who had done it. By the time our journey continued under escort to Liverpool Street Station, our little group was down to only four people. I never saw those Scouse kids again.

At Liverpool Street there were hundreds of us. And many men in uniforms that I now recognised as Petty Officers. There was a lot of screaming and shouting going on, orders being given, lines being drawn. Order was rising out of chaos. We were filed on to a train, given seats and sat down. We were ordered to keep quiet, to sit in an orderly fashion, and to wait for further orders. All along the train boys were boarding, there was shuffling movements then silence as everyone obeyed the order. There were just too many Petty Officers to argue with. The train drew out and after what seemed to be a very short time, but couldn't have been that short, we arrived in Ipswich. Our destination.

We were ordered off the train in an orderly fashion, an orderly quiet fashion. I felt as it was hours since I had actually spoken to anyone. A Petty Officer strode along the line shouting, "Line up in single file. That's one behind the other once."

That made me laugh.

The Petty Officer stopped and wheeled round on me. "Is something funny, boy?" he screamed at me.

"No," I replied.

The Petty Officer went purple in the face. "No, Sir!!" he blasted at me. "When you speak to me you say No, Sir. Do you get that, boy?"

"Yes, sir," I said. I would have said anything to get him out of my face.

"Louder, boy."

"Yes, Sir!!" I bellowed as loud as I could.

"And did you find anything funny?"

"No, Sir!!"

He glared at me. "Good," he said, before continuing on his way, telling hundreds of boys to line up one behind the other once.

When we were all in a single line right down the platform we were filed out to where coaches were waiting and we were marched on to them. With the charas full, off we went.

Our next destination. H.M.S. Ganges.

Now I really was in the Navy.

Page 8.

Except it hadn't. And it didn't. Not as far as Selwyn was concerned anyway. He failed his medical. He smoked even then, where I was as clean as the driven bloody snow, fit as a butcher's dog, a no-smoking, non-drinking, Mam dominated good Methodist boy. Selwyn couldn't inflate his lungs to the required degree, even though he had quite a few tries. His part of the dream, of the adventure was over, but that affected me not at all. I felt sorry that he wasn't coming with me, but I was still going. I was still going to be a Sailor.

After he left school Selwyn found work as a projectionist in a local cinema and I remember being dead jealous because I loved the films. I was a Saturday morning boy, going with cousin Glyn and the Gatehouses. We would all gather every Saturday for the early morning matinee, hundreds of us. From above it must have looked like miniature workers clocking on at the factory as we streamed along the road towards the picture house. I loved the movies, the serials, the noise, the stamping of feet, the booing, the hissing, the laughing, especially at the Three Stoogies, even the other kids. It was terrific and without the picture house and the swimming baths my childhood would have been particularly bereft. I saw my first naked female breast at the Saturday morning matinee. I forget her name but she was very well endowed for a young girl and took great pleasure in letting everyone have a look. If she really liked you you could have a feel. Mam would have hit the roof if she had known what I was up to in the pictures.

But those days were behind me now. I was going to be a man. I was going off to defend my country. I was going to be a hero. A Sailor. I didn't know a single other person in our town who was, or had been, a sailor, though there must have been some. But after me, many followed. Both Gatehouse brothers, for a start, young Mickey, who loved the Navy almost as much as me, and loads of others. Single handedly, I turned our town into a Navy recruiting centre. Lots of Mums and Dads hated me.

Time ticked away towards the 31st. I kept swimming. I won the North Wales backstroke championship at Llandudno, my relationship with Elaine was still going on, I still met with Glyn, and the Gatehouses. We would listen to rock and roll. Mam and Dad had bought me a record player for Christmas and the first two records I had were 'On The Street Where You Live' by David Whitfield (one day I would work right opposite his house), and 'Bird Dog' by the Everlys.

My life had been transformed by rock and roll. Bill Haley, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Cliff, Chuck, Johnny Kidd, The Shads, we loved the Shads, Buddy Holly. The late great Buddy Holly. One minute I was a hymn singing chapel-goer, the next I was a child of rock and roll. It didn't only affect me, of course. John Lennon loved it, and Paul. Mick Jagger, all of the greats of the sixties, who were, like me, affected by rock and roll. The King Of Skiffle, Lonnie Donegan, we loved him too, but skiffle came and went in the blink of an eye. Ballads continued, as did balladeers, there was folk, and country music, but rock and roll, that was here to stay. I am still a child of rock and roll and can hold my own in conversations with almost anyone of any age about popular music. These days I even write lyrics.

Then the 30th of August arrived. Mam's birthday. I gave her a card and bought her a present. Then I went to my beloved Swimming Club and bade them all farewell. I almost cried. I saw Elaine for almost the last time, though I didn't know it then. I said adieu to all the relatives and woke on the morning of the 31st almost breathless with excitement.

The day had arrived. I was going in the Navy.

Once again we set off as a family on the bus to Birkenhead, then on the Ferry to the recruiting office, me carrying a little brown suitcase of clothes Mam had packed for me. Dad gave me five shillings, little brother laughed a lot, but then again, he always did. We arrived and entered the foyer. There were two or three men in uniform, Petty Officers they said, who came out to speak to Mam and Dad. The Navy would look after me, they said. There was no need to worry or fret, I would be fine. I think Mam said that I had never been away from home before. That's all right, said one of the Petty Officer's. Everything will be just fine. If he gets homesick, the Navy will let him come home. If he doesn't like it, I wouldn't have to stay, and this blatant lie was said with a reassuring smile. I had signed a contract which tied me to the Royal Navy for nine years after reaching the age of eighteen. Which meant, as I was only fifteen years and nine months old, that I would be doing two years and three months that didn't count.

None of this bothered me. Not the first time away from home, not the fear of homesickness, not the contract, nothing. I was going to be a sailor and that was the end of it. Goodbye town, goodbye Elaine, goodbye Swimming Club, goodbye school, goodbye Mam, Dad and little brother. I had a duty to serve.

Finally, I was dragged apart from Mam, and Dad led her away along with little brother. I stood where I was and waved them goodbye until they were out of the door and out of sight.

"Right, son," a Petty Officer said, "follow me."

We climbed some stairs and went up several floors, they were making sure we couldn't escape, and eventually I entered a room the Petty Officer described as a mess. It didn't look a mess to me, I must admit, but then he informed me it was the name of the room, not the bloody state it was in. There would be many Naval words I would never come to terms with. Head, avaft, galley. I would never stop referring to them as toilet, backwards and kitchen. Beds were piled up on one another in the mess and no other boys had yet arrived. They soon did, until there were six or eight of us, including Nash from Chester, who I would go through training with and who looked about twelve years old. Years later I would meet him at a fair in Chester, by the Racecourse, and he still only looked about sixteen.

We were the recruitment. The elite. The ones who had passed the educational test and the medical. We were the best of the best. Oh, yes!

Page 7.

We all traipsed into the foyer, out of which I was ushered whilst the rest of the family went shopping and I was glad that I wasn't with them because Cities terrified me, they still do. All those people charging around like panicked beasts, all that noise, that dirt. I am strictly a small town boy and want to stay that way.

Inside the centre I was weighed, slightly over weight, the story of my life, I had to fill my lungs with air and exhale several times, look at coloured lights until they disappeared, have my hearing tested, my teeth (lots of tut-tutting about them), and do all kinds of other tests which seemed to take hours. Then it was over and I was returned to the foyer, where I found my family nervously sitting on a bench. Mam didn't seem to be very pleased about the fact that I was in glowing health.

That would be at the very end of July, or the beginning of August, because we had broken up from school and I said my goodbyes to everyone who mattered, which was no-one really, because my best friend, Selwyn, was coming with me and I was never very popular with the girls in my class.

About ten days later I received another letter. Joining papers, in fact. Telling me I was to report to the Liverpool Recruitment Centre on the 31st August for transportation to H.M.S. Ganges on 1st September. The 31st was the day after Mam's forty-first birthday. It was not good timing. Not that I gave the date a second thought. I was so thrilled to be asked to join, it was the first ambition I had every had that I had accomplished (I never expected to pass the scholarship, so that was a surprise, and I only took up swimming because Auntie Ada said I needed to do something other than sit in the house and read and draw all day, no-one was expecting anything to come from that). I was going to be a sailor. A member of the Royal Navy. Mission accomplished.

I hadn't seen Selwyn since we'd broken up from school, and I didn't have his address to write. He was, after all, only my school best mate. At home I had cousin Glyn and Gatehouse brothers who I knocked around with all the time. And the members of the Swimming Club, of course. But I expected to see Selwyn on the 31st at Liverpool. Our adventure was about to begin.

Page 6.

I received my reply in July and I was thrilled to bits. I was going to be part of history, I was going to fight great battles against evil people and survive covered in glory by being the last man on the gun, or the one who sent the signal that proved to be vital, or do something that save the day.

I still didn't equate battles with War.

Off I went to Wrexham to sit the educational test.

There were about fifteen boys gathered in the Navy recruiting centre, all flushed with the excitement of joining up. There were also a couple of older men in uniform who ordered us around. I wasn't that taken with being ordered around but the thought that this might continue once I had joined up never occurred to me. Yeah, I know, I have no vision, cannot see what's ahead. That's just what my wife says, fifty years later.

We were all told to sit at desks and then we got a lecture from the men in uniform. I didn't know what rank they were because I didn't know anything about the Navy, and even when the said who and what they were it still meant nothing to me. A Chief Petty Officer? What the hell was that. After the lecture, and the usual warnings of exams, no talking, no cheating, we were given exam papers and told we had three hours to finish them.

I finished mine in fourteen minutes.

I looked around. Everyone else was beavering away. I thought I must have made a mistake, missed some pages out or something. I checked all the pages and all the answers. I was done. When Selwyn said the exam was easy, he hadn't been kidding. The first question was a rough sketch of a hammer. It asked, is this a) a chisel b) a screwdriver c) a hammer. And the questions didn't get any harder. After sixteen minutes I stood up and wandered down to where the two uniformed men sat.

One looked up. "Given up?" he asked.

"Finished," I replied.

"What?" the both of them said, as one snatched the papers from me and began to scrutinise them.

I left while they were doing it. I passed, apparently I got one hundred percent. As far as I know, I never met any of the other boys ever again.

The following day Selwyn and me had a right laugh about how easy the exam was. Mam and Dad weren't so impressed. The first hurdle had been jumped and still my enthuiasm for my chosen career remained undiminished.

And they weren't the only ones to be concerned about me joining up. The beautiful Elaine wasn't that keen either, and though I loved her deeply, as only a fifteen year old can, I still had to follow my destiny. She would eventually leave me for Mel and I wouldn't see her again until my service days were over and I was myself, the manager of a swimming pool. She appeared on the balcony one day, looking as lovely as ever, with two lovely girls who looked like twins, but who were born almost exactly a year apart. They would be grown up by the time I saw her again.

School was drifting towards the summer holidays and I had received permission to leave and join the Navy, and my period of not learning anything was coming to an end. Grammar School had been wasted on me. Well, not exactly wasted, I think I am feeling the benefits of it now, fifty years after I left.

It had been a shock to my whole family when I became the first of my generation to pass the Scholarship, as it was then known. On the day I was told the result I raced home to tell Mam and Dad of my brilliance, and was immediately sent out to deliver the message to the rest of the family. Auntie Nora and Uncle Stephen, Auntie Florence and Uncle Wilfred, Granddad, Uncle Arthur and others on Mam's side, then it was to all those who belonged to Dad. I was gone most of the day. Only Uncle Jim didn't give me sixpence. The only problem that year was that, pertaining to my brilliance, , there were more passes of the Scholarship than there had ever been in history from our town, or my school. Either us kids were getting brainier or the exam was getting easier. I have always leaned towards the latter. Dixie, Mike, Zoff, Trevor, Stan, me, loads of us passed and went en masse to ruin the education of more serious students at the Alun Grammar School in Mold. None of us did very well out of it, I don't think. Although I think Stan went on to be a scientist of some kind and Zoff got a decent job, but that was only after he left to join the Met Police, got a hammering, and went back to school to finish off. I remember him getting 4% in an algebra exam once. Still, it's not everyone's subject, algebra. The rest of us did get jobs, though, all except me who just joined the Navy.

And Selwyn, of course, who wasn't from my town, and who I met at Grammar School. He came from some unpronounceable place in the mountains and spoke Welsh. I didn't. Neither did Mam, nor any of my family as far as I knew, but one day I was walking down the main steet with living Dad and someone spat out some Welsh, it's a very spitting language, and off Dad went, babbling like he'd learned the language as a baby. Which, in fact, he had. God, I had some good times with living Dad. He died of a heart attack some years ago after going into hospital for tests. He was halfway through decorating the bedroom he shared with Mam. It took little brother ages before he could bring himself to finish it off.

Selwyn and me spent days huddled together every day, plotting what we would do when we both joined up. We made plans about where we would go, things we would do, people we would meet. To say we had a totally unrealistic notion of what the Navy was all about, would have to be a total understatement. We didn't have a clue what we were getting ourselves into.

I received a letter telling me to go for a medical in Liverpool. Selwyn didn't get his. Somewhere along the line I had overtaken him. I had only ever been to Liverpool once or twice in my life, with Uncle Bill, who built things, he once built a hovercraft for his son, so when I went for my medical, we all went. Mam, Dad, little brother and me. We went on the bus to Birkenhead, then across the Mersey on the ferry, the same one Gerry and the Pacemakers would sing about years later, then to the huge Navy recruiting centre just by the tunnel

Page 5.

The Scouser, by the way, was hung for murdering a cinema manager after the war.

He was wonderful to me all his life, was living Dad, and my real Dad could not have done a better job at bringing me up.

I was four when he married Mam. When he came back from the War and discovered that real Dad had been killed, he went to see Granddad and told him that he had loved Mam from afar for years and that to win her would would give up drinking and behaving like a lout and would get a job and looked after her and me. He was as good as his word. My Granddad grew to adore him, as did almost evryone who knew him. I was at the wedding, of course, and I cried and screamed in the pavement when the climbed into a taxi to take them to the station for their honeymoon. So they put me in the taxi with them and Auntie Hilda and they dropped me off and where we lived at that time in Liverpool Road, with Auntie Hilda, Great Granddad, who lived to be over a hundred years of age, Elizabeth and others, where I would stand at the bottom of the garden and watch the pigs as they rolled in the mud in the field on the other side. Mam and Dad went to Blackpool for their honeymoon.

I loved living Dad, and I don't think I ever told him either, and he never let me down, though I let him down all the time. The occasion I feel most guilty about is the time when he asked me to go to Wrexham with him to watch them play football. I said I would, but on the day I sat in the cafe next to the baths with all my friends, listening to rock and roll on the jukebox, and I watched him through the window as he looked up and down the streets waiting for me to turn up. Which I never did. Then I watched as he trudged back home, head down, hands in his pockets. He looked awfully sad. I have never forgotten that day, and I must have only been twelve or thirteen, and it haunts me even now.

Mind you, if real Dad had lived I would have been brought up in the Midlands and I would have one of those really awful Midlands accent, unlike the accent I have now, after being brought up in Wales. I have a Scouse accent.

Selwyn showed me the application form he had filled in for the Royal Navy, then he showed me the reply he got back some short time later. I still hadn't sent off my application, but that night, when I went home, I filled it in and gave it to Mam to post. Then I waited. And waited. And waited. Every day I would get up, deliver my papers, come in, eat breakfast, look for the mail, find there was none, go to school, not learn anything, talk to Selwyn, come home and listen to Top Of The Form or Journey Into Space (I still have one of the books). I'd go to bed each night expecting to receive instructions the following morning, but nothing happened. Nothing came. The Royal Navy didn't want me. Only swimming kept me going. I carried on training and winning as if I had no problems in the world. I began stepping out with the gorgeous Elaine, who I adored and who moved like silk in water. She was a backstroker too, which gave us something to talk about.

April came and went. May. June. Nothing from the Navy. Selwyn went for an intelligence test in Wrexham and passed. He told me the test was easy. As the weeks passed I moaned on and on about the Navy not wanting me for the Defence Of The Realm. It is terrible to be rejected at the tender age of fifteen and it is something from which I have never recovered. I live in absolute fear of being rejected from anywhere, from anything or by anybody. Imagine how I felt later in life when I decided to become a novelist (!), poet (!), songwriter (!) or when relationships crashed an burned and I always got the blame. Can you imagine?

In July I got a reply.

It was only years later I discovered that Mam had carried my application form around in her pinny pocket for months before Dad convinced her to post it on the grounds that I would either be rejected or change my mind.

Neither of those things happened.

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