Quite often as we talk at home under Covid restrictions and I mention certain facets of my life, Margreet will say: "Why don't you write about it?" Well, I may have done so already in a forgotten article or blog. So should I repeat any of the three stories here, I apologise.
Across a field in front of the house where I was borne in the country, lived the Firths. There was no electricity then, but the Firths made their own in a generating room containing a massive fly wheeled motor on a floor covered in a series of wet batteries. We would have ours connected to the system for re-charging occasionally so that my father could use it, combined with a large dry battery and a PYE radio, to listen to Test Match cricket from Australia. This important news arrived via an aerial wire that stretched between the top of a nearby tree to the house radio, which was full of bulblike valves.
Harry Firth, whose athletic Cambridge Blue brothers died early, and was the runt of his wealthy (stainless steel) family, lived among the comforts of life, liking one of the non physical games, such as bridge, with my parents being part of that coterie.
Harry kept a well-stocked cellar, Graham's vintage port being one of his favourite wines.
He very seldom entered his cellar, leaving its contents in the hands of Sherard, his trusted butler of many years' service.
One day Harry decided to view his collection of bottles, descended to the cellar, where he found Sherard drinking some of his favourite port out of a teacup. Had Sherard been drinking from a glass, perhaps all would have been forgiven, but a TEACUP! No! He sacked Sherard on the spot.
I think Sherard emigrated to Australia.
In the early 1960s, I worked as a supernumerary on coasters. I travelled, drew and sometimes helped out by taking watch or feeding us when the Dutch cook was drunk.
For this particular voyage we had collected bags of fertiliser from Antwerp bound for Cork in Eire.
On docking there a young lady came straight aboard and was locked in the Stuurman's cabin - one that had no plumbing connections.
I was the only outsider allowed in - just to make a drawing of this Irish woman.
She was married to a Danish sailor who was at sea much of the time.
Our cargo had been sold before we docked, and was offloaded on to a stream of horse-drawn wagons driven by Irish farmers. This took several days.
When finally offloaded and new cargo aboard, the Stuurman's lady was allowed out. She walked down the gangplan on to the dockside. When free of connection with the dock, we were off once more to the open sea.
Some time in late 1943, I was in a train returning to London on leave from an RAF pilot training station, when we came to a halt in the outskirts of the city. An air raid from German bombers was in progress.
The sky was clear and dark - very dark. Even the lighting of a cigarette was banned in the blackout.
Except for the occasional distant rumble of bombs exploding or anti-aircraft fire from the East End some distance away, it was eerily silent - as silent as it was dark.
The drama came from the beams of light made by searchlights scanning the sky in search of Nazi aircraft so that our anti-aircraft guns could open fire.
Although we knew that our lives might be in danger, I doubt if many, or any of us, were at all afraid. We were transfixed by the pictorial and tranquil scene and its possible sudden transformation from peacefulness to violence.
On a censored postcard I described this small episode of war to a friend in the USA.
He sent me the card after the war as a souvenir. On it I had written that I wouldn't have missed the air raid for the world.
This was before the advent of the nasty German VI Buzzbombs and V2 rockets which really did fall around our ears when I was in the capital. And we had virtually no defence against them.
