New Year's Eve 2018 0000

Yup, late but I'm on holiday.

After getting angry on Facebook about one of my friend's obsession with staying in the EU I decided to listen to YouTube music before turning in. It's not always great if you leave it on autoplay but it does often throw up songs from your past.

Then it played Neil Young and Four Strong Winds.

When I was at sea waiting for news of my father finally passing at the age of fifty or just over (I honestly don't know) I used to listen to it. He did die and not long after and for me it is “his” song.

But I remember being on the bridge with my little cassette player and headphones. It was 0200 and time for the lookout to have a smoko. Seafaring navigators will know that in those days it was time for the OOW to go outside in the Pacific in lovely weather and sit on the bridge wing with a cuppa too.

Well I sat there with the headphones on, certainly I wouldn't have heard any distress calls but in fourteen years I never heard one mid-Pacific. I sang along to the song and when it ended I took my headphones off and saw to my left Captain Tyrell leaving the bridge!

He was too much of a gentleman to come and reprimand me, although quite what he was doing coming to the bridge for a chat at that time is beyond me.

Shortly afterwards the ship received the fatal telex. I was in the officers bar and the electrical interference with the music system was apparent. I just knew. That was the one. No idea how but I had sat bolt upright in bed at the time I think he actually passed.

Five minutes later a cadet came and said the Captain wanted to see me. Ivan Tyrell was a gentleman, he started his difficult speech and I interrupted to save him. “My Dad's dead” I said. “Yes, I am sorry. Here” and with that he gave me a huge glass of gin and apologised because he had no tonic in his dayroom and it was neat. I never even tasted it going down. I was thousands of miles away and had said my last goodbye when I left to join my ship. They sent a lovely telegram to my Mum which I think somewhere I still have. Dad's birthday would have been two days ago.

Why am I telling you this? I am not sure. I do know that music can make me emotional. Certain songs evoke memories of times, people and places in my past. Young people have no idea because they haven't lived yet. Some possibly never will in the sense that they will experience life outside the humdrum ordered existence they are ordered to here. That saddens me. It saddens me when I learn they think travelling to Beijing is a huge adventure yet they have never been outside their borders.

I have my own problems yet I still fret about theirs. Maybe as someone described me earlier tonight, I am indeed a bear of little brain.