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Thread: When Are You Going Back?

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    Default When Are You Going Back?

    'When Are You Going Back' is the title of a memoir I've placed on Amazon this week.

    It's taken two years - at 84 I don't rush uphill. But it's been a pleasure, and as it follows the other two: 'The Best of Days', and 'You'll See Wonders' it may be that my writing skills have come on. I end the book still at sea - so will there be another?

    I used a late friend, Bill Wedgwood's watercolour for the cover. Bill was a great old seaman from Robin Hood's Bay. It's an image of Liverpool docks with a tug and its charge.
    Harry Nicholson

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    Default Re: When Are You Going Back?

    Just the Link Harry to help others that may have an interest in Purchasing! I see it is in Kindle too.
    Cheers

    When Are You Going Back?: A memoir of the sea (Memoirs of the Sea Book 3) eBook : Nicholson, Harry: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store
    Senior Site Moderator-Member and Friend of this Website

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    Default Re: When Are You Going Back?

    Thanks, Doc. That's very gracious of you. With the complexity of preparing a book for publication, then the rigmarol of uploading the proper files, I end up feeling bruised in the head and miss such a link as you provided.
    Here's the link for the UK:https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Are-Yo...ks%2C87&sr=1-1
    Last edited by Harry Nicholson; 28th January 2023 at 02:04 PM.
    Harry Nicholson

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    Default Re: When Are You Going Back?

    Harry I read an article in I think Sea breezes years ago where this ship in the Tyne was short of a donkey/ greaser on sailing. The federation man went to the next name on his list and went to this seafarers house and caught him sitting down to a meal with his family . The usual story quick quick your services are required . And back to the office. 6 months later the ship returned to the Tyne and the federation man went down to the ship and asked how the donkey greaser turned out . The chief replied very good a very sociable man and very knowledgeable, but the next one you send one make sure he has two legs . Apparently the one who joined had 2 false ones. JS .............
    Last edited by j.sabourn; 28th January 2023 at 02:31 PM.
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    Default Re: When Are You Going Back?

    And why not? Perhaps he was inspired by Douglas Bader.
    Harry Nicholson

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    Default Re: When Are You Going Back?

    It's a full twelve months since "When Are You Going Back?" was published. It has over 520 readers so far, and some reassuring reviews. I'm working on another - not much else to do in a Whitby winter except lift a leek for the kitchen. Meanwhile, here is the opening of the first chapter of 'When Are You Going Back?"

    A memoir of the Sea
    By Harry Nicholson

    Extract of Chapter 1
    The Bus to Port Clarence

    Monday, 23 February 1959.
    Mist rises from the salt marsh — mist too shallow to hide a standing goose. It will soon burn off. Concrete posts poke through every ten yards or so. Twice as tall as a Coldstream Guard, the sentinels stand ready to mangle and smash off the wings of any of Hitler's gliders should he try an airborne invasion. Other crude structures, blunt and slitted, rise from the white vapour. In case they came by landing-craft, the War Office studded these flat-lands with pill boxes and tank obstacles. The slab-sided, concrete machine-gun posts and anti-aircraft gun positions are abandoned these past fourteen years. They squat here and there — mute, blind, lonely places now, except when whooped through by urchins who play at commandos, or when sneaked into by courting couples, or investigated by bare-kneed entomologists on the lookout for hibernating moths. My insect collection holds a specimen with scalloped lilac-grey wings splashed with orange blotches, the Herald moth, Scoliopteryx libatrix, gathered from just such a place.
    The sun has been up for an hour and brightens the steel of the North Sea. Twenty miles to the south-east, the tremendous sea-cliffs of North Yorkshire stand in blue relief: Hunt Cliff, Boulby, and Hummersea, the tallest cliffs in England. Directly south, the anvil shape of Roseberry Topping, North Riding's little Matterhorn, juts out of the hazed plateau of the Cleveland Hills. There's a lawn of sheep-cropped grass on the summit of Roseberry where Beryl and I sunbathed. Roseberry … It's curious how names become unglued over time, the Danes who settled at its foot called it Odinsbjarg, the hill of their god Odin. The Danes also gave the name to this district, their new conquest: Cleveland, the Land of Cliffs. The village of Great Ayton nestles in the dale beneath Odin's Hill. Captain James Cook, the great navigator, went to school there as a boy. The Cook family cottage is now in Australia, rebuilt in Melbourne and clad with authentic Yorkshire ivy.
    My leave is over, and there'll be no more greetings in the street: 'Oh, hello, Harry. Home from sea again? When are you going back?'
    I'm on my way to sign articles for another deep-sea voyage with Thos. and Jno. Brocklebank Steam Navigation Co. This time I need not journey from Old Hartlepool on the Durham coast, to cross England by train to Birkenhead; the ship is in Middlesbrough for three days loading, so this trip is a mere ten miles by bus. After helping with the handover from the relief coasting crew, my boss from Lancashire will say, 'See you tomorrow, Harry. Get yourself off home to the bosoms of loved ones while you can.' At least, I hope so.
    The clippie works her way along the aisle. 'Any more fares?' It's Maggie, six-foot tall and smart in her United Bus Company conductor's navy-blue uniform edged in red piping. She's grown into a handsome woman. I'm impressed how she carries her height proudly now; during our few weeks of awkward courting she would stoop a little so as not to be two inches taller than me. I've since seen her walking out with a fellow who matches her height. She's good at baking: once I was invited to her little terraced home when her parents were out. She'd been making cakes. We sat before a blazing coal fire and ate a few. They had currants in them. She kept her pinafore on all evening.
    'Hello, Harry. Still at sea? I hear you're getting married. And you're only twenty. When's the big day?'
    'Morning, Maggie. It'll be in July, if I'm home in time. The arrangements are all down to Beryl.' I hold out my fare. 'I'll be twenty-one by then. Single to Port Clarence, please.'
    She smiles and gives a little shake of the head. I pocket the shilling. Today I'll be travelling free — she must know the ticket inspector is on a different route. She clips a notch into the weekly ticket of the chap beside me. 'You make sure you're back in good time and don't disappoint the lass.' She moves on. 'Any more fares?'
    Morning throats are cleared on the top deck and windows shoved open amid billows of pipe smoke — strong stuff, that Battleaxe Bar and Walnut Plug. I'm seated half-way down the shuddering rows of seats, surrounded by shipyard workers. Mates are comparing notes about their weekend:
    'Do any good at the dog track, Henry?'
    The speakers are in the pair of seats in front. They've got muscular necks. 'Nah! Had five bob on a black bugger from Horden, a hot certainty, name o' Flash Harry, but he left the trap like the most constipated greyhound you ever set eyes on. Fly the birds, did you?'
    'Just a short one. Pedalled a basket of pigeons up to Hart. Watched them take one turn about the windmill, then head straight home. At least they knew the way and all I had to do was freewheel downhill.'
    'You keep them on Yankee corn; I've telt thee afore, birds never fly for the joy of it if they're out of condition. Dad allus reckoned to feed the best carlin peas he could afford. On top o' that he would tip a drop o' cider vinegar into their watter. He was never without a trophy on the mantlepiece.'
    I give up listening to the pigeon men, there's rabbit talk in the seat behind me. I've an interest; along with my dad, I used to keep and show Blue Beverens and Flemish Giants.
    The rabbit man has a gargly voice. 'At the Liberal Hall up Park Road, a tortoiseshell English went best Fancy. You don't see many torts. Breeder by the name of Wilks from Blackhall Rocks. A big man with Dutch'.
    His mate has a similar rattle. 'Oh, aye? And what did thee think on it? That Cuddy Wilks is a right dab hand with the tweezers. Yon's a well-known plucker. Should be cautioned by the British Rabbit Council.'
    'She was a bonny enough doe. I was stewarding and had hold of her. A balanced pattern and never a white hair in any of the spots, nor down the spine. Judge looked at the definition and shoved her straight to top o' table, and she stayed there. Mind you, I did notice a tiny white hair on her nose — on her butterfly, that is.'
    'There you are then, the tweezers missed that one. Cuddy's eyes must be knackered. I get fed up with all the plucking in the Fancy. I've a mind to give up the Tans and get into Fur. Been offered a mated Blue Beveren by a chap whose overstocked on Wynyard Road. She weighs fourteen pounds, lovely colour, dense coat that rolls back nice and slow. Good type — a bold Roman face and grand mandolin haunches. He asks fifteen bob.'
    'Well, if the strain turns out not to be a winner, at least you'll be able to put summat on the dinner table and at the same time make a pair o' mits for your lass. Tans make hardly enough for a sandwich, and they've nowt of a coat… That reminds me, after the show a little lass brought her Lilac Rex to judge Coulson, to ask why she didn't win a card. What she could do to make it a better exhibit and suchlike.'
    'Oh, aye? And what did Clogger Coulson have to say?'
    'Not much. He picked the Rex up, looked at its hocks — a bit bald they were — stretched out the forelegs — they were bowed like bananas — and said, "Now then, honey, you'd best get this'n under a pie crust". Poor bairn went off in tears.'
    The double-decker bus leans at a disconcerting angle while she negotiates a bend in the road. She throbs to a stop at the tiny settlement of Graythorp, where a third of our cargo of shipyard workers dismount to hurry across the road to William Gray's drydock enterprise.
    Two sea-fatigued ships: an anonymous little collier, and an eight-thousand ton vessel of the Hogarth line, stand high and dry. Cradled by huge timbers, their life support is delivered by cable and hose. The Hogarth funnel is black, adorned with a red band sandwiched between two bands of white, reminiscent of a rasher of cheap bacon, hence the fond term for the company: two of fat and one of lean. Among seafarers that company has a reputation for poor feeding. There's a ditty that goes:
    You've heard of Hungry Hogarths?
    The worst feeders on the sea
    Their salt beef sailed with Nelson
    Aboard the Victory.

    A tall crane hovers nearby, waiting for the day to start.
    At the bridge over Greatham Creek we sway and lurch as if aboard some vessel in mid-Atlantic. The morning has a nip to it, so passengers are snug inside heavy coats — tired army surplus for the main part, but some will have returned with their owners in 1945. Their flat caps, once bought for Sunday best, are black with engine grease or red with shipyard rust. The young fellow crammed next to me wears a cap impregnated with white powder.
    He points. 'Plenty of fat geese on the flats.' A host of heads lift through skeins of evaporating mist. 'Any one of 'em would go down a treat with sage and onion stuffing. Be right canny for Sunday dinner.'
    I nod. 'And with roast spuds in crispy skins, peas out of the garden, and a dollop of buttered swede.'
    'My missus won't touch swede. Gives her bellyache. Me, I'm partial to frosted snagger.'
    In one motion, black fronts and pale bellies take to the air. Wintering Brents from Spitzbergen. Honking, they form into groups that head for the estuary margins to feast on eel grass. They sense the tide is on the ebb.
    He glances at my navy-blue bridge coat. 'Merchant Navy?'
    'Yes. Been on leave for a month after the best part of seven months away. She's alongside in the Tees. I'm to sign on today.'
    'I've not had a proper morning tab yet. Late up.' He opens a worn tobacco tin. Most of the blue paint has gone but it remains embossed with the head of an Indian chief in full war bonnet. He fishes among the Rizla papers to lift out half a hand-rolled cigarette, then lights the nipped end with a Swan Vesta match. The tab looks to have enough length to give him a few draws. 'What's your job?'
    'I'm second radio officer on the Mawana — she carries two. Last trip was her maiden voyage, so she's in good nick. A steam turbine.'
    'That sounds grand. Meself, I'm a pipe lagger at Smith's yard. Just about finished the engine room of the Galway. She's diesel powered. A Doxford engine by Hawthorns up at Hebburn. She's out on sea trials any day now. We've done her nice and tidy. It sometimes gets on the chest, does lagging with asbestos.'
    I nod. 'My dad worked at Smith's. Rivetter by trade but ended up helping the ship platers when welding took over.'
    'Not there now, then?'
    'He'd have been on this bus, but we lost him a twelve-month gone. Should have reached his pension come November.'
    'That's a shame. It's hard graft in the yards. A lot don't see their pension.'
    'The war didn't help. The Great one, that is. Wounded on the Somme, baked to a frazzle in Salonika, then malaria. That generation don't make old bones — so Mam reckons.'
    The bus slows for Port Clarence junction. My smart Felca wristwatch with luminous dial, bought in Aden, says we are running late. There's the clatter of nailed boots hitting the pavement as men jump off before she comes to a halt.
    'My stop. You have a good trip. Enjoyed the bit blather.' My neighbour gets up, hitches his army haversack (tea can poking from the top) over his shoulder and joins the file of workmen that press towards the stairs. He blends with eighty others who hurry across the road towards the slipways and yards of Haverton Hill, anxious to clock on. The shipyard hooter is sounding for the start of the day.
    The lightened bus manoeuvers less heavily as she turns left, then dips beneath the railway bridge, takes a sharp right and a left into the final stop. The last score of passengers leap off and run for the Transporter. The suspended gondola fills with cyclists, mostly workmen with cans of tea hung from handlebars. There's a matron or two in headscarves and a sprinkle of office girls. The man who attends the gondola and collects fares shouts in my direction, 'Come on, lad! Let's be havin' yer'. But my seagoing kit is cumbersome and I'm the last to squeeze aboard as the gates clang shut.
    The deck is a sea of cyclists, with one Cameron's brewery lorry a silent hot island in the centre. The Bedford is loaded with wooden barrels of strong beer brewed in Stranton, West Hartlepool, for the parched throats of steelworkers. The covered areas to either side are full, so I lug my two bags up the stairs to the top deck from where the view is worth the trouble.
    The gondola clanks into motion and we begin our 300 yard journey across the river Tees, suspended by cables from a bogey that travels along a lattice of steel girders fifty yards above us. The ingenious contraption is hauled back and forth by an engine in the motor house on the Middlesbrough bank. A fellow can climb to the top by a winding metal staircase and walk across the draughty upper bridge if he wants a thrill. I've done so in the past, mostly for a lark. The Tees Transporter is the most majestic of three such crossings in Britain.
    My ship, SS Mawana, is moored to the wharf just a couple of hundred yards downriver. Despite her recent six-month maiden voyage east, she looks smart in the morning sun. Cranes already lower slingloads of steel into her holds. It's a dry day. I'll walk.


    From 'When Are You Going Back?' A memoir of the sea, by Harry Nicholson. Published on Amazon.
    Last edited by Harry Nicholson; 2nd February 2024 at 03:38 PM.
    Harry Nicholson

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    Default Re: When Are You Going Back?

    Hello son, when you going back' was all my mother ever said when I came home.
    That was after my very first voyage when she was so upset dad had to comfort her.
    So when you going back had a new meaning when on my second return home I said, gee mum you putting on weight?
    My young brother is about 17 years my junior.
    Happy daze John in Oz.

    Life is too short to blend in.

    John Strange R737787
    World Traveller

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    Default Re: When Are You Going Back?

    #7 similar John I got one 16 years younger and was crawling around the floor when I left. So eased my conscience on leaving home. Must have been the old man’s last chance to pass on his experience in the building trade. However my brother when came of age chose also not to follow in his shoes. Must have been disappointing to him to have two sons who were not working with him. My sister however was a nurse and managed to clean him up if he got into a fracas before my Mother saw his condition. A good tradesman much sought after, but a hard man to work with. JS.
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    Default Re: When Are You Going Back?

    Hi I got a letter from my Mother while away second trip asking how I was and what sights I had seen etc. it was nice to get news from home in these times . However she added a cryptic bit at the bottom of the letter saying by the way she had sold my Bed, love Mum
    I didn’t know what to make of that ! ( turns out she a bought me a new one)

    Doug

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    Default Re: When Are You Going Back?

    Quote Originally Posted by Doug Hardie View Post
    Hi I got a letter from my Mother while away second trip asking how I was and what sights I had seen etc. it was nice to get news from home in these times . However she added a cryptic bit at the bottom of the letter saying by the way she had sold my Bed, love Mum
    I didn’t know what to make of that ! ( turns out she a bought me a new one)

    Doug
    My second trip, my mate got a letter from his mother saying she was moving, only she did not say where.
    We paid off in Sweden and when we arrived back at Heathrow he was heading off to the office to see if they could help.

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