You aint NEVER going home...

[Joseph Dodds]

Well... that was the greeting we got from the crowd of Vindi boys as we marched through the front gate of the "Vindi" in our civvies in September 1962...
We were from 'everywhere'... a bunch of 'tough' 15yr old, street-wise boys... But that "welcome" sapped our strength...
Demoralised us... How many of us cried that night..??
But it was a time-honoured welcome - one that we too would extend to each new intake of "new-boys" when they marched into the camp...
And soon we weren't the new boys anymore... settled into the routine of regimen and training... Proud in our itchy serge uniforms and slanted Tams...
Up with Reveille on the bugle... making our bunks... marching down to the mother-ship for b'fast... then whatever seamanship classes for the day...
Popeye with his famous line about "laughing if our arses were on fire..."
I came down with the Flu in the November - ended up in sick bay for 4 days with a lanky Catering Dept lad called Molyneux and a scouse lad whose name I don't remember... Both of them lying on a bed with their trousers pulled down and their legs up... striking matches and igniting their fart gas... Extra-Curricular Learning...
The Institution in Berkely is memorable... The Local Ladies - and local girls - making us welcome... Saturday Night "shore leave"... cups of tea and hot oxo... the record player blaring out the top songs of the time - Little Eva singing "Do the Locomotion"... and me, singing along with it...
Spent a couple of weekends picking cider apples on one of the local farms... bitter apples - but sweet Scrumpie..!!
Ma manged to send me 2 or 3 "Food Parcels"... She couldn't have afforded it, but maybe she missed her errant son...
Not at all sure what I was defending - but had a spell of Night Gate Guard Duty... Freezing Cold...
Well.. No-one ever attacked the Vindi via the front gate while I was on duty... So I guess I was an effective deterrent...!!
And close to Christmas 1962... I Proudly marched out of the Vindi Camp back to the Berkeley Railway Station...
A fully-fledged MN Graduate (Deck)... And Fully Decked in my baggy Serge Vindi Uniform and slouched Tam..
Transferred to the "Pool" in Sunderland... and the rigore-de-imposte of the NSU... The Real World...
Did I love my time at the Vindi...? Yes...
Would I do it all over again...? No... I would hire a horse and cart and be a Rag and Bone Man like my surrugate father...
But that might not have brought me to where I am today...
In a knot of eight crossings, which is about the average size knot, there are 256 “over and under” arrangements possible…. Make only one change in this “over and under” sequence and either an entirely different knot is made or no knot at all may result… The Ashley Book of Knots…

[Jim Brady]

I went to Gravesend Sea School 1956 in the day of the Teddy Boy.The new intake would come in through the gate real hard cases with their Tony Curtis haircut with the DA at the back and long side burns.They would be wearing their finger tip drapes and rolled collar with their 14" or 16" bottoms and of course the regulation brothel creepers with 1" thick soles.They were kitted out and a visit to the barber all of a sudden these gum chewing smoking hard cases disappeared and just became an ordinary Gravesend boy.
Regards.
Jim.B.

[John Albert Evans]

Memories Jim (ah) Memories,

John