Storytelling Sunday: ...and i'm not looking forward to the journey home neither.

It's that time again, Sian is hosting Storytelling Sunday here.

Do you remember that advert? It was for Carling Black Label, an old fisherman staggered into a bar from a storm and said he ‘wasn’t looking forward to the journey home neither’ in a broad west country accent. When he had had his pint he went back out and rowed across a boating lake.

Our family loved that advert, my Dad drank Carling, and yes he did use to say “I’ll have a Carling darling” at the bar. So sophisticated :)

The worst storm I was in was very wierd, it was during the 1994 World Cup. I worked at sea for P&O and we wanted to watch a game so we were in the crew mess. Obviously this was in the dark ages of satellite and it was intermittent once we got halfway across the channel. So we knew that we would probably lose the signal but suddenly the lights went out as well. There were howls of frustration, but once we saw that not only the signal had gone but the power as well we were intrigued. The power going out was a big deal. We poured out onto B deck to look at the sea, the generator kicked in with it’s lurid greeny-yellow light. Now there were very few people working at sea that were not obsessed with the sea, the way it changed every hour or so was magical and we always felt the need to get out on deck to feel it, not just watch through the portholes or windows. Even though we were used to unusual sea scenes we were amazed at what we saw. We could see the storm riding across the sea and it was green, a beautiful spooky green and flashed through with electric lightning, the salty smell was muted as there were no waves, it is so difficult to describe but it was eerie. 

Sadly I do not have a photo of this so I will leave you of one with my Dad. This was a night he came over on the ferry to see me. It was known as a round-trip when a passenger would go out one-way, go shopping in the turnaround time and come straight back. My Dad was a huge sea traveller, he went around the world twice as a merchant seaman and he was proud of me becoming an officer, I was the accommodation officer, they didn’t let me steer :D I got on well with the Captain, ‘JW’ and so he got a Bridge visit as well and this was us having a drink in the bar afterwards.

This layout is ancient, I have just dug it out of an album in the wardrobe and smiled to see some of my old layouts.

I do miss him. 

Carling, Darling. Really?