Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Jul 27, 2006
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days that all these memories come flooding back to me.
A Bit of a Do
We went to a reunion on board the Royal Yacht Britannia recently and it turned out to be an occasion to remember. Some of you will remember the reunion story on board the same ship a year or so back, when I met up with an old shipmate that I found on the internet on one of those ex service sites. Well this one was similar, but on a grander scale.
It was an open day for us old crew members and our families to have a walk around our old ship and we had access to parts of the ship that were off-limits to the general public, as a member of the staff would come with us and open all the locked doors for us.
We decided to take my wife's daughter with us, as I am not able to push my wife's wheel chair on any surface that has a gradient as my back condition has deteriorated since my last visit. It also gave her the opportunity to tour the Yacht for free as well. We knew from our last visit that there were many ramps along the tour, some of which are really steep.
The actual reunion went on well into the evening as we all received an invitation informing us that the dress for the evening events would be black tie. Our initial plans were to arrive in the afternoon, do a tour to show my step daughter around the ship showing her all the places of interest and where I used to work and so on, then meet up with all my old mates for a while then go home. My wife does tend to get tired rather quickly when we go out and about and, besides, we had not dressed
formally to attend the evening get together.
So we set off from our house for the short drive over to the other side of the Firth of Forth where the Yacht is berthed and arrived around one thirty in the afternoon.
As soon as I produced my membership of the Yacht Association we were made most welcome indeed, as we had been on the last occasion, in fact the staff were only too pleased to see so many of us old Yotties as we are called, they were excellent hosts. I met up with the director, a man I got to know rather well when organising an earlier reunion which never quite turned out as good as we had hoped. In fact, only six people out of the thirty that said would be coming, turned up. This left me feeling rather embarrassed at the time as the director had gone to a lot of
trouble to cater and organise matters for the amount that said were coming. I think that had been on the back of my mind ever since the invitation arrived some weeks earlier and I am sure that it was the main reason for my not attending the evening do, and not the fact that I didn't have a dinner jacket, like I told my wife.
On the day, however, the director was more than pleased to see us all
again and it was not long before he managed to track down some of my old mates that I had not seen in thirty four years! He took us to engine room, where we could see them on the engine room plates1 behind the sheet of Perspex that was there to allow the visitors to see inside. It was at this point where I made a gaff, as it were. You see, unknown to me, one of my mates was helping out that day and was wired with a microphone so that he could reply to questions put to him by visitors who had a microphone on the other side of Perspex - which was not
there on my last visit. So, when the director opened the locked door to let us in, I came out with a remark as to how the years had been bad to my old mate, or words to that effect, not knowing that every word I said was being listened to by the group of visitors who were all looking somewhat amazed by this time. Of course, as soon as I realised the situation, I stopped talking and took up a position behind one of the main engines, well out of sight from the rather surprised looking group of people on the other side.
This, however, was soon laughed off, which I must admit made me feel a lot better, and the conversation soon turned round to the evening events that would soon be starting. At this point they all convinced me that we should, in fact, stay for these and it was not long before I found myself inside one of the many stores in the precinct, trying on dinner jackets and black bow ties. As luck would have it, the store we were in was having a sale, so the cost was not as much as it could have been.
Once I had been kitted out we had to find an evening dress for my
stepdaughter with, of course, all the matching attire that women have for such events. Fortunately my wife was better dressed for the occasion and did not need to purchase anything, which I must admit saved us any more expense.
Our efforts were well worth it as, in fact, we had a wonderful evening on board and had full use of the state rooms which were luxurious to say the least. The food was also excellent and the fact that the Yacht was now closed to visitors meant that we had full excess to wander around at our own pace and to soak up the atmosphere. The cost of our visit to the store for our evening wear was soon forgotten as we strolled down the wooden decks in the evening air with our glass of champagne - a far cry from the days when I used to scrub those very decks and clear up after such occasions while on Royal tours.
Another bonus of the evening was when the director came up to me as we were leaving and told me that it had been my original reunion - although I thought it had been a failure - that gave them the idea to hold this one in the first place and thanked me very much for it. So maybe my original one had not been such a failure after all. Funny how every cloud has a silver lining.
