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What do you remember?
| Your ship at the Destroyer Pens or in the dockyard. Shore-side heads with one galvanised trough for all the cubicles (who lit the newspaper sending it floating down?) The Tower with the sheerlegs on the quay. Walking through the dockyard into the tunnel to the signal room, signal station at Europa Point lighthouse and radio station at North Front.
H.M.S. Rooke with the two storey wooden cabins, the Spanish gash-man called Charlie Hombre with
his uniform festooned with every badge of the RN.
The naval hospital (we don’t want to know why you were there).
The Naval Patrol house with a couple of cells (ditto above). |
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The shops in Main Street, ivory chess sets, tortoiseshell photograph albums, 100 day clocks in glass cases, Rolex watches, cameras, jewelry boxes, booze at duty free
prices
The Red House for cheap records (78’s), Perfume shops in fact everything you could want for your Mum/Sister/Girl friend all with no purchase tax.
The bar in Irish Town that had over a hundred different bottles of whisky.
Any one remember a little cafe run by two English ladies top of Main Street left hand side, served great steak, egg and chips, bread and butter with a mug of tea?The Fleet canteen Tom Bowler with big money prizes. The Naval Trust Cinema, playing football on the hard gravel pitch, all opposite
Rooke. You may even gone on a coach trip to Jerez, an “all you can drink” tour of a sherry bodega.
Now the rest of you, blind drunk in The Winter Gardens, The
Trocodero, The Cafe Suiza or the Panama night club (Eastern Beach) buying pink or blue drinks for the “ladies”. The Alameda Gardens where the bushes whispered to you. |
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There are some of us (sorry misprint) some of you who turned left and headed for Gibraltar Street in La
Linea, Spain. I understand this gave great pleasure or tears! |
