It was 1982 and things were ticking over nicely, but I was unhappy with our consignment notes that we handed out to our customers. The above example was produced as continuous stationery, partly to make the production easier and partly to maximise the stowage of new consignment notes into neat piles once the box was […]

March, 2015 Road Trip Sydney, Wagga Wagga, Beechworth, Hay, Mildura, Broken Hill,  Tanunda, Adelaide, Robe, Ballarat, Albury, Sydney. 4305 km door to door. My wife and I have seen quite a lot of Asia so we thought it was about time that we saw some more of Australia. We decided to visit Adelaide, which would […]

For whom the bell tolls – it tolled for me on this holiday –  In 1961 I was invited once again to accompany my friendly schoolmaster for another trip to Europe, but this time it would be southern Spain, staying in a hotel rather than YHA. We’d moved up market. I was also asked if a […]

We sailed from Fremantle on the 5th April, the weather was fine and we hoped it would remain so as we were about to cross the Great Australian Bight, renowned for rough seas and sensitive stomachs. The Great Australian Bight stretches from Cape Pasley in Southern Western Australia to Cape Catastrophe in South Australia. There […]

BOAC  I joined BOAC in 1969 and in 1971 an Act of Parliament merged BOAC with BEA to take affect from 31 March 1974, which would create British Airways. The UK had joined the Common Market, as it was called then, in January 1973, so the merger of the two government-controlled airlines made sense. BOAC […]

Some years ago I’d visited the statue of the dog on a tucker box when I drove back to Sydney from Melbourne. I knew that Maureen hadn’t seen this statue, so I planned a small diversion for her to visit Gundagai (pronounced Gun-da- guy say it quickly) on the home would leg of our road […]

Savusavu is on the island Vanua Levu, which is on the smaller of the two larger Fijian islands, and I have marked the location. Savusavu is unspoiled & a place that is unhurried and free of most modern trappings and has managed to retain much of yesteryear. Savusavu was a popular trading port for sailing […]

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship The quote is from The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the ship is Ruby Princess. When I took the photograph, Ruby Princess was at anchor off Dravuni Island, Fiji. Launched in 2008, registered in the […]

22nd February 1969 – it was cold wet day in Liverpool, UK. What to do to celebrate fifty years of happy marriage? We like cruising so how about a cruise around Cape Horn at the bottom of the world? So be it . . . . . Our plan was to fly to Santiago in […]

SS Shieldhall, used to be a Clyde ‘sludge boat’. 1972 GT, built in 1954 and now saved as a piece of history and maintained by volunteers. In 2012 she was repainted in the colours of R.M.S Titanic to mark the centenary of the sinking. She operates over the weekend as a pleasure steamer taking tourists […]

Thirty six hours after disembarking our first Baltic cruise students we embarked another full complement for our second cruise to the Baltic. For this cruise our first port of call was Stockholm; what a beautiful interesting city. We arrived off the coast of Stockholm during the night, and picked up our pilot and sailed quietly […]

Coat of Arms of the Falklands After leaving Ushuaia we would be at sea for a day before our next destination, which was Port Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands in the S. Atlantic. Port Stanley, which was named after Lord Stanley in 1843, who was at the time, Secretary of State for war […]

The title of this blog is a dictate that is drummed in to authors – show the reader, don’t lecture the reader. A few years ago we were told that the e-book was overtaking the printed book in popularity – today I am not all that sure. I have an old adage that if I […]

Flag of Wales The Eisteddfod can be traced back to Cardigan Castle in 1176, when the House of Dinefwr, which was a royal house of Wales, supported the eisteddfod. The House of Dinefwr can be traced back to King of Gwynedd in 844. The above is the flag of Dinefwr. The Eisteddfod had it ups […]