hello sailors

yoho, ahoy

fairly recently i was browsing that there internet for something. it was a specific thing, but in the time since then i have forgotten what it was, look you see. maybe i found it, or possibly i did not. during my looking around - and it would be helpful if the internet was just arranged alphabetically - i got a trifle distracted by something. hence this post. 

these images (below), or "screen grabs", are off of some magazine published specifically for navy types. by navy times, i of course mean people who were in the navy. i say were, for this is an edition of it which was published a mere 45 years ago this very month. 

overall, or all things considered, i found it a reasonably interesting read. well, partially so. at the very least, a couple of things caught my eye. 

like, for instance, the above. i am pretty sure that you would have read some of that (at least) before reading this part, but for clarification that's a set of adverts for accommodation. sailor friendly in nature accommodation. hence, i suppose, them featuring in a navy magazine. 

whereas no, i had not ever given the subject all that much thought, it hadn't occurred to me that once we had a time that sailors of the navy needed specific friendly places to stay. back in the seventies, i guess or indeed presume, servicemen had a 'reputation', so to speak, and thus not all places would accept their business. now, i guess (or think) the ministry of defence has, in some instances, residential places all set up for them. certainly they do, at the least, for the raf, and they don't like people just turning up unannounced. 

and yet, mostly, the life of a sailor is not really concerned about being on land, is it? i mean, it would be reasonable for someone who had signed up to join the navy (be it royal or merchant, i guess) to expect to spend a good deal of time on the high seas, or oceans. 

not all life on the sea is cruising around with men in uniform, looking for other ships doing similar but with a view to twat them with torpedoes or what have you. everyone needs a break and a bit of downtime. on the seas, it seems, watching a (then) recent cinema release (film) was one of the ways men on a boat together could relax. 

i find, in the above, it quite interesting that the publishers declined to promote the screening of The Sweeney with an image of John Thaw or, for that matter, Dennis Waterman. quite progressive, by assumed standards of the seventies, for them to focus on the ladies in the film. also, it would seem that there was quite a few certificate 'x' films being screened. well, i guess all on board would have been over the age of eighteen, and so allowed to watch such. 

eventually, i suppose, one might tire of a life on the waves, all remote and with all them men in uniforms. or reach retirement age, even. what to do then? or what would one have done having served and then left the navy in the seventies? 

going and inspecting shops, or twatting about with electricity, actually sounds quite tempting. this would be particularly true of doing so in the cotswolds, which i believe is lovely. not so sure about going to work in a northern ireland prison, though. at the best of times prisons don't sound all that pleasant, and northern irish ones in the seventies were likely not so much fun. 

anyway, let me go off and have (a bit of) a think about just what it was i was looking for in the first instance, and see if i can find it. likely not, but you never know. i tend to misplace memory rather than lose it, for sometimes it comes back to me. 

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!