Ten signs you may think you are getting old

• One.  You are the only man in a restaurant without designer stubble and  wearing a tie
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• Two:  you don't wear shorts in the street until the sun comes out
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• Three:  you give up your seat in a bus to a young woman carrying a baby
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• Four:  you consider shaving  every day
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• Five:  you are surprised  at the price of a pint of beer
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• Six: you press your jeans with creases down the front
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• Seven: when you were young you didn't know any girls called Kylie 
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• Eight:  you keeping waiting for a tune in a modern song 
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• Nine: you wonder why boys shorts are longer than girls skirts
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• Ten:  you now understand the meaning of "second childhood" - nobody listened to you when you were young and nobody listens now .

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• Eleven:  you can't keep count
• Twelve:  You remember this ad
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A Warm welcome in Murmansk

Seventy years ago this month my dad arrived in the the Russian port city of Murmansk to a rapturous welcome.  The welcome wasn't just for him of course as he was with the other members of the crew of HMS Whimbrel which had arrived in port as part of the escort of the convoy JW58.  He never said too much about the actual voyage only remarking it had been "bloody cold" so that the young crew were happy to accept whatever kind of warm  welcome the young women of the town were prepared to offer.  Dad being 44 and the oldest member of the crew opined that he would  look for some quieter relaxation for the two days that they were in port before turning round and going back, to Loch Ewe in Scotland.

Dad had been a member of the crew of HMS Whimbrel since it left the shipyard at Yarrow in January 1943.  Whimbrel was a sloop of the Black Swan class designed as fast escort vessels.

Convoy JW 58 was one of a series of convoys of merchant ships sailing from British ports to Russia carrying supplies to help in  resisting the advance of the German armies into the Soviet Union .  The convoy had left Loch Ewe on 27th March 1944 and  consisted of 47 merchant ships with an escort of three destroyers and three corvettes plus the  US cruiser Milwaukee.  Further ships and escorts joined from Iceland  and then the Second Escort group which included HMS Whimbrel.

Two days out the convoy was encountered by a lone U boat U.91 which was depth charged and sunk by HMS Starling and HMS Magpie, both sloops of the Second Escort Group.  This group is said to be  the most successful anti-submarine unit of the war, being credited with the destruction of 23 U-boats during two years of active service.

On 31 March JW 58 met a  patrol line of enemy U boats.  Over a  48 hour period  the submarines   mounted eighteen  attacks on the convoy. None of the  ships were hit, but three U-boats were destroyed.

On 2 April during  another submarine  attack HMS Keppel destroyed U-360 and later  U-288 was destroyed in a machine gun attack from HMS Avenger.

On the following day the convoy wa joined by a local escort and arrived safely off Kola inlet on 4th April, with all the merchant and escort ships intact.

This was to be  the last Arctic convoy for many months.

The return voyage to Lock Ewe with convoy RA58 was uneventful and the crew were given leave as the ship required "weather repairs".  The cold obviously affected the vessel as well as the crew.

Eventually all the sailors, Merchant as well as Royal Navy were awarded the Arctic Star, but by the time this happened, most of them including Ernie McKie, were dead.

Create something today

My Gran didn't  know about facebook or the internet and didn't even keep a diary or journal so we know very little about her early life.  I wish she had kept a diary or journal so that we knew a little bit more about her.  People of my grandchildren's age however use networking sites like facebook or twitter as some kind of diary and are thus recording for posterity their activities and thoughts.

But how many think about that when they are posting silly selfies or  clicking "like" on something close to pornography ?

What will their grandchildren think about knowing just a bit too much about "Nan" when she was young ?  Then there will perhaps be great grandchildren, that they may not meet for whatever reason.  Will they be happy to know about the antics at those hen or stag nights ?

Next time that little box appears which says "write something" think about those grandchildren and their children and write something.

a poem, a little story about your first day at school for first job.

Cant write ?  Course you can.  You did it an primary and secondary school, you do it all the time
on the social networks.

So think about leaving something positive for those kids to know about you.  Life for some is all a laugh at the moment, but take care, it can turn round and bite you on the bum in no time at all.,

My Gran knew all about that.  Her mother died when she was 16 and she had to become "mum" to her younger brothers and sisters , siblings in modern day social work speak.  She married at 20 and had nine children of her own.  Her old Dad came to live with them and one day she found him cold in the back yard having had a fall.  He died soon after.  Her own husband died two years later and she was left with five children under 16 to care for, so if she wasn't working before then she needed to now, and she carried on working until she was over 70.

During the war she was bombed out of the house she had lived in for over thirty years and after a short time in the country, which she didnt like, she returned to London and ended her days in a first floor flat, reading the newspaper through a magnifying glass because she didn't, or wouldn't wear specs.