My mother shows me an advertisement in the Evening Post [around 1954] which reads: “Recruits Wanted for the Girls’ Nautical Training Corps. Apply Thursday evenings, 7 pm, TS “Lotus”, at the Charles Hill Dockyard.” I tingle with anticipation. This is for me; I can already feel the salt spray in my face, and the wind in my hair.

Alas for my romantic notions. TS “Lotus” was “a stone ship” firmly aground and there was no boat in which to put to sea, but the cadets seemed friendly, as were the officers, Mrs. Champion who was tall, dark and elegant, and pretty blonde Mrs. Kingsley.

We lined up in two watches, port and starboard, “tallest on the flanks, shortest amidships”, with the officers in front of the big ship’s brass bell and a flag pole, where the flag, a red ensign, would be “bent on” for colours and taken down at sunset. I was placed in the starboard watch.

I learned a few knots, and was kitted out in a smart uniform: navy blue skirt and jacket, white shirt, black tie, black stockings, a white lanyard and a round sailor hat, with the letters G.N.T.C. picked out on the black band. The officers had to be saluted “shortest up, shortest down” and never without your cap on. It was thrilling to be sometimes mistaken for a Wren, but needless to say silly boys called us “The Girls Naughty Training Corps.” I was so keen to receive my Ordinary Cadet armband that I tramped to the Dock Yard on a dark January evening - through the snow.

On Empire Youth Sunday in May 1955 we marched through Bristol with our sister unit from Avonmouth, behind the band of TS “Adventure”, the Sea Cadets’ unit. Unlike nowadays, the twain never trained together. Off duty, it was OK to fraternise, and Brian, the “Adventure” band’s Drum Major went out with Margaret Crew, one of our girls, which seemed impossibly glamourous.

It was our dream to get a boat. Eventually, Mrs. Champion found a small rowing boat, which we called “Lotus Bud”. She was tiny, taking three people at most, and badly needed repair. We held jumble sales and begged donations to raise funds and by the summer she was seaworthy. Before we could take her out we had to undergo a wet bob test to show we could swim. My swimming was never very good but I managed to pass. We had large “Mae West” type water wings, but I don’t recall any talk of insurance. Can you imagine nowadays a crowd of teenage girls with no previous experience rowing up and down the Dock, all the way to where the “Flying Fox” was once moored? Nowadays “Elf and Safety” would have a seizure. Nobody drowned or even fell in, but once we had a race with some Teddy Boys in another boat, and on another occasion we almost rammed a new vessel of Charles Hill’s. It was called “The Queen Mother” but no harm was done.

This the launch of “Lotus Bud” - I don’t remember who the man is, but I am next to him in the foreground with my head down. Mrs. Champion is standing on the left behind the two Petty Officers. I think the one nearest her is Margaret Crew. Is the officer in the “Bud” Miss Price?

Do you recognise anybody?

Later that summer, with another officer, Miss Price, we joined the Avonmouth girls for a “Crossing the Line” ceremony at Shirehampton fete. As Amphitrite, goddess of the sea, in a green shroud and seaweed in my hair, I instructed my “Doctors” to give a dose of jalap to three cowering Sea Cadets in girls’ clothes. When they were pronounced free of tropical diseases, they were ducked in a canvas tank filled with water. For obvious reasons, the boys gave false names: ‘Arry Ticker, Lofty, Jack Tar. Everybody concerned got very wet.

The next year I went to London to work and joined the Kilburn unit and made more good friends with whom I spent a never to be forgotten week aboard TS “Foudroyant” in Portsmouth Harbour (For more information see  http://www.hms-trincomalee.co.uk/) where we wore bell-bottomed trousers, and slept in hammocks, having to “lash up and stow” in the morning. After a cold water wash in “the heads”, we had seamanship classes or took up oars in the harbour in the whaler. Everyone who wished was allowed to climb so far up the mast into the rigging.

Aboard “Foudroyant” - I am in the middle – The others are Helen Rusk, left and Audrey Felton. The cap ribbon.

We even went dancing on the Royal Navy boys’ training ship.  One day, in Portsmouth town, on “shore leave” I absent mindedly put my cap on back to front. A passing sailor, a real one, yelled out, “You’re going astern!” I was mortified.

“Foudroyant” in Portsmouth Harbour with a passing Royal Navy MTB.

Signals were my thing. In London for an “Anchors Aweigh” display, a bossy officer spotted the crossed flags on my arm, and thanked me for “volunteering” to raise the colours. I had done it loads of times before, but there was a large crowd and Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten was the guest of honour. I was all fingers and thumbs. I had begun to raise the flag, when to my horror, I saw I had attached it upside down. Trying not to panic, I pulled it down, detached it, and started again. In his speech, Lord Mountbatten, looking straight at me, with the hint of a chuckle, congratulated the ship’s company on their excellent signalling. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was a sad day when he was murdered by the IRA.

For a short time I became an officer, but wanderlust got me and I went travelling. I returned my uniform and in a thoughtless moment even gave away my silver bosun’s call, with which I would pipe dignitaries “over the side”. Looking back, for sheer fun, my time with the G.N.T.C. was one of the best times of my life. Some names I remember were Foale, Miller, Shappland, Sheppard: we seldom used first names, but there were also Elaine Evans and two girls called Harris, Margaret and Lyn, who had a brother Dick, a sea cadet; Phyllis Gibson, Petty Officer Anne Edwards of Avonmouth. Where are they now? My name was Doreen Pillinger then.

Flying saucers have landed..........?

He lives in a niche in Crail churchyard. Did he come from outer space? What do you think?

This is the Dead House at Crail: the caption reads "Erected for securing the dead MDCCCXVI" i.e.1816. It was used to keep bodies safe from professional "Resurrectionists" who supplied the brisk demand for corpses for dissection by medical men, no questions asked. Some years later, not far away in Edinburgh, Burke and Hare could not keep up the supply and "cut out the middle man", turning to murder.

"Resurrectionists” generally, but not always, low life, worked under cover of darkness digging up freshly buried bodies. It seems to have been a widespread activity and struck horror into most people at the time. The corpses of executed felons were often handed over to anatomists as in the case of Bristol's John Horwood in 1821.

Young John, only 18, was not only hanged but also anatomised and his skin used to bind a book which was displayed at Ship and White's (booksellers and newsagents) in Kingswood in 1951 as part of a local "Festival of Britain" exhibition. At the age of 14, being of a rather macabre bent, I spent much time gazing at this grisly relic through the shop window. My friend, Eddie White, the son of the business, then half my age, but now almost catching me up, denies all knowledge of the thing. (The book is now held at Bristol Record Office, and have I indented for it? No thanks!)

As to Brislington, St Luke's never aspired to a dead house, but we do boast graves with iron railings to keep out potential robbers and where it would be possible for the bereaved to picnic within the enclosure, as at Crail. On February 1828, two grave robbers were caught in our churchyard and taken in charge before the magistrate. They were revealed as Dr Wallis, founder of a Bristol school of anatomy and Dr Riley, another noted anatomist. They got off lightly: fined six pounds, perhaps because they were "posh". It was reported: “The parties then bowed very respectfully to the worthy magistrate and, wishing his worship a good day, left the house.”

Back to Crail. Having married into the Danelaw, so to speak, I soak up all things Viking. The Danes' Dyke, a bank or wall, about 4 foot high, made of uncemented flat stones, popularly built by Danish invaders, stretches from our holiday cottage at Little Craighead down to the foreshore. At one time it terminated at a rock in the north face of Constantine's Cave.

This is me and our dog Patch at Constantine's Cave where in 874, according to legend, the Scottish King of that name fought and died in battle against - "the Danes" - who had double crossed him in a land deal.

A little farther along where the golf course meets the sea, a widowed French princess, Mary of Guise landed in 1538 - by accident - en route to meet her bridegroom, James V of Scotland. After losing two baby boys in infancy, in December 1542 Mary gave birth to a daughter and in the same week King James died. The baby, six days old, ascended the throne. She was Mary, Queen of Scots.