How do. I just like Harwich, I used to love going in the water, I love a swimmer, I used to go in at 7 o’clock at night until about 12 o'clock at night. My missis used to moan like hell about it cos she couldn’t swim! 

It’s lovely, it used to be full of people on the beaches, all up there on the promenade. People used to open doors, give you a cup of tea. You know, anybody you saw, they all made you friendly. Well, my wife, I tried to teach her to swim. I said ‘when you think you’re big enough to go up, just pick the last foot off the floor, slowly’, I said ‘I got you there’. She said ‘alright’ but she it off too quick and she went under and she said ‘you trying to drown me!’ I said ‘I ain’t trying to drown ya daft…’ And that’s what put her off swimming.

We used to get 3 or 4 on the old boats and that. Even on the boats my mate said to me one day ‘can you come, want to come fishing with my dad’. I said ‘yeah I’ll come fishing wit yer’. Well I love shrimps believe it or not. We went fishing and on the way back we’s caught these shrimps and that’s the only time I’ve been sick over the side. Oh I couldn’t stick it! They really stunk rotten!

And I love all sea stuff, cockles, the lot. When I was aboard ship I used to scrape these mussels off the bouys and I used to cook them and when I was cooking them, you could hear them cryin'.

Well little did I know that I had a relation that died on the boats and I didn’t know that until my grandson told me. He said to me ‘I didn’t know you had a grandad what got killed on the ships.’ I said ‘yeah, so they tell me.’ And when he told me where the ship was, it was trying to come in the harbour and whether there was a submarine there or not or a bomb there, that all blew up and they all got killed. And we had sea planes and everything down here. 

Harwich is a nice place, I mean practically all my friends are gone. As far as I know I’ve still got one person alive what used to be the boss of the coal yard, he was the only one now on the photo with me wedding holding the shovels up outside the registry office. Apart from that, I’ve had a good life.

Coal yard. We used to load all the coal ships what come in. And I left the Trinity House boats, I didn’t have to but I went in the army. The captain said to me ‘you don’t have to go in’, I said ‘na if I do ever decide I want to get married or meet a woman, I said I’d have to go and do this anyhow’ so he said ‘fair enough’. Well I went up to Ipswich I passed six doctors and it was just like being on the pictures, all these clinical lads saying bend down, jump or whatever. He said ‘you’re all fit’, I said ‘when will I hear somethin?’ He said ‘About a week’. 
I never told me mum and when the letter come I got it, I left my house at six o’clock that the morning, I just left a note on the table saying to me mum I’m gone away for a little while, I’ll get in touch with ya. I got in touch with her, she said ‘why didn’t you tell me’, I said ‘na I made me own mind up, didn’t want no one making decision for me’. Because I went to Wrexham, and we had to sleep in tents, oh that was cold. I first joined there with a load of blokes. We did, we trained really well, went over all the assault courses, crawling around in the mud, we used to get saturated! 

They said to me where’s Harwich, and I said in Essex somewhere, they didn’t know where Harwich was!
As I say, I’ve had a good run.