Welcome to my blog, where I take pleasure in words and pictures, be they my own or those of others. I'm a creative individual, and the crafty side I explore on my 'other blog', Picking Up The Threads, which I hope you'll visit too. I'm sure you understand that I have sole copyright of my original work and any of my contributions, so please ask if you want to use them. A polite request is rarely refused. So, as they used to say on the BBC's 'Listen With Mother' radio programme, many years ago: "Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin."

Friday 29 September 2017

Who Has Control?

A question any one of the four adults in the party might have been asking with reference to our four-year old twin grandchildren. The occasion was Remembrance Sunday 2012, the place was the Historic Dockyard Chatham. In fact the twins, although very young, behaved impeccably. Let’s face it a tour of a WW2 Destroyer, 1960s submarine and Victorian warship, are not on every child’s wishlist and we wondered if they would get bored and fidgety; instead they thoroughly enjoyed scrambling over HMS Cavalier, the Destroyer, and were in buoyant mood. This lifted our spirits at what was a very sad time. We had flown over to say our goodbyes to my seriously ill father, who passed away just two weeks later. of course we combined the trip with a quality time spent with the twins and their parents.

In the event the Dockyard proved a fascinating place and we didn’t manage to cover everything that day. There was also a temporary exhibition called ‘Whirrs, Cogs and Thingumybobs’ which I've written about elsewhere.

Here we are aboard HMS Cavalier, a Royal Navy C-class destroyer of WW2.


The Bridge, where they took turns to issue orders, and the room where the helmsman received orders from the Bridge.









Below, Office and the Operations Office (later the Ops Room) full of interesting knobs and dials.








And aboard the Victorian warship HMS Gannet. This was fun and the twins are happy to have joint control. It appears to be the wheel that positions the guns.


And in the radio room of the RNLI lifeboat Edward Bridges (1974). Everyone can relax, the twins have control of the situation again.


This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt image was a 1948 B-36 cockpit, with far more dials, knobs and levers than any of the above. Why not visit to see what other contributors made of it.





8 comments:

  1. Some lovely photos of the grands. Looks as if they enjoyed themselves in their giant toy :-) I can see how they would lift your spirits!

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  2. Lovely memories even though associated with a sad time. Your photos reminded me of our visit to Chatham in 2015 and indeed I have a couple of photographs of ships' engine rooms from that visit. Unlike you, I wasn't smart enough to note down which particular ship it was that we were inspecting.

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  3. The photographs are really excellent (as are the words - as always). I always think that the very essence of a good set of photographs is to be able to give a third party a taste of an event so that they feel as if they were with you. I was with you in Chatham.

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  4. Your grandchildren are adorable. What a great experience to share at such a time. Is the spelling of thingamabob different in the U.S.? Wonderful word no matter how you spell it. And perfect for the prompt today because who could remember the names of all those levers and buttons and switches.

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  5. A very nice match. The twins look like just the right age to find such tours of interest. A few years older though and everything becomes boriiiiing! Curiosity is a difficult trait to sustain.

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  6. Oh what fun, shared with us here, and just imagining those little ones darting from one area to another and your camera captured them, (and then you captioned the photos) excellently!

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  7. The twins are darling! No doubt about that. I rather suspect, knowing you (kind of through your pix and remarks on Sepia Sat.& Facebook) you probably had a hand in (or voice in) piquing the twins' interest in what they were seeing. A little explanation about what things were for can quickly spark a kid's imagination. :)

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  8. What lovely bright little faces the twins have here. And I am sure it was a paradise for them to organise everything for everyone aboard, they look quite competent! :)

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