"They're this year's", he said, "don't spend them until I get back". Well I haven't and I never will. My mother had died three months previously and my memory of her is a vivid one of how she used to play the mouth organ after breakfast. Because of her death, my father decided to go to sea leaving my brother and myself in the care of an aunt. I remember being taken to see his ship, a small figure in a velvet suit and sailor hat, walking between my father and my Uncle Bob who had once been a sailor himself. The trip was a special treat and I remember it in detail, because what I saw wasn't a boat at all, although they said it was one. It looked to be like the side of a street - a street of towering frightening buildings. I gripped my father's hand tighter as we stood on board.

In reality, she was a magnificent spectacle - a sixth of a mile long, as high as the Albert Memorial Clock and funnels through which a Belfast tram-car could pass. It had five miles of decks, squash courts, a swimming pool and luxurious rooms - a radiant, stately, majestic thing rising like a mountain out of the sea. My father described her as a "Brave Size" - bigger than Uncle Bob had sailed in. "That's just the trouble", said Uncle Bob, "she's too big, it isn't right to build a ship that size, you can't manage them, you never know what will happen."