Times flies when you’re living life

Yesterday I arrived at my father’s house on the south coast to stay the weekend.

At lunchtime, he set off to attend a monthly reunion pub lunch for former members of the Fleet Air Arm, saying he felt an obligation attend because, at the last one, the organiser had remarked “There are so few of us left”.

He returned shortly after 3.00pm. There had been five attendees in all, one of them a widow of a former comrade. My father had been the oldest person at the table, albeit that he holds the most junior rank of all. He is referred to at ‘Sub-Lieutenant, RNVR’ in all their invitations. This was a rank he was promoted to in the summer of 1946, sixty-eight years ago, after being awarded his ‘wings’ twelve months earlier!