The author has been a sailor most of his life and, by inclination, a poet. He has written these stories in order to portray the lives of people of an age which, though only sixty odd years past, is light years away in reality. There is a strong inclination here towards irony and black humour, the tools with which these people did battle. The ethos is Northern but it is the author's hope that the tales will be recognised anywhere and that, for the older reader as well as the young, a glimpse of how it was just prior to television will provide a nostalgic journey, a pleasurable instruction and a good read.