Our day at the seaside

On Sunday 15 of my family all made a 6 hour round trip to the East coast in the pouring rain .

Not the best time of year for a day at the seaside but the reason for our trip was to take the ashes of my Great Uncle Jim and lay him to rest at sea.

Uncle Jim spent most of his life at sea as a radio officer working mainly on cargo ships and sometimes on cruise ships working in the past for P&O and Holland America.

He didn’t particularly like working on cruise ships because he had to socialise with passengers and much preferred the relaxed way of life he had on cargo ships. He also got to spend much more time ashore working on cargo ships because they stayed in port sometimes for several days or even weeks.

He travelled around the world and it seemed there was nowhere he hadn’t been. When I was off on my travels he loved to tell me all about his time there and most of what he told me is not suitable to repeat here. We often called him Uncle Albert ( only fools and horses ) because he always had a story to tell that often changed after a few too many whiskeys !!

He had a long and very interesting life but never had a family of his own so my parents and aunty along with myself, brother, cousins and our children decided to take him on a final trip to the sea.

It was freezing cold and torrential rain but he sailed in typhoons so that would not have put him off. My brother said a few kind words , had a toast to his life before laying him to rest.

You can’t go to the seaside without having fish and chips so we went off for something to eat before heading home.

I think if he was looking down on us he would probably have been laughing at us all stood there in the rain but probably quite touched that we all made the effort.