# From the Beginning. Part I.



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

I was an Ipswich boy... born and bred. After leaving Tower Ramparts Secondary School, I enrolled at the Civic College in the Science Department to study to become a draughtsman... on my way to being an architect. I studied science-orientated subjects for two years... then all hell broke out in the world, with civilization determined to face Armageddon in full abandonment.
In 1961, there was the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, where the Americans backed a rebel-led civil war. They even arranged for the rebel army to be trained in a sympathetic Central American Country, supplying them with all their needs. But it was a total fiasco, where the Americans really had their noses shoved down in the proverbial excrement.
In 1962, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the world as we know it got to within fifty nine seconds of thermal nuclear war. At the very last minute, President Kennedy and Khrushchev picked up the red telephones and saved the world from total annihilation. 
In 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. There have been so many claims and counter claims about government plots and counter-plots that it's a wonder anyone could dream up all this bull-dirt. Who paid who, and who double-crossed who, has been done to death a thousand times, but the truth of the matter is that he was the only Head of State who represented the young people of the world.
For my first year as a student of the Civic College in Ipswich, all I was really interested in was the day to day life of the college. There was the chess club, and the buzz of being in the refectory with all those gorgeous young girls around me... especially coming from an all-boys secondary school. I had joined the college choir and armature dramatics club, taking part in several productions in the college theatre.
While I was in my last term at secondary school, I took part in the Aldeburgh Festival, which was held at the Orford Church. I played the part of Mr. Pig, in Noah's Flood, written, presented and conducted by Sir Benjamin Britten... although he wasn't a 'sir' at the time. I was also a member of the school orchestra, as well as a member of four church choirs, including the Ipswich Male Voice Choir and St. Mary-the-Tower Church Choir.
In the spring of my first year at college, me and some of my friends built a tree-house fifty feet up a sixty feet elm tree. It was in the blackberry field, behind where I lived in Pembroke Close... that we referred to as 'The Back'.
My old school friend from my secondary school days... Wally Sedgwick... also built another tree house next to ours, across a fenced-in platform. We used this like a mini-fortress, spending our six weeks summer break living at the top of the tree.
After the summer break, the local council sent me a letter instructing me to remove the tree houses from the elm tree, which put us in a bit of a quandary... what to do with all this timber? We decided, in our youthful wisdom and enthusiasm, to build a raft as a swimming platform, for our next year's summer break.
One of Wally's friends was Kenny Hall, who lived with his mother on Wherstead Road... their terraced house backing onto the River Orwell. You could still see the tide-mark on their living-room wallpaper from the 1953 floods that devastated the whole area.
All the residence on this part of Wherstead Road had been looking out of their kitchen doors, as the flood water rose up their garden sea-walls, on that freezing cold January night. But what they didn't realise was the water surged over the open car park of The Live and Let Live public house, to pore down the street. While looking out of their kitchen doors, the water forced open their front doors and flooded their homes around them.
His mother resembled Ena Sharples, from Coronation Street, and called me Bloody-Chief. Her pet name for Kenny was Gladys, as he spent so long looking at himself in their living-room mirror combing his long, black greasy hair. He wore the full Teddy-Boy rig... drainpipe trousers, calf-length jacket and winkle-picker shoes. Whenever he passed a shop window, out would come his comb from his breast pocket to comb his DA and elephant's trunk hair style.
We decided to build a raft on the foreshore behind his house. Once all the timber had been assembled in his back yard... being brought down from Maidenhall Estate on a simple two-wheeled trailer towed behind a bicycle... we decided we needed three strong and straight lengths of timber for the main frame. After searching around a bit, we cut down three trees from the local wood... much to the annoyance and displeasure of their owner.
While we were drawing up the plans for our raft, we found out about twenty five foot telegraph poles being sold off cheap at a pound each by the Post Office, so decided to buy three to support the main deck. They delivered them for us at Kenny's back yard.
Kenny worked at the local brewery as a yard-hand, and said they were selling off almost brand new sixty gallon oak wine casks... also for a pound each. They had been used to carry Madeira wine halfway across the Atlantic Ocean to the brewery for bottling, and it was cheaper to sell them off rather than return them... so we bought a dozen of these for our construction. 
With a copious supply of pilfered galvanized steel wire, we set to work building our swimming pontoon... to use as a platform for swimming and sunbathing in the following summer months. Measuring twenty five feet by twelve feet, and decked with pine planking, it was a heart-warming sight... much too good to use just for swimming off... so we decided to build a shed on it to use as our gang-hut.
Again we set about our work, and with the left-over planking from making our deck and some bought second-hand doors, we built a four berth cabin complete with a wheel-house... without a wheel, I might add.
All through that bitter, cold winter, we used it as our base for evening drinking sessions, and listening to the constantly fading sound of Radio Luxembourg. Before the pirate radio stations were introduced shortly afterwards, starting off with Radio Caroline moored off Walton-on-the-Nazi, this was the only source of pop music on the radio suitable for young teenagers, and was our lifeline to the modern world.
All my mates went to work straight after leaving secondary school, but I was still attending college. Not that they earned much in those days, and I was on only five shilling a week pocket money to buy tea during our morning and afternoon tea-breaks between lectures.
I made sure that I was the first one down to the raft each evening, so I could collect all the empty bottles lying about and take them to the nearer public house and cash them in for a pint bottle of Cobnut beer. It was a good job that I was tall for my age... standing at six feet two inches tall... or I wouldn't have appeared old enough to buy my bottle of beer at only sixteen years of age.
As we were also obsessed with guns, each evening two or there of our gang would go out to the local woodlands to hunt for pheasants. Wally carried his double-barrel, barrel-unrolling twelve gauge Damascus shotgun... the right-hand barrel being so warn that it leaked oil through the layers of beaten steel, rendering that barrel unusable.
I had a collapsible three-bore shotgun, which I could easily fit into the special pocket sawn into my heavy GPO overcoat. My father... in his day... had been a postman, and his overcoat made an ideal poacher's coat. I'd also stitched another large pocket inside, capable of holding a shot pheasant. Kenny had a •410 shotgun for his night-time adventures. To be continued. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## tsell (Apr 29, 2008)

G'day, Dick, hope you and Marianna are well. Has she been to see her mum yet? 
Another great read, mate, looking forward to subsequent posts.
How's things with Kimberley, don't hear from her anymore, maybe I should toss her an email as I've written 80 chapters so far?
Regards to Marianna, keep in touch!

Taff


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*For tsell.*

Good to hear from you, Taff, and hope you and your missus are well. Mariana has gone to Samoa with the grand-children for Christmas and spend it with her family. 
I'm glad you liked this post, and hope you will enjoy the follow-up posts, mixed up with others for variation. I know you will remember the subjects that I brought up, as they were responsible for me spending most of my life at sea. To put it bluntly, I wanted to see the world before they blew it up.
Kimberley has just finished editing my ninth book... Return to Début... which I give you a mention. I'm hoping to be published later on this week, and will let you know when I am, and the Kindle code to down-load the book. 
If I were you, I'd email all the chapters of your book to Kimberly, so she can assess the best route to proceed with your work. I'm looking forward to when you can email the Kindle code for your book, once you have been published. For us writers, this is a very important moment in our lives. All the best to you, Taff. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## ccurtis1 (Aug 16, 2007)

And yet another great yarn Capt. Substitute Sunderland for Ipswich and it could be my own youthful experiences.


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*For ccurtis1.*

How's it goin', mate? I'm glad you liked my story, and there's much more to come... in-dispersed with other stories for variation. The grief being created at the start of the 1960's turned my life upside down, and I gave up the reason for a comfortable, respectable shore job and decided to explore the world. It cost me a wife and family and my house, but there was no way that I was going to be held back... not for anyone.
If you would like to read the full story up to the point when I floated out my second ship, Biche, and started my charter business, then go to the Books forum and download the details for 'From Beat to Open Deck', which will include the Kindle code for the book.
This is followed by 'Whisky and Water', which covers the four years of chartering Biche, before buying the Dauntless Star... converting her to a dive-support vessel, then taking her out to Dubai. Most of this book is about ex-pat life in Dubai in the late seventies, and supplying whisky and water to all those who were up for a drink.
All of the eight books that I've had published contain some 35 or so photographs, and my ninth book, 'Return to Début', should be published later on this week. This book has 45 photographs of my adventurous return to Australia in May this year to try and visit Début, still upright and in one piece on Emily Reef, then onto Samoa in the South Seas. I hope you enjoy the read. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

*For tsell.*

Hi, Taff, how are you making out today? I tried to send you an email, but your user code name wasn't accepted. I wanted to let you know that I was notified today by my literary agent that my ninth book... 'Return to Début : The Last Resort'... was published by Amazon this evening. The Kindle code is B01MRX2ZGF. You get a mention in the book. I hope enjoy the read. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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