I’ve always felt that it’s the little anecdotes knitted together that really give the best overview of a story and tell it well; big events are easy to remember, sort of in your face and difficult to miss out but the little ones (to me) are priceless. For me they are a bit like finding out something you could never have imagined and yet very endearing about someone very famous; I follow a Buddhist path in life and when The Dalai Lama said one of his biggest regrets in life was not being able to have a girlfriend I was blown away.
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Throughout my memoirs I’ve tried to include as many of the major events that I can remember (and there are still more to come); but I’ve also tried to include the smaller day-to-day ones as they’ve sprung to mind because all these things go into the mix which make up my memories of living in Gibraltar. 

(USS Nimitz off Gibraltar)

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One of the smaller day-to-day things that had everyone talking was the arrival of a humongous aircraft carrier from the United States, the USS Nimitz, which it appears was so big that it couldn’t berth alongside and had to anchor off. With a crew of 6000 personnel it certainly put any British warship in the shade and if rumours were to be believed they had race wars and gang warfare onboard. As ‘locals’ there was an element of fascination about having such an impressive visitor to the Rock although the downside was that we avoided going out to eat or shop on the Main Street because we found Americans to be overly loud and too familiar (we didn’t really want to be #bff with people we didn’t know). Another downside was (with no disrespect to traders who wanted to make hay while the sun shone) prices for anything and everything virtually doubled.

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On the upside whenever ships like Nimitz left the Rock there always seemed to be a bargain to be had in many of the eateries – for example a free bottle of wine with dinner. One of our regular troughs was the Lotus House Chinese which even got into the habit of contacting us with their current offers particularly when bookings were down. Although it would never be my intention to circulate spurious rumours about any restaurant there was an occasion when the Lotus House was closed down the day after we had eaten there; sailors being sailors suggested something unpleasant had been found in the fridge but in fairness it wasn’t long before it reopened and it didn’t stop us eating there.

(Royal Naval Hospital Gibraltar)

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Perhaps one last little memory I’d like to include in this post would be to give a mention to the Moroccan painters who periodically would come around Edinburgh House and give all of the flats a fresh lick of paint. The painters who came were really super fast and could paint an entire flat in no time; I can still smell how fabulously fresh the place smelled every time they finished. With a new child on the way it was lovely to have the painters in just beforehand and it certainly wouldn’t be long before Carol had a date at RNH Gibraltar.

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