7.45 a.m. I am now back from first morning walk. I say first because I have just nipped once round the park and will be setting off on a longer journey in about an hour or so. It is Saturday morning. As a kid at school in Liverpool, I loved Saturdays. Saturday’s meant a possible trip to Anfield to watch Liverpool play providing; I had the four shillings entry fee. If not, I could always head down to the Pier Head and spend the afternoon crossing backwards and forwards on the Mersey ferry. There was also the Isle of Man Steamers, that is, if I could blag my way past the policeman who sat in his little box which sectioned off the deep water going ships from the ferries.

Today, and especially since I stopped work, Saturdays are no different to any other day. That sounds a little negative I know. However, when I say Saturday is just another day, my prospective on days, weeks and months has somewhat changed owing to the circumstances in which I now find myself. If you think of the days of the week as you do a box of chocolates, then Saturday is just another chocolate. There is no reason why it shouldn’t taste just as nice as Friday did.

Saturdays in my school days also were also spent wandering around Liverpool city centre. I wanted to share the busy city life with my brothers who were back in sleepy Castletown, on the Isle of Man. They would have loved the football, the docks and the general hustle and bustle of Liverpool. I on the other hand, would have given anything, just to be kicking a football or, just ambling along Castletown’s quiet sleepy streets. Today I might take a stroll down through our quiet streets and sit on the quayside for a while. As I listen to boats heading out in to the bay, I would probably know all of the owners. Many of them would probably shout to me as they pass. Back in my childhood at the Pier Head on Saturdays I did the same thing. The difference was, I sat on the landing stage listening to the distant fog horns of large ships sailing down the Mersey to far flung parts of the World. I knew no-one, and no-one knew me. I would always be able to pick out that very distinctive triple bell steam whistle sound though of an Isle of Man Steam Packet ship though and I would have given anything to have been onboard, sailing home. However, this was of course not to be. Time would pass, and I would leave the landing stage to catch the bus back to my school convent on the outskirts of the city.

As I would stroll up the link span bridge that linked the floating landing stage to the main road, I would always be able to hear the preacher. There was always a preacher banging out passages from the bible on the Pier Head. The phrase I remember him using most was. “It is the will of God.” I often felt like smacking him or throwing him in the Mersey. Whenever I had asked the nuns at the convent difficult questions such as, “Why am I here?” Their standard fallback was always the same response. “It is the will of god my child.” As I’d sit on my bus heading back to school, I would often reflect on my Saturday afternoon of freedom. If I had been down at the Pier, then I had spent the day surrounded by ships that might have taken me home, heaven! Now I was sitting on a bus and heading for Hell. As the large heavy doors of St Vincent’s swung shut behind me, it was like I had entered another World. The busy hustle and bustle of Liverpool was now firmly shut away. The ship’s fog horns, the traffic and the general buzz of the city, were now replaced with deadly quiet. As I walked down the polished corridors with my hands trailing along the spotlessly cleaned tiled walls that made the place feel anything but homely, I might hear a bell ringing calling the nuns to evening prayer. Passing the chapel, there would be the sound of the few nuns (had arrived early for the prayer) chanting.

I would continue to the play room where I would report on my day out to the other kids. A bell would ring, time for tea, another bell would indicate 30 minutes to bedtime and the last bell for time for bed. You lived by the sound of bloody bells.

Well a bell is ringing in my head right now. Its telling me its time for Skipper’s next walk and that you have probably had enough of my schoolboy ranting for now.

I was thinking about Dad yesterday. Isn’t it strange that when you loose someone you love dearly, sometimes their memory brings back laughter and joy and other times just tears and sadness. Dad was a man of the land. I was always a man of the sea. I close today with this description of death by Henry Vandkike.

"I am standing at the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud, just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. . . . And just at the moment when someone at my side says: 'There, she is gone!' there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: 'Here she comes!' And that is dying."

Until tomorrow then folks this Tom Glassey with News at 8.40, about to head up the Silverburn River again.