N is for……Navy (Royal)

Those of you who had the good fortune to live before the era of The Pill will know what I am talking about. Jack Tar was ready for almost anything, in exchange for a few pints and a bed for the night (or the weekend).

He was obliged to make his "run ashore" in uniform, his pay was very low, the Pill hadn’t been invented, and the idea of getting a girl pregnant was unthinkable. And in any case, it was an old tradition. Did not Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty say, before WWII something like: "There are three traditions in the Royal Navy, and never shall they be changed. Rum, buggery and the lash"?

The traditional daily tot of rum went out some time after that war, and the lash had been abolished long before that, but buggery was still a fixed point on the horizon. Was, that is. It’s hard to know if it persists. But legend has it that, after a certain time at sea - nine days, six weeks, two months; it depended on whom you listened to - all rules were suspended, and you could screw with whomsoever you liked.

So perhaps it continues "in house". In theory it is no longer illegal today, but social ostracism can still operate on the lower deck.

Certainly, when it became possible to for Jack do his run ashore in civvies, and even more when he could screw women with impunity, thanks to The Pill, all good queens had to admit that they were beaten. But we’d had a good run for our money before that. Provided that you were from an earlier generation, that is.

In the late 50s, when I was a student in London, I had the good fortune to meet a bloke who was kind enough to introduce me to a Scot, who was an afiçonado, par excellence, of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. He has a bijou residence in Chelsea, which must be worth a fortune now. He certainly took his time spending money on it (well, he was from Haggisland), but when he did, he spent it well.

At that time, and probably still today, he had a dire folding single cot in his guest room. While that certainly drove two occupants into each others arms, it was not conducive to any sleep after the gymnastics were over.

He had an even bigger obsession about the Navy than I did. It is interesting to note, in passing, that he claimed to have done his National Service in the Senior Service himself, but when I put some clothes in a wardrobe in the guest room one day, what did I find but a grey-blue fly-boy’s uniform.

Night after night he would be in the Golden Lion, the Swiss (which became, I believe, the Admiral Duncan), and a few other places between there and the White Bear in Piccadilly. He could not settle in one place, for fear that "Mister Right" was already waiting, ready to be "trapped" in the next, and this led to certain tensions between us.

More often than not we would finish up back in the Golden Lion, then two Jolly Jack Tars would roll in, and - comme d’habitude - my chum would say - as the owner of my lodging place: "I don’t think much of yours, but mine’s all right". The laugh, in the end, was usually on him.

We’d take the two back to Chelsea, feed them with booze and