While aboard the Gransden’s Edith May last weekend the mate and I sat at a table which already had several people, a lady and two gentlemen, seated enjoying their luncheon. Jane Gransden, when taking our order, asked if we’d been introduced … we soon were. http://www.edithmaybargecharter.co.uk/

Ed at work…

The lady, Linda Moffat, had a connection back to my childhood time spent in Maldon during 1964: her cousin is John Prime who then owned the Gipping. My father borrowed John’s electric drill to drill pin holes in several short lengths of scaffold tube to fit in the rudder gudgeons when withdrawing the May Flower’s pin … for refurbishment.

Viewed from the May Flower on Cooks Yard Blocks, 1964, My Alice CK348 then owned by Barry Pearce and beyond her the Gipping is alongside the Hythe…

I discovered that John is well and still living in Maldon in a house that overlooks the Hythe Quay.

The other gentlemen were Linda’s husband (a church warden of St Peter & St Paul, Shorne, a river side village to the east of Gravesend – and a place I have wanted to visit for a while too) and Robin Moffat, of West Mersea Marine … his connection is the enjoyment of a copy of ‘May Flower’ recently given to him as a present… Robin has asked me to make contact when next in West Mersea… I must do this!

Wow, what a small world we live in.

It is always amazing to me: I’m of the generation that wasn’t brought up with the marvels of our modern communications age.  Our ability to say, ‘let us go out for lunch’ … must be added to this too. Shorne to Lower Halstow by public transport would have taken half a day…

We can link with people on FaceBook (plus others) and such networks as Linkedin. We communicate by email more often than we ever wrote letters, or probably telephoned … then there is the blessed mobile phone, which has now encapsulated all means of electronic communications…

Graham Bell and Marconi would be amazed, surely, or maybe not!