Vernon, the chap on the Dorsetshire that fired torpedoes into the Bismark was from Cape Town. I asked him why he volunteered for the Navy when so many went north to Tobruk. He told me he'd always been interested in ships and, when he was thirteen, he had been about one square rigged ship that was in Cape Town for a few days that they began to think of him as part of the crew. When the ship was ready to sail, he was told he'd better get on board as they were about to leave and he just went aboard. When the ship got to Port  Elizabeth, the police and his father were waiting. He commented that the next few weeks were unpleasant.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vital-Spark-No-Witnesses-What-ebook/dp/B00UNNKUUO

This is a photograph of the chap I mentioned who was on the ship that torpedoed the Bismark. His first experience of the navy was being ill in West Africa and being flown off his ship to be looked at by a doctor on shore. They sent him off on the plane in the second picture. He said he was sure he was going to drown. He was sitting in the bit at the front when the engine started, then there was a lot of hissing from steam pipes and the thing shot off the catapult and dived towards the sea. It was almost touching the water when it pulled away and took him to hospital. He said he was glad to be taken back to the ship in a boat.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vital-Spark-No-Witnesses-What-ebook/dp/B00UNNKUUO

This is the fifth radio controlled model of the Bismark built by one of the model boat builders in Cape Town. Each build had more detail added and on this one, the radar turned, the guns could be elevated and the turrets rotated as well as an action stations siren and navigation lights. It was about four feet long and I saw it at a dam called Sonstral. I also met one of the sailors who fired the final torpedoes into Bismark through the club but that's another story.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vital-Spark-No-Witnesses-What-ebook/dp/B00UNNKUUO

Sailing, Cape Town, Yacht Racing, I did a bit of bridge work - checking the racing keelboats at the start and finish - and it was watching some of them that the idea for Vital Spark came to me. All production boats if the same type are the same. What distinguishes them is the name and the number on the sail, both easily copied. The idea developed beyond that but I might come back to it one day. I miss the yachts nodding to each other at the jetty.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vital-Spark-No-Witnesses-What-ebook/dp/B00UNNKUUO

Travelling by bus, cyclists, cycle lanes - From the bus, I've seen cyclists go through red lights, through pedestrian crossings, ride down pedestrian streets, ride im bus lanes when there is a dedicated cycle lane. In fact, I've seen them break every rule in the highway code. I'm told it is only a minority of cyclists who behave like that but is it every cyclist who breaks the code in a minority of occasions like that? Does every cyclist break one rule every year so that it is continuous? I stress that one of them will be run over but the more byciles there are on the road, the more likely that is to happen.
Sullatober Dalton