venta

Hmm. I wrote this last night, and now I find that at least one other person has been doing the same thing.

On 10th July, I was accidentally in the vicinity of Buckingham Palace during the "60th anniversary of the end of WW2" celebrations. I caught some of the poppies as they fell from the Lancaster bomber, and saw a huge and culturally diverse crowd cheering Mrs Queen as she came out onto her balcony.

The 10th July, 1945, was more than a month after VE day, the day that Europe celebrated the final defeat of the Nazis. However, there was still more than a month left of war in the Pacific; VJ day wouldn't be celebrated til 15th August. And during that month, when Europe was starting to breathe again, my Grandad's ship was kamikaze'd off the coast of Phuket - the last Royal Navy ship of the war to go down.

Grandad lived to tell the tale, though sadly not long enough for me to ask the questions that such a tale now inspires. By the time I was seven he was terminally ill with lung cancer, and before I was eight he was buried in West Cemetery in Darlington, a beautiful place full of specimen trees.

For the few years after his retirement and prior to his illness, I'd spent the day and a half on which Mum worked part time up at his house. He lived in the same road as us, a quick two minute trot up the hill. Sadly, my memories of him are, at best, patchy. He taught me to play fives-and-threes, a variant of dominos, because (according to him) it would help me learn to count and add up, and (according to my mum) because he wanted someone to play dominos with. At a time when, certainly among my friends, your dad went our to work and your mum kept house, he surprised me by being a very competent cook. He played me his classical records, read me stories and took me out for walks and sometimes, as a special treat, to a tiny coffee shop called Blends down one of the yards in Darlington. He talked about the places in the world he'd visited, and was endlessly patient with questions.

He, with various other bits of my family, often went to Austria on holiday, and he always made it sound so inviting. His descriptions and photos, and the landmarks he'd point out as we watched Ski Sunday made me fall in love with the place before I ever saw it. My first trip abroad, aged ten, was to the Tirol with my best friend and her family; by complete coincidence we stayed in a hotel under the Kitzbüheler Horn, one of the places he'd loved to visit.

I remember asking him about his ship during the war, and what happened to it. Of course, she wasn't "his" ship in the accepted sense - he turned down a commission to stay on the lower decks - but at the time I couldn't imagine an environment in which he wasn't important. He was a wireless operator, sitting at the wireless when the ship was hit, I think. I have vague memories of him talking about being trapped somehow in the wireless room while the ship began to sink.

The word kamikaze was familiar to me - I think it was usually used by my mum to describe the little plastic diver who came out at bathtime and invariably sank the moment he was placed in the water. I asked what it meant to have a ship kamikaze'd, and remember being surprised by the explanation. Wouldn't the pilot of the plane be killed ? As ever, I got a straight answer: yes. The pilot knew he would die.

In the end, Grandad and the crew were taken safely from the ship and she was scuttled, left to sink out of reach of the enemy. A quick google tells me that she's still there. It seems that HMS Vestal is quite an attractive prospect for divers these days. Some of the divers' sites treat her purely as a reference point, a wreck to serve as a backdrop for the fish. Others include photos of her in full sail, and details of the ship's class.

I've now gone back and edited the last few paragraphs as I remember Grandad's comments that ships are always "she" not "it". Also that one is in a ship, not on her. (You can be on board, but you are in a ship. You are, my mother fills in the gaps for me, quoting, "on a bloody raft".)

The one thing that has stayed with me as a vivid memory is Grandad talking about having to leave possessions on the ship as she sank. Although I imagine he lost practically everything, he only complained about his works of Shakespeare, his fountain pen, and the mess fund (all in rupees). Even in the late 70s and early 80s, Grandad would refuse to buy anything Japanese-made, yet he never appeared bitter - except about the Shakespeare, the fountain pen, and the mess fund in rupees.

Many of my thoughts on my grandfather are now "false" memories, built up from my parents talking about him. He sounds like someone I'd like to know. He sounds like someone who enjoyed life, and who encouraged others to do so. Anyone who can respond to a request for permission to become engaged to his daughter by offering the requester a liquorice allsort is guaranteed a place in my good books.

Although he never swore in my earshot, he apparently had a colourful and thoroughly naval vocabulary from which I'd cheerfully now learn. Alledgedly he and my dad came to a mutually convenient arrangement when it came to DIY - Dad did the work, Grandad did the swearing when it went wrong. He also had an extensive stock of rude parodies - though disappointingly the words he knew for the Toreador Song were considered too obscene even to sing within hearing of my parents, so we are destined never to know what followed the opening "Into the ballroom rolled a ruptured rat" (any ideas?) He did, apparently, do an impressive double take the day I came home from school singing Kafoozalum - the only version of the song that he knew being somewhat unsuitable for children. To be honest, I can't currently remember the highly innocuous words I learnt, but if he knew these I can see his point.

The interweb is a wonderful thing. Googling for my grandad's name finds me a casual mention of him in a 2002 Northern Echo column, which is actually my mum relating an anecdote about him and (of all things) beef dripping. More impressively, it finds me this page, an surprisingly comprehensive list of occasions in which the bells of St Mary's, Whitby, were rung. He was a keen bellringer, and can been seen popping up as a visitor ringing various changes between 1970 and 1976.

Grandad was the last surviving grandparent I had, and the only one of whom I have anything approaching real memories. Sometime when I'm home I'd like to spend some time looking at the letters he sent back to England during the war, and the other ephemera my mum kept. At this distance, I can't honestly say I miss him, but I do regret the conversations and friendship we might have had as I grew up.

It looks like the HMS Vestal is a deep and difficult dive, expensive and not one a holiday-maker could ever attempt. It also sounds as if the ship herself is inaccessible, covered up with netting. Except in the unlikely even that she's raised, I'll probably never be able to look at the rooms Grandad lived and worked in. But if I ever get the chance (or if I can send