Seasick...

I've always been into ships. I love em! My childhood dream (before I discovered the ladies you could say) was to be the Captain of a ship. Pretty dorkish, but Its probably in my blood as some great uncle of mine - a man of the cloth who's name eludes me - whittled some amazing replicas of a couple of ships that were regular vistors to Wellington - complete with working engines and 'protective' asbestos. As a kid I loved visiting warships when they were in port - I was hugely disappointed when the 1984 Labour Government banned visits from American warships because of the 'neither confirm or deny' policy and I've sulked about it ever since .

Fortunately a few of the worlds other navies send the odd ship our way, and a few in mid 2007 the Japanese sent a group of vessels that exceeded the size of our entire navy to weigh anchor in Welly for a while. Last weekend the French sent a frigate 'Vendemiaire' - and Liam and I decided to report for duty. When I told him as part of the sale pitch that the ship has a big gun, my young gun totin' sons question was of course, "Liam shoot the gun???" I guess it can't hurt to ask...we'll see what we can do. By the time we were wandering up the gang plank the tune had changed to "I not like guns - we see a little ship with no gun?". Nope.

Liam was a little under the weather the day we went to have a gander at the pride of the French South Pacific fleet but the weather was so damned good I thought I'd take him out anyway. As we went about our business he looked more and more tired - and this was the most cheerful photo I managed to get of him. He still managed to get a little excited about the visit to the toy shop afterwards but wasn't his usual self - no kicking, no screaming... just a tired little boy.