My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleypresent and the future; the mood was exalte. I awoke standing strangely amid theruins, and went back to the sea.We crossed the Bay of Biscay, which on this occasion was not quite so fierce as itsreputation, and put into Bordeaux, which entailed a long and slow trip up the tawnywaters of the Gironde. There we encountered the full glories of France in themagnificent eighteenth-century architecture; and I must add, the Basque cooking.Neither of us had ever been in Bordeaux; we felt we were at last really beyond theconfines of Brixton and Holloway when we entered that temple of the classic Frenchcuisine, the Chapon Fin, now, miserable to relate, defunct. Alexander and Max, thenaged ten and nine, sat rather disconsolately through the unaccustomed thoughsuperlative repast, but Max brightened a little toward the end and observed in hiscurrent Wiltshire accent: 'This is almost as good as them plain ices you get down thevillage'. He had not been a year at the Bar in later life before he developed as nice ataste in food as any old bencher; perhaps Christchurch had assisted to sophisticateWiltshire. I trust he always remembers the classic and paternal principle: 'Moderationin all things, especially in moderation'.The journey continued along the northern coast of Spain with the boys becomingmuch too bold now they had recovered from their initial seasickness. They wererunning around the deck with bare feet in every sort of weather and we had someanxiety that a roll of the boat or a wave washing across might put them into the sea,but with the adaptability of children they had almost become experienced seamen bythe time we reached Corunna, our first port of call in Spain. Neither of us had everbefore been in Spain, which we thus met for the first time at this point of Sir JohnMoore's last stand.We continued from Corunna to our next port, Lisbon, our first experience of thislovely eighteenth-century city. Once more we had a little trouble with fog on arrivingin the Tagus. Visibility was almost nil, and it seemed that large ships were bearingdown on us from all sides with their imposing warnings, which we could only answerwith our small hooter. Our experienced seamen made little of it, and we got into portnear the renaissance monastery of Belem, which celebrated the early Portuguesevoyages of discovery.After a brief sightseeing, we continued our journey and ran into our first rough sea offthe southern coast of Portugal on our way to Tangier. It was a real storm and our boatadopted many strange and disturbing positions, but stood up to the racket splendidly.It had been built for a first owner who had an island on the Atlantic side of Ireland,and wanted a ship which would resist the ocean gales. With our two capable sailorswe were quite safe, though we were far from feeling it.We next achieved our first main objective, which was a visit to the interior of Spain,for which we had made some arrangement in advance. We knew few people there, butmy stand against the war was well known and approved by many in that country, whothought this division of Europe a tragedy. We crossed from Tangier to Gibraltar,where we left the boat with crew and children, all happy to be back with fish andchips.From Gibraltar we took the train to Madrid, where we made new friends who were a351 of 424