"DirtCrashr" wrote in message
...
the Swallows and Amazons series.

Wow! I read those when I was a kid, overseas, almost forty years ago
-- it suddenly comes back. I think that's when I first wished to go
sailing.
I remember the idea of lights in-line, guiding a boat into a harbor at
night. My brother and I used to make maps of imaginary harbors with
rocks and secretive "light-lines" that would enable passage.
Our land-based adventures as kids of that age group were pretty
similar.

-keith
mtn. view

There must be many of my generation (don't ask) who's first stirrings of
wanting to sail and go to sea were stimulated, even initiated by Arthur
Ransome and those books; I know I was. I introduced my children to them but
somehow, it didn't work with them - a bit dated perhaps if the original urge
isn't there, and a character called 'Titty' didn't help. They are based on
the east coast of England and the north west lake district where he
eventually retired to.

He led an interesting life, was in Russia as a correspondent for the
Manchester Guardian at the time of the Bolshevik revolution; interviewed
Lenin; married Trotsky's secretary. After he died she went back to Russia, a
very old lady, and found, after a lifetime of living in England and only
speaking English that she could no longer remember how to speak Russian.

Q.