The journey has started well for us. The journey from home to Waterloo went well, Elizabeth line was great, all changes without steps. We snagged ourselves a good first class train ticket, £9.50 each, especially as the rest of the train was heaving - nice. Portuguese meal followed by 42nd Street at the theatre rounded the day off lovely. You may recognise Samantha Womack of EastEnders, Les Dennis & Faye Tozer of Steps who were in it.
Spent Sunday on a cultural trip about Southampton. Firstly we had a look at the Titanic story, the number of crew from Southampton who died was shocking. They had a street map on the floor with red dots on the houses that had lost someone. Southampton was smaller and there were many dots per street. One group of sailors had a good drink in the pub to celebrate and were late back to ship & prevented boarding - they survived.
Southampton was the home of Supermarine. R J Mitchell was lucky when he got the chief designer job because his predecessor had a German wife & was sacked. It was WW1, even the King had to change his name. When you look at Mitchell's designs, lumpy looking seaplanes, & his first attempt at a fighter plane, it's amazing he came up with the Spitfire. I wonder how much credit should have gone to his draughtsman, Joseph Smith and his wing designer, Beverly Shenstone. Joseph went on to design 24 marks of Spitfire, such that it developed almost beyond recognition & was still in service in 1954.
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