Chance encounter to lifelong friendship
Fine summer rain had stilled what little wind there was and, with the limp sails of my Heron sailing dinghy hanging uselessly over my head, I shipped the oars and rowed towards the great black hull of a motor-barge which had arrived off my home Thames Estuary town.
Although Leigh-on-Sea was still, in 1965, served by steam trains, it was the barge traffic bringing timber
