Freebornman says

I was pleased to get this link to an article cleverly masked with an ad for the Marriott hotel, (wasn’t pleased to get that so persevere) about recordings of shanties made in the 1920’s. On the whole the Carpenter family descendants seemed fairly happy with the day out but if folk music is not their thing I’m not sure how much of a discovery they realized had come to hand. I so wish I had recorded my own father singing over the years. Both he and my grandfather were wonderful singers but sadly I never did anything about it till the old man was in his nineties, living in a nursing home and losing his memory, which is fairly useful if you’re attempting to recall lyrics. At that stage he could only remember one song which he repeated every ten minutes or so much to the annoyance of everyone in ear shot apart from the Alzheimers cases who thought they’d never heard it before and called out ” Be good Charlie and give us another one”

Listening to the singers got me feeling all nostalgic and maudlin about ‘regrets’ how my family history is not on any form of recorded documentation and how easily, after we’ve gone, we can slip beneath the waves ….forgotten.
To cheer up I tootled around and came across this strange and bizarre story of a man who had cut off his penis and no, before you ask, he wasn’t a seaman, just some disgruntled customer who took it through to the kitchen just in time for the police to arrive. (where he was going to tell the chef to stick it remains unclear) but to brighten my day again was this gem!!