Chasing the blues away.....................

Do you find there are times when for no apparent reason a murky grey cloud sits just inches above your head and before you know it you are feeling blue.

There is nothing really wrong it's just a feeling and a hard one to shift. I could never work out why it was described as 'feeling blue', after all blue should make you think of blue sky’s and sunny days; time to be happy and glad your alive. I think it would sound and explains the concept much clearer to say 'I'm feeling grey' - everyone would understand that. Any way I'm rambling again, so, to get back to my point. This totally uncalled for feeling, which is almost but not quite depression, has the ability to take the joy out of any day or even days.  So to distract myself  I began wondering just where we got the saying 'feeling blue' from.

My husband is an avid reader of the tall ships and the naval period of Nelson (Horatio, not Mandela or the guy from the Simpsons!) The writer Patrick O'Brien is one of his heroes. Think Master &; Commander and you will know the the type of story I mean.

Well, it seems that a lot of our sayings come from the Royal Navy and feeling blue is no exception. We are using a phrase coined from a custom among many old deep-water sailing ships. If the ship lost the captain or any of the officers during its voyage, she would fly blue flags and have a blue band painted along her entire hull when returning to home port. Indicating the sadness of the ship and crew.   Another one Eddy explained to me was Touch and Go - this relates to a ship's keel touching the bottom and getting right off again with no damage. Or how about Son of a Gun - I love this one.  Apparently ladies of easy virtue were often allowed to visit or even live aboard ship along with the crew when in port, and when the crew had been restricted to the ship for any extended period of time.  Frequently, but not uncommonly, children were born aboard, and a convenient place for this was between guns on the gun deck. If the child's father was unknown, they were entered in the ship's log as son of a gun.  Good eh?

Now I have no idea how this blog ended up rambling along till I helped educate you on Naval sayings.  It wasn't my intention.  I meant to record all about THE wedding and how my son Philip with Sarah and Joe got infected with Royal wedding fever and joined the crowds outside Buck house.  I also meant to introduce the rest of the four legged friends.  Never mind it will keep.  Here is a photo of Floyd III, our 'baby' of 11 months.  He hates to be left out of anything and I cannot have him sulking till my next update! So here's Floyd's waving goodbye pic!