Being brought up on an island meant that I had led a rather quiet, sheltered life prior to joining up. One great revelation – and a source of fear and fascination in equal measure – was the Haslar Club pay day disco and the resident platter spinner…..

Being brought up on an island meant that I had led a rather quiet, sheltered life prior to joining up.

One great revelation – and a source of fear and fascination in equal measure – was the Haslar Club pay day disco and the resident platter spinner. Ladies n' Gennelmen, I give you Barry Dyer!

I challenge anyone who was at Haslar in the early 70's and used to go along to the discos (is there anyone who didn't?) not to remember Barry's sign off tune and the last chance it represented to have a slowy and, who knows, a quick snog on the way back to F Block. There was never a square foot of free dance floor once the strains of this song were heard… Why didn't someone come up with the concept of an "all slowies" disco? Be still my beating heart!

I live in the north east now, have done for many years. I love it up here for lots of reasons, but when those winds come off of the North Sea in winter straight from Siberia I'm sometimes in danger of falling out of love with the place again, if just for a second.

To warm me up psychologically I often drift back to my time on The Rock in the mid-eighties. I don't know a single member of the medical branch who doesn't put their time spent at sea at the top of their "great times I had in the Andrew" list and I'm no different in that respect. However, my time in Gib, despite some…er…run ins with the authorities, runs this a close second.

It was a magical time where it felt as though the right bunch of people had come together in the right place and time to almost guarantee maximum fun. Even work was fun most of the time – not something I can say hand on heart about RNH Guzz once I'd started to climbing the greasy pole.

I have a photo of the flagstaff on the edge of the tennis courts at RNH Gib, taken at sunset. Swallows (or was it swifts?) dart around and the coast of North Africa lies tantalisingly near, clinging on to the horizon. I can still feel the warm evening breeze, so welcome at the end of a hot summer's day of working afternoon shift on Families Ward and the enormous feeling of wellbeing it induced. I felt like one of the luckiest people alive – everything was very laissez faire then, despite being on a military fortress, in those pre- 9/11, pre- Gulf War days. We were where it was at – and we knew it.

After sunset it would be time for some assorted kitchen scraps in Rooke Barracks, a flick at the Queen's, a barbie (there was always a barbie somewhere), pichitos in Jim's Den or a pint; maybe in the mess or The Matchbox or The Wembley Bar, The Coach & Horses, The Angry Friar, The Hole In The Wall, The Bull & Bush, The Captain's Table or any other of the multitude of little bars clinging to that tiny, cosy rock at the edge of Europe and Empire.

They haven't got the Yorkshire Dales its true, but what do have, and will always have, is a little piece of my heart.