Exploring the Queens' warships

As promised we arrived at the dockyard nice and early and met LittleMax and the JoniBobs.

It was nothing like as busy as Ark Royal day so we breezed through to the first ship: HMS Gloucester. It had guns and missiles and even a special room for spies but it was quite small.

The captain had his own bath and I got to sit in his command chair and phone up the engine room and press all the buttons. All the rooms and corridors were tiny and there were cables everywhere and little cupboards in unexpected places and trip hazards and head-bump hazards and armed guards and telephones all over the place.

Once we'd done the tour of the type 42 destroyer Gloucester we went over to HMS Daring which was much bigger and we took turns to squirt the giant firefighting hose over the side. It had space for helicopters and I played with the guns which were chained down.

We got to play with the buttons in the ops control room but most of the consoles were turned off so we didn't get to launch any missiles against the Isle of Wight ferry. A huge bank of sea fog rolled in and completely obscured Gosport, which was nice.
On our way out we met Elizabeth because her mum was working there, she got to play with origami ships and operate the candy floss machine. I took her away from all that and she came back to ours for cutting and sticking. After a while, we walked round to the JoniBobs' place for another excellent barbecue where I helped inflate the paddling pool and we all got wet. This was no problem as it was a very hot day and we could dry off by just standing there. Then we all got naked, having invented the "Naked Room" which made the parents despair, but they couldn't do anything anyway because of all the beer. So we got on the windowsill and waved our winkies through the window, which just made them despair even more.

The 1 picture of events in the "Noody room" just won't upload, and neither will the detailed picture drawn by Johnny. We shot each other with the water pistols and took turns to slide down the slide into the pool and get naked again. Elizabeth got naked so many times she lost her clothes and nearly had to walk home starkers.