Good Morning coincidence.

My coincidence happened almost seventy years ago but I still find it hard to believe. It was War time,1942, and after a few months working in the Mancheser offices of the Daily Mirror I was promoted to the dizzy height of a junior reporter in Newcastle. It was a great adventure for a sixteen year old, for I had never been away from home before but was working with a very experienced newspaper man. The only problem was loneliness, but fortunately and quite soon my week-ends were filled travelling by bus and train throughout the whole of Northumberland and Durham. The Mirror had come up with the great Idea of publishing a newspaper called Good Morning written especially for members of the British Submarine Service and my task was to visit the families of submariners and bring them 'News from Home.' Things were different in those days : travel was no way as easy as it is today and I suppose I was homesick and missed my family. I came from an ordinary working-class family in Manchester and I can't remember any one of us travelling further from home than Blackpool. Newcastle a million miles away. I had two brothers serving in the Forces: Lew in the Army, Bert in the Navy but had seen neither one since the early days of the War. Two years at least and I missed them both. Then one early Saturday evening after visiting a submariner's family I found myself walking up a cobbled street in South Shields and heading for the train to Newcastle. For some reason I felt completely alone and in no way looking forward to an evening on my own. It was then I noticed a pub on a corner and decided almost on impulse and perhaps desperation to see if I could find some kind of company there. I was really too young to be in a pub but decided to chance it anyway. All they could do was throw me out. It was an old end-of-terrace pub and I still remember how nervous I felt as ]I made my way past the outdoor sales counter to stand at the bar and order my drink. As the landlord turned to pull my beer, I looked around and was disappointed to see it was nearly empty - two or three couples at most and at the far end of the long room a small crowd of sailors happily deciding on their next round of drinks: hardly the kind to welcome a teenager on his own. Suddenly one of the sailors was standing besides me ready to order his drinks and as I reached for my glass I heard a voice say: 'Eric. Is that you?' Yes, my brother Bert! Hundreds of miles from home, Bert on his first day in England for God knows how long and both of us together in a little, ordinary pub on a back street of South Shields- a place we had never been before, were never to visit again. Soon after the pub became busy and the talk was of nothing but the unbelievable meeting of my brother and I. Later a warrant officer popped in -checking the welfare of his lads, no doubt - and was so taken back with what happened he insisted on taking me back to their ship. What a night ! Incidenatally my dear old Mum could never really understand what had happened, try as she might.