Shiver me timbers – where on earth did that year go? I was amazed when I came to write this final column of 2008 to realise that I’d been doing it for nearly 12 months – firstly in our now defunct sister paper, the Leader and more recently in the Herald & News.
I knew from a very young age that I loved the water. It didn’t matter whether it was pottering about in a small rowing dinghy on the Thames at Twickenham where I was born or flinging myself through breaking waves on the beach at Holland on Sea in Essex where we used to stay with my uncle and aunt most summers – I just loved the water.
