My Grandfather and Grandmother, Arthur and Daisy Miles, lived in Mill Road, St Helens. Here in this small village my father Jack Arthur and his younger brother Kenneth, grew up. Arthur and Kenneth remained on the island all their lives but my father left to the mainland after schooling at Sandown and never returned except for holidays. As children (1946 - 1955), my younger brother Nicholas, sister Isabel, and I spent our long summers in St Helens We walked down through the woods to the golf links below the village, rambling out along the foreshore to where the rocks bent and twisted towards Seaview, or in the other direction to 'Woodnuts Boat House' built on the Bembridge bar. From 1947 onwards I recall the life in Bembridge harbour. A small ferry crossed between the St Helens and the Bembridge side. Mill Lane led to the harbour. The road was unpaved and lined lower down with a mass of blackberry bushes. The gaunt mill was abandoned but one could still enter inside. There were walks along stone causeways with little bridges over the tidal mill streams.

My family used the tiny steam train that ran through St Helens from Brading and beyond. We would use it to go along the Military causeway. There was a turntable at the Bembridge end. The people of the two villages hardly ever connected. Even the boats were different. Redwings were sailed from that village, while we had our National 18s and Seaview Swallows.

I learned to sail in a West Wight scow. This tiny dipping lug craft had an iron horse on which the main sheet ran. The Brading Haven Yacht Club was as far up Bembridge harbour as one could go before the sea met the marshes. I sailed the boat out to sea beyond the Bembridge ledge, sometimes going as far as the St Helen's Fort that was still covered in those days with anti-aircraft guns. My Grandfather told me of the time when the air raid warden or local policeman cycled through the village to get everyone to open their windows. The 16" naval guns on the top of the cliffs between St Helens Church and Seaview were exercising. I remember as a small boy watching shells going out to sea. The guns were firing at targets towed by MTBs. The greatest and most stupid thrill of my own sea journeys involved sailing my boat between the submarine pilings just off the Seaview coast. Judging the waves and the wind at the right minute to scurry between the massive steel and concrete pilings.

I recall the launch of the Bembridge lifeboat. I picture an island reached by paddle steamer. The fascination with the Sunderland flying boats off Calshot and the opportunity to see close at hand the great Cunarders, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and the green hulled Caronia. Driving down to Lymington or Southampton the first child of our family to see the sea was awarded a 6d. (£0.025 ed.).

Grandfather, Uncle and Father (when he was there) played cricket on the St. Helens Green. I went to Ventnor with the sea scouts. The island had a remarkable influence on my later years. I sent considerable time in the Greek Aegean and felt I knew them better because I knew what island life was like and how it worked.