didn't mean to scathe anybody with my remarks about ploughboys being pretty - everybody to his goat as the french say. similarly (ugly or handsome)cabin boys and people traumatised by the press gang - I apologise for any distress caused and admit that my statement was motivated in the main by malice and was probably without foundation.

Its like slipjigs and hornpipes. I bet if you're a sailor about to tread on a banana skin, they are dead easy to relate to.

they just leave me.......sort of irritated.