HMS Sussex sparkles in the Mediterranean sun | Nostalgia

At the time Sussex, a county-class heavy cruiser, was anchored in Gibraltar. In the muzzle we see the tampion with the familiar martlet, the emblem of the county of Sussex. The creature is an heraldic and mythical bird, like a swallow or swift but without feet. It is continuously on the go.

In the bottom right hand corner can be seen what looks like garages of some kind. Does anyone know what they were?

No doubt the two sailors, working under a hot sun, were itching to get into town for an evening pint.

To get to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar to the fort seen in the background, there is now a cable car, but I should think when the photograph was taken it would have meant a hike up the Mediterranean Steps.

• Can anyone tell me what the instrument, below, was used for?

Paul Rushton, who sent the picture, has had it in his tool box for years.

He wonders if it was used to measure the width and thickness of springs. The maker’s mark is ‘Pyramid’.

• Andy Peach sent this picture of his mother Gladys, who owned the Silver Grid fish and chip shop in Locksway Road, Milton, Portsmouth, from the ’60s to the 1980s.

Her husband Edgar was a bus driver/ inspector on Portsmouth buses and they had five children, Ian, Stuart, Andrew, Charles and Josephine.

Gladys died on August 2, 2016, the day before her 89th birthday, at a Wiltshire care home.

Gladys’s shop and home is now called Crispy Cod.

A message from the editor, Mark Waldron.

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