My head was swirling and I was lapsing in and out of wakefulness.

Every morning in Bangladesh I was boarding a bus, a ferry, a minibus, a train, a motorbike even a rickshaw, and all before 6.30am.

I was getting exhausted and my head was rolling from side-to-side. As I drifted in and out of my stupor I looked out of the window to see the horizon going up and down, left and right just like the swell of a broad ocean.

How could I get seasickness on a train?

The windows in the air-conditioned carriage were double-glazed and water had somehow got in between the two plates of glass. The water had settled at just about eye level.

The journey reminded me of all the wonderful train journeys I had been on: the Northern Line on a Friday night from the City to Kennington to meet my mates, Bangkok to Singapore, and taking the train down to Gourock on the Firth of Clyde with my father.

On arrival at the quay my father would just sit and read his paper: his job was done, and that is when I remember him being most happiest.

He would let me just wander up and down the pierhead so I could watch the ferries coming and going being careful to keep out of the way of the boarding passengers.

The ships of the Caledonian Steam Packet Company sailed "doon the water," ferrying passengers and excursionists across and up and down the Firth of Clyde to Dunoon and Rothesay on Bute and further down to the Isle of Arran.

If I were really lucky I would get to see the PS Waverley the world's last ocean going paddle steamer.

I would never stray too far and I would occasionally run back up to where my father was sat and look over his shoulder to see what he was reading.

Once he was looking at the map of a country with a long coastline with the Gulf of Tonkin in the north bordered by Laos and Cambodia.

"What's happening dad?"

"Well Fergus these bad men in the north are fighting these bad guys in the south.'

"Is there not any good men?'

"Well son some men have come all the way from America."

"Are they not the good men then?"

" Fergus there is not often good men in wars."

During the Second World War my father had served on the HMS Suffolk a three funnelled heavy cruiser.

He was incredibly young and I never ever remember him talking about the war.

When I grew up and I had the pleasure to meet up with some of his old friends even then mention of the war was always only ever in passing.

My brother Keith and I pestered him to buy us an Airfix model of his ship. We never had the Humbrol paints to give it the livery it deserved - it only ever received an RAF roundel from an old Spitfire kit and when we finished it we set fire to it in the bath.

I wonder now how many horrific memories that little plastic kit must have brought back to him.

All this talk of war and getting up at 6am made me think of my own time in the army.

Marching up and down at 8am in the morning and getting up before the sun to polish the bright red floors only for the Duty Corporal to say that it wasn't good enough and we were all to get up again the following morning to repeat the exercise.

The bulling of boots - polishing your parade boots to a mirror finish: a yellow duster, some spit, a tin of black boot polish and many, many hours.

The sweet smell of the polish filled my nostrils and I was nudged out of my reminiscing - a young man in a white turban carrying a wooden box on his head filled with boot polishes of all shades and hues was stood over me - his beaming smile bringing me back to the here and now.

I looked out of the window at the lungi dressed men and women planting the new paddy - lines and lines of newly sown green shoots - as straight as a battalion of soldiers.