I volunteered to join the entertainment committee, which was
responsible for organising various functions, throughout the year, for air
traffic control. It was interesting to
find that I was the only person on the committee, however, if you remember
people like me, people with a heavy regional accent, could not organise things,
couldn’t really have any original thought, or ideas, so an officer, a failed
fast jet pilot, was detailed to be in charge of the committee. I managed to persuade a couple of the other
guys to join the committee and soon we had a quorum.
This wasn’t the only activity I was engaged in to help get me
promoted and back to aircrew. I was attending
Llangefni College for night classes studying A Level Mathematics, Physics and
English. Don’t tell anyone, for I wasn’t
exactly known for my study skills. I was
known for having a party. Well, I was
probably known as being a complete party animal. In fact the six man room that Docker and I
shared was party central. We invited
Mervyn, Dereck and Willie up from London for an away match. Louis even managed to find a saucepan for us
to use, should have asked him for a stomach pump as well.
It was a fantastic party and the three boys loved Valley so
much that Dereck went off and joined the RAF.
In fact Dereck joined the RAF as sergeant aircrew air electronics. That really got to me and I was tempted to
buy myself out and re-apply for aircrew through Biggen Hill, but I was warned that
there would be a file. A big collection
of reports and statements, mainly from the police, that would follow me around
for the remainder of my career. I wasn’t
really sure if this was an old wives tale, or fact, so I had to play it safe, however
I can confirm that everyone in the air force has a file, some containing more
paperwork than others, and these files do follow you around for the remainder
of your career.
As for Dereck I was pleased for him unfortunately during his
training they found that he had a hole in his heart so he was chucked out. Catherine too was a regular visitor at party
central and actually used her close friendship with Louis to get him to provide
various bits and bobs like curtains and rugs to make the room more homely. Docker and I would of course go to Rochdale
to visit Catherine and those nurses couldn’t half drink.
At one party in Rochdale, in the old people’s home, Docker was
so drunk they put him to bed in a spare room in the hospital. The duty nurse called in to check on him, Docker
woke, saw this white clad figure and thought The Angel Of The Lord had come to
visit him. It was so funny poor old Docker
couldn’t remember a thing. I thought it
my duty to remind him about it as often as I could.
So it would be fair to say that I had a little bit of experience
of parties, whether I could actually organise one was a different matter altogether. I didn’t really consider the fact that I
might not be able to do it, that whatever function I organised might flop, and
they didn’t just record successes on your record. But I was young and stupid and failure was
something that happened to older people, not me.
I did the usual party thing, lots of booze and some finger
food but I wanted to do something different, so I came up with the idea of a
treasure hunt. This would be in vehicles and would be around Anglesey Island. On their return we would have a barbeque with
loads of charred meat products and lunatic soup. I plotted out the course and got some reference
material on each point they would have to discover and planned the whole route
out. Docker was my guinea pig and we travelled
the course on a couple of occasions to calculate timings and distances. Then I wrote a story. It was biblical. I don’t mean it was huge, with hundreds of
millions of pages with people begetting each other, I wrote the story like a chapter
in the bible. I had the SATCO as Moses
leading his people through the Desert of Anglesey Island. So not only did they have to move from point
A to point B and so on, answering questions at each point, they had to
interpret the story first of all.
They had to work out who al the characters were in the story before
they could made head or tail of the whole thing. I believe it was quite an event and I was given
my own little certificate as a thank you, which I have attached to this blog. What
it actually meant is that my efforts were being recognised and recorded and
entered into that file that was following me around, so unlike my other, failed,
attempts at getting back to aircrew, this time I was making sure that my six o
clock was covered.
There were other parties I remember at Valley one was Norma’s
wedding. We thought it strange that she
would invite us to her wedding but never the ones to turn down some drink and
some finger food Docker, John Boy and myself went off into Holyhead for the
reception. We didn’t attend the ceremony
as we were afraid that the religious icons in the church might melt in our presence.
I knew some of Norma’s relatives and briefly exchanged pleasantries
with them. We three settled ourselves in
a corner and began the serious job of drinking.
Norma appeared in her bridal gown and we all congratulated her and
gave her a hug. Docker even went so far as
to buy a gin and tonic then, writing 'congratulations' on one of John Boys
cigarette papers, stuck it to the glass before presenting it to Norma, as a
wedding gift, from the three of us. I tell
you, we certainly were the old romantics at heart.
The evening progressed as evenings do. There was no jiving, so we all maintained a
dignified silence and concentrated on the beer.
Norma’s new husband had quite a few friends there who eyed us suspiciously
from the bar. They might very well have
been members of the local Viet Taff, so we kept our distance, as we didn’t want
our holiday homes burning down, not that we had any. We kept telling each other that we would
leave after the next drink. At a given
signal we stood and prepared to leave.
Norma saw this and came running across to throw her arms around my neck proclaiming
her love for me, which I have to tell you was quite embarrassing not just for
me, but for her new husband, who along with his friends, were swinging punches at
Docker and John Boy.
Hindsight is a great thing, especially when beer bottles are
being lobbed at your car as you are driving away, but to tell you the truth I
was more worried for poor old Norma. If
I was continually reminding Docker about his visitation from The Angel Of The Lord, I hoped
that poor Norma wouldn’t be reminded as often about her slight faux pas at her
wedding.
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