I had two bolt-holes at Locking. One was another course member’s car, down on
the student car park. We would nip off
to his car and sit and listen to David Bowie and ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy
Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ album.
The volume was at eleven and the windows were open. It was difficult to enjoy music at a decent
volume when you shared a room with three other chaps. My
other bolt-hole or I believe as they are called these days, safe or panic room,
was the camera club. It was a very
serious affair as you may guess. At
Violent Hell I had only worked with black and white photography, now I was
introduced to colour. I know, stop the
world I’m dizzy.
It was great to have somewhere private where I could
escape. Simply lock the door and switch
on the red light and know that you could have peace and quiet for an hour or
two. Our training was moving on at a fair
pace. We had been told that we were to
participate in a parade in London and would have to start practising for
it. If you have ever seen the Trooping
of the Colour you will know what a spectacle it is, the bands, the horses, the
fellows with the bear skin hats, and we were to be a part of that. Knew you would be impressed.
Of course we would not be doing the old left, right, left,
right, bit accompanied by a band, we would be standing still. We had weeks of preparation for standing still. First of all you line up in a single line. Tallest on the left and the shortest on the
right. Then you ‘Number off’, that is,
everyone shouts out a number, starting from the person on the left. Now please do not think this is like a gang
of fellows with Tourette’s, screaming out numbers willy nilly. This is a controlled military exercise.
The fellow on the left starts at number one; the fellow next
to him is two, the next three and so on.
See, you thought standing still was easy. I bet you even thought you
could do it yourself, all on your own, with no specialist training. Well; think again. Once you have ‘Numbered off’ the odd numbers
take one step forward and the even numbers one step back, fun isn’t it. Then the front row, the odd numbers, turn
right and the even numbers turn to their left.
And now they can form up into ranks of three.
So now you are in your standard military three ranks and off
you go, but this is the tricky bit, as you are moving along certain orders are
called out, very, very, secret, I couldn’t possibly tell you what they are or I
would have to come round and kill you.
Once the secret order is given, the left, right, left, right, combination
is interfered with. Some people start to
do the oaky koaky and shake it all about a bit, but after twenty or thirty paces,
you now only have two rows of marching people.
Yes, I know we already had that at the beginning, but this is the
military, why do something simple when you could make it much more difficult
and have someone shouting at you while you do it.
Now both lines would open up, so that they were on either
side of the road, near the pavement, and you would peel off, I don’t mean that
you would strip off all your clothes and race down the Mall in London flashing
at the Queen. No, you would peel off,
move away from the main body of men, at the appropriate moment and stand by the
side of the road with your gun. Then on
the word of command we would all turn and face the centre of the road. We would guard the road. I have
to say that during all the times that I guarded roads, even at night-time, and
in the rain, when you couldn’t see the fecking road, not one bit of road ever
got hurt. But once you’ve done it, you never speak about it.
I know, highly trained electronic engineers, armed to the
teeth with guns and trained in Taekwondo, guarding a road. Well
it was called the guard of honour, or honour guard, whichever you preferred,
but busloads of service people would be coming in from training establishments all
over the country to line the roads so that dignitaries could drive past and know
the road was in safe hands at least. All
you had to do was look at the faces of the military personnel as they got off
their buses to see the sheer excitement and enjoyment eight weeks of intensive
training for standing still had led them to.
Not only would there be all the marching about and
synchronised counting out loud but the inspections and the insults. Get your hair cut; stop breathing so fast you’re
stealing air from the rest of society, you are as much use as an ash tray on a
motorbike, or you are as much use as a chocolate teapot. It was as we often called it pure
unadulterated bullshit. Which reminds me
as for the standing still malarkey I was often tempted get a wheelbarrow and
fill it up after the horses passed by, it would have kept mums roses going for
some time.
The only known and effective antidote for marching, or the
more difficult standing still, is disco dancing. No one in Weston Super Mare knew how to jive,
how advanced was that! Being a popular
seaside resort there were quite a number of hotels and clubs providing dancing
opportunities. We were only allowed to
go to Weston Super Mare in groups of three or more. The local yobs loved to catch a trainee, on
their own, and give him a hiding. Once,
they took a trainee to the top of a multi-story car park and threw him
off. After that we never travelled alone,
or at least tried not to.
My hand to hand combat training at primary school in Belfast had
given me an extra sense and I could feel trouble coming, although, in my case
it would be more frequent that an average person experienced. At the time the most popular tune was Van Mc
Coy and ‘Do The Hustle’. I hated it,
didn’t even think it rated as music, however I quite like it these days. Wonderful
how tastes change, although I still prefer a decent tune that you can jive to.
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