Well; it had to come, my last day in the air force,
plus one. It was the day after my
thirtieth birthday, I had to report to Station Headquarters at RAF Wattisham at
nine o clock in the morning and extend my adult service by one day. I was beginning to think most civilians were
pretty useless but my reception by the air force made me think that the
civilians had some pretty serious competition.
First of all no one knew why I was there, then, when someone finally
worked out why I was there, despite me repeatedly telling them, they wanted to
know where my uniform was. Apart from
the humiliation of people asking me what I had been in jail for, which I hadn’t,
I was embarrassed at the unprofessionalism of the air force.
People have an image of the air force being a
professional service, when in fact it’s a wonder any aircraft ever get airborne
at all. Most multi million pound
aircraft are held together with bodge tape and para cord, and I’m not joking. It’s a combination of the engineer’s ingenuity
and the pilot’s professionalism that keep an aircraft airborne. It had been bad enough in station
headquarters and I was not looking forward to going back in to air traffic
control. I knew that the mindless idiot
Joe, I can march, Pearson would have a field day with me, and I wasn’t wrong. When he asked me what I had been in jail for,
I told him that I had been in possession of an illegal eighteenth birthday. The one thing I do remember about Wattisham
and Joe Pearson was on my very first day there I had glanced at the first aid
book, where any incident requiring first aid in the work place would be
recorded. One of the earliest entries in
the book stated that the recipient was Joe Pearson and the medication was fifty
thousand volts. I still smile when I
think of that and actually think it may have done him some good.
Eventually people began to leave me alone in
the corner with my cup of tea. Now that
they had stopped asking me why I had been in jail I could relax and think about
who actually was in jail, or at least on his way there. Graham.
Luckily I was only held by the police for a brief interview and then
released. Ginny was distraught, Phillip
Howard was nowhere to be found, as you might expect from a member of the British
aristocracy. It had taken a day or two
but eventually I got the full story and it all came about because of the council
house tenants wishing to exercise their right to buy and purchase their council
house. At that time in the UK it was
pretty standard for anyone wanting to buy a house to get a mortgage. Normally the buyer would stump up ten percent
of the total value of the house as a deposit and the other ninety percent would
be covered by the mortgage. The only
drawback was that the maximum amount you could borrow, as a mortgage, would be
three times your salary.
Because greed was so rampant and the increase
in house prices became ludicrous, the base calculator increased, it went from
three times the highest earner plus the other earner, to five times the highest
earner, out of a couple, plus the others salary. Even so, sometimes five plus one would not be
enough to buy a house. These were
working class people doing normal working class jobs. So if I remember correctly the average council
house was approximately one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. That would mean the prospective purchaser
would need twelve thousand as a deposit, and to borrow as a mortgage one hundred
and eight thousand pounds. This would
mean that the main wage earner would have to earn at least thirty six thousand
a year. The average salary was around
the twenty thousand mark so most people were outside the existing parameters
before they even made their initial enquiry.
That was until Graham came along. He was not pleased seeing so many people
wanting to buy yet unable to, so he decided to shift the balance. Had this been an altruistic motive I may have
been impressed but unfortunately it was pure greed that motivated Graham. Graham would ask the prospective purchaser to
supply him with at least one sheet of headed notepaper from their place of
work. Graham would now type a letter on
the headed paper stating that the person in question earned a certain amount of
money every year, which of course meant they could now qualify for their mortgage. The letter along with completed paperwork was
now submitted to the local manager of the building society along with a fifty pound
note. She knew all about the scam but as
her bonus was based on the amount of business she attracted to her branch she
like Graham was motivated by greed.
Even the solicitors who would do the conveyancing
knew it was a scam, I think the only person who knew nothing about it was
me. As mortgage interest rates began to
increase, meaning the amount someone had to pay out each month increased;
people eventually began to default on their mortgages. Because the building society in Wallingford
had so many defaults they were investigated and arrests were made. Phillip Howard, got his father to bring in
his Queens Council mates and get him a slap on the back on the wrists, which is
quite funny because if you Google him you will see that the little shit presents himself as
a business consultant now. Graham was
not so lucky, he got six months in Brixton prison. He took it well as I wrote to him to try and
cheer him up. He seemed to be on good
form as he had been given a job in the prison library, although I shuddered when
he announced that he had made some new chums and had a few ideas for us when he
got out.
Ginny was grateful that I contacted her as all
her other mates had abandoned her and wouldn’t speak to her because of the
shame. Poor Ginny, she had enough to contend
with just being with Graham. I remember one
night Ginny was out with her girl fiends in a wine bar in Wallingford, Graham and
I had gone to bed. I slept up in the attic
room, Graham and the children were on the middle floor. One of the children began
to cry and rather than get out of bed Graham began to telephone around the pubs
and bars in Wallingford, looking for Ginny so that she could come home and see
to the children. I got out of bed and attended
to the children as Graham lay in his bed shouting at the shadows on the ceiling.
So here I was, my final day in the air force and
already a couple of careers had hit the wall and were over and done with. I was happy as I looked about and listened as
I wasn’t a part of it anymore and I knew my time was up. It had been a laugh, well; most of it, and I
had learned a lot, all I could hope for now is that I could put what I had learned
to good use. I arranged to meet Tom in a
local pub for lunch and we shared a few beers and had a laugh. I came back on to camp and decided not to go
back to air traffic control. Joe Pearson
would try to create trouble for me but I couldn’t have cared less. I went to station headquarters and asked for
my papers. The chief clerk had come out
from his office and was dealing with me himself. He sat typing my discharge papers as I glanced
at my personnel file. The only day while in the air force that you could
actually look at your file and your assessments.
It was so disheartening to see that for most of
my career I had been lied to by spineless air traffickers. I felt quite sad that I had allowed these
people to mess me about as much as they had, but I suppose I had in turn given
as good as I had taken. The chief clerk
placed my demob papers in a tacky little blue plastic folder and handed it to
me. I open it and looked at the paperwork. “This is all wrong,” I said, as I glanced
over the paperwork. The Chief Clerk and
I had both taken and both passed the O Level economics course over one weekend. It wasn’t mentioned on my papers as were none
of my education qualifications or even my award on the nineteen eighty five New
Year’s Honours list. “This is bollocks!”
I said, handing him back the paperwork. “I
thought it wasn’t right,” he said, passing me back the documents. I could see he had no intention of changing
anything.
My one thought was of my cow of a sister
Carol. When she graduated from Trinity
in Dublin she had achieved the highest marks ever recorded in the university
and at a special award ceremony had been given a certificate to mark the occasion. Carol, took the document, read it and then
dropped it into the fire stating, ‘I don’t need fancy pieces of paper.’ It must have been the only time I ever agreed
with my sister in my life, for I dropped my demob folder on the Chief Clerks
desk and told him to stick them up his arse.
I left station headquarters, I left Wattisham and I left the air
force. I was quite angry with them but
told myself that perhaps one day I would sit down and write a wee story about
them and show them how they really are. I
smiled to myself; can you imagine it, me writing stuff? I drove away and tried to look forward to
the evening; it was a special evening for me for Tony had arranged strippers and
beer, a fitting end to a glittering career.
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