I have to admit that I found myself in a very
strange place indeed. First of all as
the squadron Warrant Officer I was responsible for making sure that the cadets reached
a certain standard of drill. Me!! I think I was the only person in the military
who would say. “By the left, quick
march. Please.” Luckily the senior cadet loved marching about,
so I didn’t have to involve myself with the marching too much. The other point that concerned me was the
involvement of the Masons, or Freemasons, or whatever you want to call
them. I have no real position regarding
membership of Masonic Lodges. I know
that a lot of members of the Masonic Lodges do a lot of charitable work, and
nobody in their right mind would complain about that.
They do an awful lot of good work within their
communities and I know that certain people, like David Icke, takes the
discussion about Freemasonry off into weird and wonderful places suggesting all
sorts of wrongdoing and world domination.
On the one hand these people were giving up their time to help children,
but at the same time they controlled the rank structure, allowing only their
fellow members to participate, and that didn’t feel right to me. I couldn’t complain as I was a member of my
own double top secret groups and if David Icke continues to speak badly about
the Illuminati I’ll have to have words with him. I was invited to join the Freemasons but declined
their offer.
Like many people I know nothing about the
Masonic Lodges, well; I know quite a lot actually as I did an awful lot of
research on them, just read The Hiram Key by Christopher Knight and Robert
Lomas if you want the lowdown on the Masonic Lodges. Even just yesterday they were front page news
in The Independent newspaper, where it is claimed that crime gangs have used
the Freemasonry network to corrupt the criminal judicial system. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/revealed-how-gangs-used-the-freemasons-to-corrupt-police-9054670.html I’m sure
the debate will rumble on for years to come. As they say back home, I was
dithering about whether or not these guys were good or bad when something
happened that made up my mind for me.
The squadron was to have a dining in night. This is where everyone dressed up in their
finest uniforms and sat down for a formal meal.
The Wing Commander, the head of the Merseyside Wing, would be the guest
of honour and he would be accompanied by a couple of Squadron Leaders. The squadron building was scrubbed from top
to bottom as this was considered to be a great honour to have the Wing Commander
visit us. I think we all had to pay
something like twelve pounds toward the cost of the evening, but some of the cadets
could not afford this. However they were
still allowed to participate in the event, they would be serving the food. As I sat there, watching and listening, I
felt so awful for the poor cadets who were serving the food.
If these men, who claimed to be Christian men, dedicated
to helping their fellow man, they should have been serving food to the cadets
who couldn’t afford the meal, and they should have paid for it for them too. I’m sorry to have to say this but I was
disgusted with them. I couldn’t really
say anything to them for I would have been let go and my children would have
lost such a wonderful outlet, although I have to admit that they didn’t always think
it was so great. We were planning an expedition
to North Wales, which would involve hill walking and canoeing. A local school allowed us the use of their
swimming pool where we were able to bring all the cadets up to a certain standard
in watercraft before letting them loose in the wild.
I was standing in the swimming pool and one by
one working my way through the cadets, making sure that they could execute and perform
what is commonly known as an Eskimo roll.
This is where the individual in the canoe has to roll over, so that they
are effectively upside down, and then correct the situation and bring
themselves back upright. My final test
was on my own nine year old son James. I
knew he was looking forward to the expedition and I wanted him to be able to
participate in all the activities, but there was a look of terror in his
face. I held the nose of the canoe and
could see that my son was really scared.
It’s that terrible moment in any parent’s life when you know you simply
have to push your child into the situation.
I asked James if he was ready and he shook his
head asking that we forget about the Eskimo roll. I twisted the nose of the canoe and turned
him upside down. I knew he had been well
briefed in what to do, so I waited for only a matter of seconds watching my son
drown. Thankfully James managed to right
himself but the young fellow wouldn’t speak to me after that and the incident has
never been forgotten about. Despite the
fact that my son now hated me I knew he would be able to participate in the canoeing
in Wales and I was happy that should he get into difficulty he should be able
to sort himself out.
We were heading off to a place called Rhydtalog
in North Welsh Wales. It was supposed to
be an old army hospital, which was now being used as a youth hostel. There seemed to be some sort of Masonic
connection, which gave us access to the site which I wasn’t complaining about,
I liked the place. It was run down and
ramshackle. There were three wooden
buildings. The largest had two enormous
rooms either side of a huge kitchen. The
next biggest building was all sleeping accommodation, while the smallest
building was not used. It was said that
the smallest building had been the mortuary so it was haunted and out of
bounds.
As you can imagine telling young people that they
can’t enter a building because it is haunted will produce many, many, dares and
attempts to spend the night there. I
arrived with two or three cadets and my own two boys. We were the advance party and had to get the
fires started to get some heat in the buildings. I let the children run off to investigate
every nook and cranny as I set about lighting the fires. The room I was in was littered with old arm
chairs and settees. It was a wooden
building so had a faint a smell of damp.
There were two self-standing fires in the centre of the room, sort of
like modern log burners. I was quite
content with the peace and quiet when the evening air was filled with shouting
and screaming.
I went to the front door to find my children
and the cadet’s race past me and hide. I
could then see that the cause of their concern was a Welsh farmer waving a shotgun. He was furious and began shouting at me explaining
that he was not impressed that these little vandals, from the city, were
wandering through his fields leaving gates open. He wasn’t concerned with what they got up to
in the city but in the countryside there were basic rules and regulations to
follow. I couldn’t agree with him more
but found it interesting that he had assumed that the children were from
impoverished homes and that this was a sort of social services holiday for
them.
I apologised to the farmer who immediately
assumed that we were all from Northern Ireland.
I didn’t bother explaining where we were actually from to him. He left us, happy with my guarantee that
there would be no more incursions on to his land. I had the children and cadets scour the local
area for firewood, which kept them busy and tired them out, so that when I
suggested it was bed time they were ready for it. With them all safely tucked up I made my way
to the kitchen and gave everything the once over making sure I had prepared everything
I was supposed to. I was sure that I had,
so I sat myself down at the kitchen table and attempted, once again, to write
my daily quota of seven hundred and fifty words.
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