It was 1975, Queen were at No1 with the vinyl single Bohemia Rhapsody, President Ford was trying to regain public respect after “tricky dickey’s” Vietnam nightmare and his demise in the Watergate cover-ups. The Cold War was being hyphenated by SALT agreements and Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister to the disbelief of the Labour Party.
Smellys of the year were Old spice, Charlie and Brute, Curley perms were the in hair fashion for men and just imagine how sleazy they looked in the, in fashion, garish, lounge suits.
Der-dum, der-dum, der-dum-dum-dum-dum, make a guess at the movie of the year? Television had a manic hotelier demonstrating how not to run a hotel, “Fawlty towers”. And in even lighter entertainment, a man with a cigar was making children's dreams come true. Yes! “Jim L’ fix it”.
“Bob Marley and the Wailers” raised the profile of the devoted Rastafarian and paved the way for a reggae explosion in Britain. The Beatles officially dissolved their partnership in 1975.
Children’s toy of the year was, “The basic Lego Set”.
I joined HMS Collingwood for professional training; this was going to be my “bread and butter” for the rest of my naval career, no different to going to college really but with the added interest of being paid and learning how to kill a man in unarmed combat.
Duties were more often and even more tedious, picking up litter in given area’s, standing on street corners and noting which classes were misbehaving while marching and the best one was the fire duty.
When you were fire duty you got to sleep rough in a designated building, go to the front of the dinner queue and if required run what in effect could have been anything up to a mile with a tin hat pushing a heavy trailer full of axes buckets and spades and hose reels.
There were some other duties, which all included cleaning or carrying out ceremonials, like raising and lowering the flags and opening and shutting gates but none were sought after. The further through the training, the less duties you got unless you had been found guilty of certain misdemeanours and in these cases you got shit loads of duties, one of which was getting caught trying to get your leg over on the camp, I hasten to add there was a WREN division at Collingwood, this was one misdemeanour that was popular but the Camp Captains daughters were definitely off limits.
Smellys of the year were Old spice, Charlie and Brute, Curley perms were the in hair fashion for men and just imagine how sleazy they looked in the, in fashion, garish, lounge suits.
Der-dum, der-dum, der-dum-dum-dum-dum, make a guess at the movie of the year? Television had a manic hotelier demonstrating how not to run a hotel, “Fawlty towers”. And in even lighter entertainment, a man with a cigar was making children's dreams come true. Yes! “Jim L’ fix it”.
“Bob Marley and the Wailers” raised the profile of the devoted Rastafarian and paved the way for a reggae explosion in Britain. The Beatles officially dissolved their partnership in 1975.
Children’s toy of the year was, “The basic Lego Set”.
I joined HMS Collingwood for professional training; this was going to be my “bread and butter” for the rest of my naval career, no different to going to college really but with the added interest of being paid and learning how to kill a man in unarmed combat.
Duties were more often and even more tedious, picking up litter in given area’s, standing on street corners and noting which classes were misbehaving while marching and the best one was the fire duty.
When you were fire duty you got to sleep rough in a designated building, go to the front of the dinner queue and if required run what in effect could have been anything up to a mile with a tin hat pushing a heavy trailer full of axes buckets and spades and hose reels.
There were some other duties, which all included cleaning or carrying out ceremonials, like raising and lowering the flags and opening and shutting gates but none were sought after. The further through the training, the less duties you got unless you had been found guilty of certain misdemeanours and in these cases you got shit loads of duties, one of which was getting caught trying to get your leg over on the camp, I hasten to add there was a WREN division at Collingwood, this was one misdemeanour that was popular but the Camp Captains daughters were definitely off limits.
Training began with the absolute basics, ohms law and all the other physics associated with the movement of atoms and collection of charges. I never did physics at school so it was all new and I found it all interesting.
AC followed DC theory, then motors, generators and switchgear, class work was interesting and the instructors even more so. Some instructors were young and keen others old knowlegable and humerous the mix was good.
We marched between school and every other instruction and in the usual manner voices would come from hidden places and windows "take charge of that class, class leader, get in step, bring that class to halt report to me."
Nothing different to HMS Raleigh but now we had to worry about misdemeanours!
The Bumpton Fire Department was alive and kicking.
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