Author Topic: My God! Can't old posts go away!  (Read 19608 times)

ajaffa1

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #30 on: June 04, 2018, 11:52:37 PM »
Hey Johndoh, sadly I do remember those times, can`t remember what I did yesterday or where I left my glasses but forty years ago is clear as a bell. One that stands out was a night spent with a young lady in the back of an MGB GT (very cramped).
Woke up the following morning to find that the local traders had put up the market around us.

Happy days  :laugh:

Bob

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #31 on: June 05, 2018, 12:51:51 AM »
Hey Johndoh, sadly I do remember those times, can`t remember what I did yesterday or where I left my glasses but forty years ago is clear as a bell. One that stands out was a night spent with a young lady in the back of an MGB GT (very cramped).
Woke up the following morning to find that the local traders had put up the market around us.

Happy days  :laugh:

Bob

Happy days indeed! The Mk3 Cortina was a 2000E tan vinyl over BRG full leather interior. I remember  more about the car than the young lady (in all honesty you really didn't want a lady)!

mikenash

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #32 on: June 05, 2018, 02:25:36 AM »

Isn't it wonderful the way topics morph . . .

ajaffa1

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #33 on: June 05, 2018, 09:14:26 AM »
Sadly nowadays, it takes us all night to do what we used to do all night. I`ll stick to diesel engines they don`t nag, get pregnant or F off with the next door neighbour.

I remember the cars well, had a mate with a 2.8 injected Capri, went like hell in a straight line, just no good when it came to a corner. Also knew a guy with a Jensen Interceptor. He picked it up cheap cos it had a blown motor. He managed to shoehorn a 7.7 litre Chevy engine into it. It did about 8MPG and I think he was quite relieved when he wrote it off.

Bob

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #34 on: June 05, 2018, 10:05:45 AM »
That Jensen would be sweet to have today. Those old Fords handled like a wardrobe on corners but they looked great if you washed and waxed them and they did need much more maintenance than a modern car. You needed a set of wind deflectors, "GL" rims with chrome bands and an ashtray on a sucker on the drivers window. If you were really trying to impress you had a Sharp radio cassette the one with APSS that would fast forward to the end of a song you didn't like. At least 4 magic trees were obligatory and a small selection of parts and tools in the boot. I always liked that BRG paint not many modern cars have it

ajaffa1

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #35 on: June 05, 2018, 11:06:53 AM »
Hi Johndoh, Had a lot of fun with cars when I was in the RAF. They had a motor club with all the tools you could imagine. Ran all sorts of vehicles including a jaguar XJS. We regularly got to play with very sophisticated military stuff, most of it still covered by the official sectrets act. Research and development for the military is probably the best job in the world, there is a slight chance of getting killed, but any fool can do that crossing the road.

One of my best memories was dropping a brand new Scorpion armoured vehicle out of the back of a Hercules aircraft at 1,200 feet. Parachutes failed to deploy, we got to watch several million pounds worth of hardware make a hell of hole in Salisbury plain. The ground recovery crew didn`t bother digging it up, they just filled in the hole.

I guess it`s no wonder taxes are so high when you realise that some idiot put a moron like me in charge of expensive stuff like that.

Bob

AdeV

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #36 on: June 05, 2018, 05:50:22 PM »
... prevent anyone from posting anything ... pornographic ...

Hmm, well, prevent sounds a bit extreme. Maybe delete after the fact.... y'know. After a backup is taken for "research" purposes, obviously  :laugh:
Cheers!
Ade.
--------------
1x Lister CS Start-o-Matic (complete, runs)
0x Lister JP4 :( - Sold to go in a canal boat.

ajaffa1

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #37 on: June 05, 2018, 11:01:22 PM »
That sort of research can cause blindness, only risk one eye.

Bob

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #38 on: June 05, 2018, 11:26:46 PM »
Hi Johndoh, Had a lot of fun with cars when I was in the RAF. They had a motor club with all the tools you could imagine. Ran all sorts of vehicles including a jaguar XJS. We regularly got to play with very sophisticated military stuff, most of it still covered by the official sectrets act. Research and development for the military is probably the best job in the world, there is a slight chance of getting killed, but any fool can do that crossing the road.

One of my best memories was dropping a brand new Scorpion armoured vehicle out of the back of a Hercules aircraft at 1,200 feet. Parachutes failed to deploy, we got to watch several million pounds worth of hardware make a hell of hole in Salisbury plain. The ground recovery crew didn`t bother digging it up, they just filled in the hole.

I guess it`s no wonder taxes are so high when you realise that some idiot put a moron like me in charge of expensive stuff like that.

Bob

Thats very cool Bob. I applied to join the RAF at 16 they turned me down because I have poor eyesight they said, but I think me saying I wanted to bomb people was the real reason!

ajaffa1

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #39 on: June 06, 2018, 12:39:07 AM »
Back in the day there were only two options If you wanted to bomb people. Joint the military or join the IRA. Whichever you joined you got to spend time trying to kill the other. What a f*cked up world.

Strangely enough, the military like to recruit well balanced individuals and then train them to kill, rather than recruiting people who want to kill and showing them how. Same result either way, highly skilled killers with PTSD.

I did read one report from a recruitment sergeant which said: "I do not recommend recruiting this individual as it would be a shame to deprive his village of its idiot". :laugh:

Bob

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #40 on: June 06, 2018, 08:12:53 AM »
Bob, remember those really cool ads for the RAF in the mid 70's especially the ones showing the Harrier? That's what made me want to join, I wanted to fix them rather than fly them I don't have much of a head for heights and I hate flying. There's a history of service in the family all army, I didn't fancy all that walking and marching! Paul

ajaffa1

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #41 on: June 06, 2018, 11:13:34 AM »
Hey Johndoh/Paul, Yes I remember them, the Harrier jump jet was probably the finest flying machine ever made. I built the shipping/lifting equipment to get them to the Falklands during that unfortunate conflict. Seven Harriers where winched into the hold of the Atlantic Conveyor, on deck were several Chinook helicopters to be used to lift the Harriers onto the deck, where they could be deployed in offensive/defensive roles. Sadly the Argentinian Air Force targeted the Atlantic Conveyor with French built Excocet missiles and it sank with enormous loss of life and the loss of the Harriers. I should have been on that ship but thankfully was given orders to design, build and deploy a system for delivering and picking up the mail for the troops on the ground.

War is a sick and F*cked up activity and I am very glad that you have never had to participate in it. I watched the body bags containing my friends and co-workers  being unloaded at RAF Brize Norton. I saw the injured returning and being ambulanced to the military hospital at RAF Wroughton.

I have the very greatest of respect for those who have served their countries in times of conflict, regardless of which side they were fighting on,  I thank you for the service of your relatives and I am very glad that you don`t have to carry the emotional and physical scars that war leaves on people. War is what happens when politicians fail.

If you want a hero, check out Simon Weston who saved so many of his crew mates at enormous cost to himself. Ten years of plastic surgery to replace the flesh that burned off him when the Sheffield got struck by Exocet missiles. He is now a happily married man with children, God bless him and his family and all those who have had to do the dirty work of corrupt, inept and callous politicians.

Bob

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #42 on: June 06, 2018, 12:04:16 PM »
I know of Simon Weston and I agree he's a hero and a nice guy as well, very articulate he doesn't be on TV as much any more. I had a great uncle enlisted in 1915 he died in the disaster that was in the Dardanelles at Suvla Bay. I had an uncle who was in WW2 he didn't talk about it much but he wouldn't buy use or touch anything Japanese and he detested the Japanese people. I filled in some of the blanks as I got older. I had another great uncle who was at the Somme, catering corp. He said he did as much harm to the British as the Kaiser and he claimed he only fired one shot after training, shot a crow! It's hard to know what was true he was a teller of tales again seldom mentioned the war in detail. Uncle Stuart was at Normandy but he wasn't able to cope with whatever he seen, spent the rest of his life drunk and afraid.

This thread is a little sad now time to get back into the Cortina with its straight line speed and cheap petrol!

ajaffa1

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #43 on: June 06, 2018, 01:45:27 PM »
Hey Paul. Yes a lot of veterans won`t talk about what they have seen and had to do to survive. A lot of them turn to drink and drugs to dull the internal pain. My Father was in the artillery and was evacuated from Dunkirk. He was then sent out to fight Rommel in North Africa. He fought his way up through Italy and eventually ended up in Berlin.

I doubt that there is a family in Britain or Germany that has not lost good men and women in both of the world wars.

He wouldn`t talk about his experiences and came back to the UK where he studied medicine and devoted the rest of his life to sustaining like rather than trying to take it.

Hat off to him and all of his generation, for fighting for the freedoms we now take for granted.

I believe that it should be part of the school curriculum to go and visit the war cemeteries in France and Germany. I have visited some, I have also been to some of the concentration camps in Poland and Austria. When you stand in the middle of an immaculately maintained graveyard and all you can see is headstones for as far as you can see in every direction, it focuses the mind on peaceful activities.

Strangely enough, my experience of the concentration camps is even weirder. The birds don`t or won`t sing. It is a truly sobering experience being in a place where such atrocities have occurred and realising that even the wildlife respect it.

Bob.

mikenash

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Re: My God! Can't old posts go away!
« Reply #44 on: June 07, 2018, 12:40:34 AM »
Down here at the peaceful bottom of the world we haven't sent men off to conflicts - apart from specialists to the Middle east and a few other such things - in significant numbers since Korea

I have a photo on my will circa maybe 1941 where my dad in his army uniform is about to sail for Africa, his brother in his uniform is in training and would sail to the Pacific Theatre next year, and his other brother, in civvies, is about to be shipped off to a conscientious objectors camp for the rest of the war.  His wife, pregnant with their third child, and with two small children, was treated as a pariah by the short-sighted, narrow-minded folks of those days, was vilified by the women of her neighbourhood, and she and tjheir children would have starved or frozen to death in an Otago winter if not for the kindness of family and friends

Those were not enlightened times

I often reflect, gratefully, on the fact that, at age 61, I am part of a cohort that represents the first generation - in our country - ever to grow up, grow old and die without being sent overseas to fight in some pointless war

I guess that's progress