I keep thinking back to this news item from ITV. I mean ITV is a trusted source isn’t it? It seems ridiculous to me that a new member of the government in our current times would insist on a particular style guide for his staff.
The problem with this news article is that it’s so ridiculous that it could be true. It might have been made up but we all know Rees-Mogg is a prick of the highest order and so this could be true. I’m just not sure. This news article could be a case of Poe’s Law in action.
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.
While Poe was talking about creationists being fucking stupid his views have been converted into a law stating that in some cases extreme sarcasm is indistinguishable from the real thing. This is what I think has happened here. Someone has cleverly taken the concept of Rees-Mogg being a fucking prick and gone extreme. Seriously, let’s look at the things he wants done:
All non-titled males are Esq. – fuck you, what a singular stupid fucking thing to say. Jesus Christ, this is fucking entitled bullshit in the highest.
No comma after “and” – of course you use the Oxford comma, it’s there to make sure you have clear intentions in your language. We’ve developed this wonderful thing called language to be able to communicate clearly and we can make our words mean the correct things. For an example – Rees-Mogg is an entitled prick.
Check your work – this man is really telling his staff of professionals to check their work? Really? Does he employ monkeys or something? You would think that people already know how this type of stuff works. Arrrrrgh.
Could someone please stop the planet, I want to get off.
On Thursday I went to see Men In Black: International. I wasn’t that fussed about the film, I was more concerned about getting out of the 36C heat outside. Inside my house it was hitting around 30C and that’s plainly ridiculous and fucking scary. These events are going to become more frequent due to anthropogenic global climate change and that saddens me intensely, I hope I’m dead before the water wars start.
There were zero films I was even slightly tempted with at my usual place, Cineworld Rochester, and so this time I went to the far-flung Bluewater shopping centre. The car was not happy about starting in the heat [36C] and so initially I turned it off straight away, it made sounds I have not heard before. I tried again and the thing seemed reasonably comfortable so I decided to risk driving to near Greenhithe. I managed the air conditioning in the car so it stayed at a cool 24C eventually. I don’t like being that warm in a car, it makes me sleepy, a steady 18C is more normal but it was a special day.
I’m afraid I can’t give you any news about the state of the tide as the Bluewater complex is in a quarry and nowhere near the sea. I mean, the river is a couple of miles away but I wasn’t going to make that detour just to keep some strangely traditional part of these reviews going. The tide report will return.
It’s about 1km to the river.
More tradition: the IMDB rating and tweet. As is custom I rated the film on the IMDB website and there’s a guide to those ratings in this communication. You can see all my tweets and things by looking at the menu at the top of this page.
So, I rated this film as an 8. That’s quite high really but the film gets two extra points just for the air conditioning available in Bluewater and the theatre. It was glorious to enter the building from the car park and feel the cool air and to feel more human again. I don’t think we were made to sweat constantly. I used the Showcase cinema app on my phone for the electronic ticket on there and it worked well.
The seats in the cinema are lovely and comfortable and I was happy with that but my seat happened to have an EXIT sign nearby and it was too bright. It took my attention too much. So, I snuck into the seat next to mine and was in the shadow of the part-wall and felt much happier. I would not have liked to sit in my original seat for the whole film.
I really enjoyed the film. It looked good and I even chuckled out loud in certain places. The plot was pretty thin, essentially the same as the previous films. But, it was cool in the cinema and the film was fun.
Just one thing though. All the London street scenes seemed to have an EAT restaurant in them. Like there was product placement. The Lexus was obvious but I’m not sure EVERY street in London has an EAT. It might do, I’ve not been that observant every time I go there. Wikipedia says there are 75 EAT locations in London.
I went to RAF Fairford a short while ago to attend the Royal International Air Tattoo. RIAT is a huge airshow which takes place each year at RAF Fairford. I’d never been to this particular airshow before and so I was quite excited. There were also a few aircraft types I had never seen static or flying before:
F35
Su-27
P8
F18 (a friend told me I had seen some at RAF Waddington years ago)
Patrouille de France
Freece Tricolori
Nearly all the other types of aircraft I had seen static or flying before. I have to say now that the very best displays were the F16s and F18. They were both incredibly impressive given how old their design is. The Flanker was amazing, utterly brilliant.
Here is a selection of some of the photographs I had once I’d returned home. Not all the credit goes to me, the kids took quite a few of the photos and did a good job.
Spanish Harrier
Freece Tricolori
NATO Elephant Walk
Breitling Jets
Patrouille de France
Flanker Landing
A Moody Red Arrows Shot
Min Radius Turn F-16
Flanker
Freece Tricolori
Double Concorde
The weather was a little cloudy at times but we coped. Photographs look better with a mixture of blue sky and fluffy Simpsons clouds.
The noise was amazing and I just loved the sound of the afterburning jets taking off and pulling many G to show off their capabilities. I also met some old friends while at the tattoo and it was lovely to arrange to meet them. I even managed to bump into George who is a colleague from the PAC at Amport, I knew he attended and I was hoping to see him.
I’m not too happy with the media page for the photos as I think the photo is too small on that, so the images link to the actual image file, I might get around to learning how to adjust that one day.
Just browsing my favourite aircraft tracking website and decided you should know that air-to-air refuelling gets practised off the Norfolk coast. See this Voyager aircraft enjoying the baking weather in this country.
Refuelling
The green box is the area they are allowed to practise. The red planes are military planes, not all of them, but those transmitting ADS-B. I would expect that some Typhoons are over the sea taking on fuel from the Voyager.
Aside from the fact that the news this country has a new Prime Minister who is a racist liar I was bothered by the phrasing on BBC News last night. I haven’t really watched TV news for a long time, I find it patronising and reliant on the personal story rather than the facts, I don’t enjoy watching it. I viewed a little on catch up last night just to see what they said about the tory party leadership result.
Marginal Error
Boris Johnson won by a MARGIN of two to one.
Now, what the actual fuck does that mean? I mean, I’m not happy Johnson won but that’s the shitty system we have. I’m really asking what does the phrase “by a margin of two to one” mean?
Does it mean that Boris got around 66% of the vote and Hunt 33% [or thereabouts]? In which case the margin is 1/3 of the electorate or you could even say the majority was 100% of Hunt’s vote. What you can’t say is the MARGIN was a ratio of 2:1 without DEFINING what the other side of the ratio is. Fucking hell, people need to understand that maths and words have meanings.
My instinct is that these numbers are the relative share of the vote, but the news chap doesn’t say that. He says MARGIN. The margin is the majority? I don’t know. How is margin defined in this case. A quick inspection of Wikipedia has the definition that MARGIN is the percentage of the difference relative to total turnout.
So, I think it would be best for the BBC and other news outlets to have used the phrase:
Mr Johnson won with a margin of around 33% of the turnout.
In around the year 1988 my friend and I travelled to the back garden of someone in the village of Mildenhall to camp for the weekend. The purpose was to spend the weekend at the Mildenhall airshow, which I had been to before but was important for a few reasons:
Aircraft
Military aircraft
Military might
Blackbird
More planes
When you are a plane nut then airshows are where you get your kicks. I can’t help what I like and planes have troubled me all my life. It’s possibly due to growing up underneath the flight path of Stansted Airport in Essex. It could be because of my dad who was involved in the industry when I was young or it could just be that an aluminium tube filled with people and fuel doesn’t really have any business being six miles up off the ground.
Somehow Alan and I had found the number of someone who lived near a walk-in entrance to RAF Mildenhall [actually a USAF base] and we had booked to camp in her garden. Then, each day of the show we walked in. My memory of the charges is not great but I seem to think we got in for something like £5 each whereas a car for the day was £40. I suspect those prices are wrong given what prices were like in the 80s but I can’t remember. I do know it was dirt cheap to walk in to the show rather than drive.
SR-71A with Habu Pilot @ Mildenhall
There’s only a few things I can remember from the airshow. I sort of remember the Blackbird flying, it was a privilidge to see that. I also remember both AB and I watching a helicopter display, possibly an Apache, when it did a form of a wing-over or loop. Both, AB and I were amazed and clapped. There weren’t many who joined in the clapping, only those in the know.
Red Arrows Cross Over @ Mildenhall
The Red Arrows were there, of course, I I’m not sure if this was before or after I had been to Cyprus, porbably before and so I was still excited by them. The above photograph was beautifully timed by me.
My father must have found the original negatives of these photographs as he has scanned them inot his computer. I suspect there are some more picture lurking in a box somewhere and I’ll have to keep scanning his computer to see what I can find.
Here are some more photographs from those days. They aren’t very good but them photographs weren’t back in the 80s. I wasn’t great with a camera and with only 24 or 36 shots on a reel of film you were very limited in what you could take.
Sea King @ Mildenhall
Harrier, A-10 and A7 [?] @ Mildenhall
F-5, F-16, C141 and AB @ Mildenhall
EF-111 [?] @ Mildenhall
SR-71A @ Mildenhall
Phantom @ Mildenhall
AB and I had a great time at the airshow. It was a really good experience and well worth the camping and entrance fees. I do feel it’s a bit of a shame that the number of airshows has decreased over the years, but these beasts were probably also a show of strength during the cold war. They were interesting times and maybe I should be glad we don’t currently need massive forces to prevent mutual destruction [it feels like it’s heading that was again though].
Addendum: I have had confirmation of aircraft types from a US source:
A7 is indeed an A7D and it will have been a Lynx you saw display rather than an Apache.
You know when you are out and see something a little different? Well, that happened to me last October time while I was at Crowborough. I spotted an old safe in a storage area and I thought it would make a pretty good picture, probably in black and white to give it that arty look:
1st Safe – Crowborough
Then you start seeing safes everywhere! So, I’ve decided that whenever I see a new one I’ll take a photograph of it. Here’s another I saw in the Maidstone area:
2nd Safe – Maidstone
This next one was sneakily hiding in a school staff room in Tonbridge! I probably looked a little odd getting this photo and I didn’t move stuff around so it’s not the best photograph.
3rd Safe – Tonbridge
My final safe for now was in my room at RAF Halton, obviously. I guess it’s just in case you bring some top secret materials back to study in your evening? Nope, that would be illegal. I’m not sure why it’s there but it’s still pretty cool.
4th Safe – Halton
I think there will be more, I’ll keep looking as I travel around. It’s fun having a stupid hobby like this one.
On Saturday I went to visit the Redsand Forts. There are a couple of things I’d like to note for you.
Firstly I use the opportunity to calibrate the altitude on my Garmin Instinct watch. I usually give it a go each month, just to make sure it’s working properly. While out near the forts I used the calibrate with GPS option and I got an altitude of -2m. Initially this confused me but then I realised that I was close to the sea but during low tide, therefore I was likely negative AMSL, so -2m seemed about right.
Garmin GPS
The above picture is my position as saved by the Garmin Instinct. I didn’t even know that was an option but I noticed it while I was calibrating the altitude. I saved the position and then was able to display it on my phone. There’s a Garmin app called Explore and I like the functionality.
While out on the sea I also used Google Maps to see where I was.
iPhone GPS
I took this screen shot a bit before the Garmin one and so you can see I am slightly further east than the previous picture. I don’t think either of these was taken at the Redsands Forts complex as I was too busy watching.
While walking along the wharf before I went to the cinema to see The Matrix I happened upon some cranes on boats. Now, I know technology and science stuff but cranes on boats still amaze me. They shouldn’t but they do.
Crane On A Boat
Above is a crane on a boat. That’s pretty impressive. What could be better than a crane on a boat? Well, surely a boat being held by a crane on a boat:
Boat Held By Crane On A Boat
Also, as a bonus there are two cranes on two boats. I think this could turn into a minor fascination along with my occasional series on safes! Having glanced through these esteemed communications I can see that my series on safes didn’t even mage these pages. I’ll try and correct that.
Yesterday I sailed out from Queenborough into the Thames Estuary to see the Redsand Forts. My ship fo rthe journey was the X-Pilot captained by Captain Chris, they weren’t worried with formalities. It was meant to be a four hour trip to see these abandoned aircraft defenses.
X-Pilot
After a safety brief the four passengers including me boarded the vessel and made ourselves at home. What really happened was we dumped our bags in the crew room and sat outside for the journey. The tide was waning, there was little wind, the skies looked kinda moody and the seas were slight. To make it a slightly more perfect trip it would have been nice to have glimses of sunlight for the photography but I was happy.
The boat departed Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey and headed out past Sheerness to the Redsand Forts. These were built in the second world war to aid the anti-aircraft defenses of London. There are a few sets of Maunsell Forts in the estuary but I was booked on a trip to see just the Redsand ones.
Approaching Aliens
These forts were designed by Maunsell and towed out to the different sand banks in the Thames and sunk. They were crewed by over two hundred members of the army. There are pages about them on Wikipedia and the general Web. I won’t go into too much detail about their history in this communication because you’ll find much more information elsewhere, this is a good page.
Redsand Forts
These beasts spring up out of the shallow waters and tower over the flowing sea to impress. They are such incredible structures. Four reinforced concrete legs followed by the I-pattern beams and metal walls. I do wonder how cold these were in winter! Most of the walkways are gone, can you imagine having to move from one to another?
Roof Garden
In the above photograph you can see the two story structure and the roof. One of the towers is further away from the centre and I wonder if that’s where they kept the ammunition. It would be fascintating to see movie footage of these in use.
Redsand Forts looking like Martians
Above is my favourite photograph, I love the way the water looks so still and the towers look like little toys. I think we were lucky with the seas. As I said earlier, a few rays of sunsine breaking through would have made this a perfect photography day.
Departing the Forts
On the way back to port we passed around the SS Richard Montgomery. We had made good time out of the Medway because of the waning tide and so we had the chance to add to our excursion which meant a chance to encompass the ticking-time-bomb that is the Liberty Ship Richard Montgomery.
SS Richard Montgomery
You have to love a sign that says:
Danger. Unexploded Ammunition. Do Not Approach or Board This Wreck. By Order.
If it goes up there will be a massive bang, a huge cloud and plenty of water heading to the shores on both sides of the estuary. There are plenty of warnings around this wreck including yellow bouys, red bouys, signs and an exclusion zone on the charts.
This trip was great fun, a wonderful experience and very good value. I really enjoyed it.
Yesterday I took an evening trip to see The Matrix at the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. I had spent a good portion of the day already aware of the tides as I visited the Redsand Forts and while it was high-ish tide when the trip started it was half tide on the way out when we returned to port. The tide at Rochester was about half again I think when I got to the cinema.
The showing was at 20:00 and I got there about twenty minutes before then. I went for a walk along the wharf. It’s that or buy sweets to eat and so I opted for the healthy option. I’m in a bit of a healthy phase and hoping, once again, to adjust my routines to be more healthy. I’ll probably write stuff here someday about that, I’ll see how it goes first. At the other end of the wharf there was a new development of houses along the river’s edge. They look nice and had lovely balconies and views but I couldn’t help thinking that in less than one hundred years they will either have been destroyed in the Water Wars or flooded by rising ocean levels. I am not optimistic about anthropogenic global climate change.
After seeing a movie at the cinema I rate it on IMDB and I was looking forward to rating this film until I watched it. There will be more about my battle with memory below the embedded tweet. If you read through the movie reviews on this site you will be able to spot the time I learnt how to embed tweets!
Hmmm, WordPress, my website editing software had a update about a month ago and I am learning the new features. I’m not sure if that embedding will work. I’ll wait and see once this page is published. [It worked fine, no need to edit anything]
The scoring of this film as a SEVEN is controversial, I know. Especially if you read my guidance communication on the rating system but I guess I’m trying to break the Matrix [ha fucking ha]. The thing is I was hoping I would love this film. The 27 year old me loved this movie, I bought it on DVD and I’m sure I watched it a few times, I even went to see the sequels and they were fucking terrible films, really terrible. I mean they were really really bad. I went with friends to see them at the Odeon in Maidstone.
Right, here we go.
I wanted this movie to be amazing, I wanted it to blow my mind and when I was 27 it did. Bullet-time was a filming style invented for this movie. The whole look and feel of this film was ground-breaking. It was an amazing action film along with the philosophical grandness of wondering what if we are in a dreamworld or the product of other people’s dreams or in a computer simulation – each of those is equivalent I think.
The things I remembered about this film were:
Trinity being amazing at the beginning
“I know Kung Fu”
The lobby scene
Dodging bullets
The things I had clearly forgotten were how fucking dull some of the philosophical bullshit scenes were. God, there were times in this movie when I just wanted it to finish. I think that’s the problem with nearly every genre now taking lessons from the Matrix and how to make films, the Grandmaster gets killed by those he trains.
Looking at the film now there were lots of things that don’t work in the plot and timing. I will admit though that 1999 was a pretty good time to be alive, just think:
No 9/11
No Iraq war
No Afghan war
No GW Bush
No 7/7
No Brexit
No Trump
To get around the “dying in the Matrix” problem the writers just said that if you die there your mind dies and your body can’t live without a mind. Which is bullshit. They could have just used another excuse, they could have said that you become metally unstable and we kill your body. Similarly getting injured in the Matrix means that you get the same injuries in real life, this is poor writing but I guess you need to have some form of risk involved once you are in the Matrix. I think that just entering a different world would be managed perfectly well by the mind, we do it every night. Unplugging the link into the Matrix shouldn’t kill you either.
The action scenes were pretty good but the Lobby scene seemed much shorter than I remember. I wasn’t that impressed. This is mostly to do with me having watched another twenty years worth of films in an age of computer graphics and near photorealistic graphics. It isn’t really a problem with the Matrix but it just looked slow and I was unimpressed. This is a shame and more a problem with me than the movie.
Fuuuck films with an oracle or wise old woman or man. What a lazy crock of shit those plot devices are. I hate it. Of course, that person needs to be black or they wouldn’t have the same credibility. What I sugest you do is look through all movies with wise old people and see what their current role in society is.
More fuuuck films which use a prophecy. I’ve been reading books recently that have a theme of a prophecy and it’s lazy fucking bullshit. Our species seems to live with the idea that we can predict the future and so some wanker somewhere will have written down what is going to happen. We love the concept of agency and we can’t cope as individuals if we understand that the shit is just random. Nope, we have to have prophecy. We have to have a way of explaining the world and how some people become the heroes or gods. Fuck that shit. It annoys me so much.
“Neo – you are the one”. Fuck you.
How about just Neo being a hacker and then considered someone who can cope with being out of the Matrix. Then he could just develop into an amazing leader. All this destiny bollocks makes me want to cry. It’s a throw back to the days when we didn’t understand how stuff works. It’s a way of giving the human race hope for a future that won’t happen. It’s calming to the global psyche. It’s fucking bullshit that’s what it is.
I hope that now I’ve alerted you to this prophecy shit you will spot it in future and start to downgrade those stories. I do know they are popular. I do know that most of the world relies on that shit but it’s time for reality. All this pophecy shit does is reinforce the idea that some people are born better than others. It keeps the poor poor and the rich/powerful wankers. Our entire societal structure is formed so that only some will be in charge and they will do all they can to stay there. They love this prophecy chosen-one bullshit. Just look at Boris Johnson and tell me he doesn’t believe he should run this country. You see what these stories do to people?
I do note that the Matrix had many scenes without music and I admire that. It was nice to have the stark contrast so that when the action happened the music worked pretty well. I was struck by the idea that people who dress in black and look “alternative” are the dangerous ones. As someone who lives in that world I don’t think it’s right for society to cast those people aside and see them as dangerous but things will change slowly. At least I hope they will, it seems that the world is getting more intolerant recently due to the leading politicians of our time.
I don’t know whether it was the soundtrack or the cinema or where I was sitting in the cinema but some of the scenes’ sound seemed balanced poorly. There were a couple of times I couldn’t hear the speech because of the music and I couldn’t hear the music at the beginning of the Lobby scene. This was a shame because those are important parts in my memory of this film. Along with sound issues fuck the person who seemed to be wrestling with a loud plastic bag during all the quiet bits of the film. Obviously they have no empathy or they would have waited before making that much noise.
Overall this film left me slightly sad that it didn’t meet my memories of it. I saw it as a tired slow film full of philosophical-bull. I understand that it was mind-blowing and ground breaking when it was released but not all groundbreaking films remain amazing, some slowly go away and get remembered for their effects rather than their plot.
On the way out I overheard someone mention they might watch the two sequels. Jesus, that’s beyond the call of duty. I will NOT be seeing them. They were worse than shit.
It’s Ozzy isn’t it! You don’t need much more than that. This freaky person who once bit the head of a live bat during a concert. This man who took copious quantities of drugs and who invented Heavy Metal. This man who still writes great music. This god of metal.
And then you see him on a reality TV show and it shocks you just how fucked he is. His body is knackered and you can actually see him thinking. The show highlighted just how much his wife had managed him and got him clean, eventually.
Whoever your heroes are they will let you down eventually. This downfall will be quicker if you see or meet them in real life. Never meet your heroes. I used to think Ozzy was a god, now he’s a broken man.
I’m pretty sure this was the first Ozzy album I bought. There are a couple of others but I think I got this one on music cassette. It’s a brilliant album. It’s very well produced and has excellent songs on it. I’ve loved the rolling bass lines keeping the rhythm section going and the creepy sound clips over the top. There’s a certain beat to these songs that is a slow but heavy boom that means you can feel the urge to move and bounce along.
Mr Tinkertrain – excellent. Mama, I’m Coming Home – tear jerker. No More Tears – brilliant opening, the riffing is ace. Hellraiser – damn good. Zombie Stomp – written with the audience in mind. A.V.H. – darn good.
I’ve enjoyed this album for many years and it still pleases me, which is no mean feat.
This photo shows me in the rear seat waving at the crew room as the Juno helicopter taxied past before landing. I’ll thank OM for this photo. The Flight was easily the best fifteen minutes of the year so far, I can’t see it being outstripped either.
DHFS – Wave
The DHFS uses two types of helicopter and both are pretty much Eurocopter versions painted similar to all others! I’ve found it hard to tell them apart but after examination the easiest difference is the engine intakes. The Juno has intakes flush with the bodywork whereas the Jupiter has intakes mostly vertical in shape and they stick out more, the engine exhaust is more pronounced. There might be a slight difference in the landing skids too.
Last Saturday I went to see Rammstein play their current set at the MK Stadium in Milton Keynes. It was bloody amazeballs.
Early Fire
I had spent the previous week at RAF Shawbury with a cadet camp which was already a brilliant week and I then topped it off with this brilliant show. I drove down from the West Midlands to Milton Keynes and met with Smith in a supermarket car park. This gig is an important one because he had brought his kids along, their first major gig. You could tell that there was a slight trepidation from the eldest [around 14] but the youngest displayed nothing but sheer excitement [around 12].
The support band were two women who played pianos on a stage just in front of our seats. It was nice but I didn’t really pay attention. I was suffering with the effects of being tired and so I read a book on the development of the pressure suit for high altitude flying published by Nasa. It wasn’t bad but I needed to rest!
Extinguishers?
Rammstein themselves were amazing. Absolutely amazing. The show they put on is remarkable and worth every penny of the 7500 for the cost of a ticket. There were the normal theatrics with lots of fire. And I mean lots of fire. There were black clouds bellowing over the stadium at certain points during the show and I wondered what it must look like to someone outside the stadium.
Angel Of Fire
There were many highlights. Every song had its own act. The keyboardist being burnt in a massive cauldron, the burning to death of a giant baby, the massive riding cock for the song “Pussy”, and flames shooting from guitars.
This might seem odd but the dance track halfway through made my night. That was the moment I thought “this is the best show ever”. One of the guitarists DJd while being lifted high above the stage and the other members of the band came on with suits that lit up along the limbs. They then performed a dance routine to an electronic version of thier own song. What balls, to make 30,000 metal fans listen and dance to electronic music. This band have it all.
This was the best show I have ever seen and is the third best gig I have been to. The Prodigy last year at M’era Luna may have been an excellent show, I don’t know I can’t remember any of it. This concert would have been top of the list had I been in the pit. You have to take whatever you can from a gig and I loved this but part of me hankered to be in the mild violence of the circle. I still had a great time. My top three gigs are: Combichrist Old School, The Prodigy and Rammstien – this one.
This Was Warm
This is the thrid time I have seen Rammstein and it was bloody brilliant.
“Did I mention? I’m seeing Rammstein in Milton Keynes this weekend.”
It’s the end of a great week and tiring week at RAF Shawbury. I spent a week there with the CCF RAF cadets and I’m pretty sure everyone had a great time. I’m struggling today with being super tired [fault of seeing Rammstein last night] and so have decided to write this instead of doing some pressing work badly.
Baby Helicopter, Moody Sky
RAF Shawbury is home to the helicopter flying school for the three services and there is a mixture of uniforms walking around.
On the Sunday we had some time on a high ropes course in Telford and then went to fly some birds of prey along with seeing owls close up. I got some excellent photographs and I endeavour to show them on here at some point.
Monday was the first day of section visits and we had the RAF Police tell us about their job and demonstrate restraining an adult volunteer [me]. One of the Midlands ARVs also came along to show us what kit they have and what they do. In the afternoon we had talks about training Air Traffic Controllers and we saw the simulators they use covering RAF Cottom. We had a tour around the dry helo training area run by the Ascent military contractors.
Apache
Tuesday brought a trip to nearly RAF Cosford and involvement in training the Midlands police how to cope with public demonstrations and protests. The cadets also learnt how to use riot shields correctly.
Wednesday for me was time spent at the DCCT block and then on the range in the afternoon. It was a little disconcerting that we had to stop often as there was a helicopter taxi way just behind bullet catcher. The last thing we needed was a stray round to kiss a Juno flying ten feet above the ground.
Thursday meant a visit to Air Traffic Control and a drive across the airfield. Then we nearly all had a helicopter flight in the afternoon piloted by an Army major. In the evening we had a camp meal out at The Red Lion in Shrewsbury.
In The Air Again
On Friday I had a very short visit to the RAF Museum at RAF Cosford and then another afternoon on the range. It was very hot and there was a lot of aircraft activity including a visit from an Apache and two Pumas. We managed to get a tour around the Pumas. In the evening an ex-SAS member gave us a talk on motivation. This was followed by the traditional ceremony of the plates.
Only a PUMA!
The final day meant tidying rooms, packing and then a journey home. Mind you, I had to stop at Milton Keynes to see Rammstein burn gallons of fuel during their concert. The review should follow shortly.
![Harrier, A-10 and A7 [?] @ Mildenhall](http://fooyah.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/img149-1024x636.jpg)
![EF-111 [?] @ Mildenhall](http://fooyah.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/img171-1024x669.jpg)
