Social Networking issues (of a minor kind) and Pink Floyd

Once upon a time I could hide certain bits of information that I really didn’t want promoted.

I was content, like, I suspect, many other folk, to just nod in the direction of the calendar when I entered the kitchen, and leave it at that.

But not any longer.

Facebook (which, as we know, is a tool of the devil) and various other websites proudly boast the previously hidden annual event to all who care. And a surprisingly large number of people seem to care.

Yes, it is that annual event, the one which is less of a big deal than April Fool or Christmas or even Boxing Day.

It is my birthday.

I’m having a break from writing for an hour or so.

I’m sitting at the dining room table listening to 23m 11s of pure gold from Pink Floyd: Echoes, from the album Meddle.

No computer, I don’t want to restart. How many times have you asked me that today, since you needlessly upgraded a piece of Windows software I don’t and will never use? I’ll tell you, shall I? Twenty-six million times, that’s how many. Now bugger off and just leave me alone or I’ll lose my flow (for what *that’s* worth).

Where was I?

Oh yes, Echoes.

The reason I’m indulging in Meddle is because this album was one of my birthday presents from the lovely Soph.

She also gave me a birthday card with such a touching poem and inscription that I almost bawled my eyes out this morning.

Fortunately I had a quick rant about something meaningless on GMTV and swerved around the potential puddle of salt-water.

Perhaps I should tell you about the rhyming text that Soph sent me lunch-time? It made me laugh so much I almost fell off the chair.

Anyway, I digress.

This is (counts for a while and then stares vacantly at a small disc of sunlight on the wall) my fourth, no, fifth copy of Meddle.

I’ve had two vinyl copies and this is my third CD edition.

Why?

Good question. Let’s begin from the unarguable place that no serious music fan can *not* have a copy of Meddle in their collection, OK?

I bought my first vinyl copy of Meddle when I was in school, one of the schools that I didn’t get expelled from.

Geoff Richards and I used to spend hours in his bedroom in his house on the Old Hereford Road in Abergavenny, listening to ELP, Cream, The Nice, Yes and, of course, Pink Floyd.

We’d throw up the sash windows as wide as they’d go, crank the volume on the home-built stereo up to eleven (in an attempt to gain some kind of attention from the passers-by), and shout the lyrics in the most tuneful shouty way we knew.

About 17m 21s in to Echoes – does anyone else get emotionally moved at the segment just before Nick Mason’s brilliant rapid-beat/subdued drumming? Just me then? Oh well.

The school-boy version of Meddle was packed up when I joined the forces and got sent to RAF Swinderby, then RAF Cosford. Who knows what happened to it, because I don’t.

I replaced it with Meddles v2.0 when I hit my first NATO posting. Which was, in retrospect, an entirely foolish thing.

Why?

For three years I lived out of my grey hold-all as I served on every single NATO and UN detachment known to the bastards RAF personnel who sorted out my postings.

No, computer, I still don’t want to bloody restart! Now go and stick your head up a dead bear’s bum, there’s a good little Windows Notification Message.

The reason I almost used a bad word there, describing those former unseen RAF colleagues, is because the RAF boasts that it give its staff a choice of posting.

For example: when I had completed my technical training at Cosford, I got the appropriate form and filled it in:

1st posting choice: RAF Little Risington (Gloucestershire)
2nd posting choice: RAF Kemble (Gloucestershire)
3rd posting choice: RAF Locking (Somerset)

Know where they sent me?

To a bunker beneath the tube-lines of central London. That was nice of them, eh? Especially nice as my billet was at RAF Hendon. The RAF had turned me in to a London commuter. Wasn’t that fantastic! Erm, no.

I realised I’d have to get out pretty quickly so I did the unthinkable, I took on many extra technical courses. I was trained in everything – and I mean *everything*; certain languages, odd pieces of equipment, distinct types of electronics, firearms, pursuit driving, Morse code, you name it, I did it.

And I was rewarded with another choice of postings.

This time I thought I’d be canny:

1st posting choice: Wales
2nd posting choice: Wales
3rd posting choice: Wales

Five weeks later I was on a flight out from RAF Brize Norton to RAF Wildenrath in Germany.

The onwards transport picked up me, my baggage and my only operating arm (it’s a long story, but I’d had six stitches put in to my left forearm five hours before my check-in at Brize) and delivered me to No 14 Sqn, RAF Brúggen, part of NATO’s 2nd Allied Tactical Air Force Command.

I was at Brúggen for 39 hours before my first detachment to RAF Decimomannu in Sardinia , wasn’t that lovely of them?

Where I’m going with this ramble is that somewhere in the Germany-Sardinia-Germany schedule, Meddle v2.0 went AWOL.

Meddle v3.0 got implemented some years later when I hit London as a civilian. I paid an absolute fortune for it, CD’s being a brand new technology at that time. Meddle v3.0 was, sadly, the victim of an unintentional one-way loan to a student at UEA

Meddle v4.0 was procured six months after I moved to Bristol, to work in Social Work. I had an absolute wreck of a car – working in St Pauls in Bristol, wouldn’t you? – at the time, I felt it was safe to leave a handful of CDs out of sight in the boot.

Can you imagine how I felt when my car was torched in a minor street disturbance? Meddle 4.0 (along with other classics) had been melted.

And that brings us, via Geoff Richards, Abergavenny, various excitements by way of the hilarious posting department of the RAF and a few hundred thousand miles of travels, to Meddle v5.0.

And to my birthday, today.

This is my formal thank you, to the friends and relatives who have gone out of their way to wish me well, and show just how generous people can be.

I’m touched.

But you knew that anyway.

Thanks.