Once upon a time I could hide certain bits of information that I really didn’t want promoted.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But not any longer.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Yes, it is that<\/em> annual event, the one which is less of a big deal than April Fool or Christmas or even Boxing Day.<\/p>\n It is my birthday.<\/p>\n I’m having a break from writing for an hour or so.<\/p>\n I’m sitting at the dining room table listening to 23m 11s of pure gold from Pink Floyd: Echoes, from the album Meddle.<\/p>\n No computer, I don’t want to restart<\/strong>. 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).<\/em><\/p>\n Where was I?<\/p>\n Oh yes, Echoes.<\/p>\n The reason I’m indulging in Meddle is because this album was one of my birthday presents from the lovely Soph.<\/p>\n She also gave me a birthday card with such a touching poem and inscription that I almost bawled my eyes out this morning.<\/p>\n Fortunately I had a quick rant about something meaningless on GMTV and swerved around the potential puddle of salt-water.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Anyway, I digress.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n I’ve had two vinyl copies and this is my third CD edition.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n I bought my first vinyl copy of Meddle when I was in school, one of the schools that I didn’t get expelled from.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n I replaced it with Meddles v2.0 when I hit my first NATO posting. Which was, in retrospect, an entirely foolish thing.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n 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<\/span> RAF personnel who sorted out my postings.<\/p>\n 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.<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n For example: when I had completed my technical training at Cosford, I got the appropriate form and filled it in:<\/p>\n 1st posting choice: RAF Little Risington (Gloucestershire) Know where they sent me?<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n And I was rewarded with another choice of postings.<\/p>\n This time I thought I’d be canny:<\/p>\n 1st posting choice: Wales Five weeks later I was on a flight out from RAF Brize Norton to RAF Wildenrath in Germany.<\/p>\n 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 Br\u00c3\u00baggen, part of NATO’s 2nd Allied Tactical Air Force Command.<\/p>\n I was at Br\u00c3\u00baggen for 39 hours before my first detachment to RAF Decimomannu in Sardinia , wasn’t that lovely of them?<\/p>\n Where I’m going with this ramble is that somewhere in the Germany-Sardinia-Germany schedule, Meddle v2.0 went AWOL.<\/p>\n 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<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n And that brings us, via Geoff Richards, Abergavenny, various excitements by way of the hilarious <\/em>posting department of the RAF and a few hundred thousand miles of travels, to Meddle v5.0.<\/p>\n And to my birthday, today.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n I’m touched.<\/p>\n But you knew that anyway.<\/p>\n Thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2nd posting choice: RAF Kemble (Gloucestershire)
\n3rd posting choice: RAF Locking (Somerset)<\/p>\n
\n2nd posting choice: Wales
\n3rd posting choice: Wales<\/p>\n