ODMA Day, which was nothing like as fraught as any of us had expected. The Air Office, the centre of my domain on board the ship, is not exactly over-endowed with equipment, containing as it does just a couple of chairs, desks, a filing cabinet or two, a phone, a typewriter, a photocopier and the teleprinter tail which spits out pointless messages in a seemingly never-ending stream.
That is in fact one of the niggles, because almost every message to do with any aspect of the Air Department, including all the stuff for the squadrons, both helicopter and fixed wing, the Air Engineering Department, Air Operations and just about everything else is sent to us as either an action or information addressee. It’s almost as if every time any Royal Navy pilot farts, his Commanding Officer feels that we need to know about it. And I’m not entirely sure that we do.
But at least the ODMA wasn’t particularly onerous from our point of view. I mean, to count the equipment that’s been placed in my charge would take even a fairly dim-witted Supply and Secretariat Officer no more than about eight seconds, and to the best of my knowledge everything in the office works, including my Writer, Naval Airman Wood, even if somewhat erratically and occasionally unreliably.