A very quiet day, which was also a change. I was lumbered, in a manner of speaking, by the Senior Observer of 814 Sea King Squadron, who rang me up towards the end of the morning and asked if I had any particular objection to doing Air Officer of the Day today. I hadn’t, and in retrospect it might not be such a bad idea to get one such duty out of the way now, as that might mean that I am less likely to get them while we are in Portsmouth, where it would matter much more than here.
I returned the Spitfire to Brian at lunchtime, and he gave me a lift back to the ship in it, and I spent the rest of the afternoon sorting out things in the Air Office. Then I was involved in giving a trial brief on air traffic procedures to a select company of fellow aviation specialists.
Actually, my bit of the brief was only one of six parts, all of us having a word or two to say on our own particular topics. What we are trying to do is to standardize what we say, so that aircrew who join the ship will get exactly the same information from any of us. That way, we should all, as the Padre would doubtless put it, be singing from the same hymn sheet. I will probably be the leading briefing officer but if I’m unable to deliver a brief for some reason, then anyone else in the Air Department can simply collect my briefing notes, and go along and say exactly the same things as I would have done.
I got myself dolled up in my mess undress for the evening, had dinner, and then did one set of the rounds to be carried out by the AOOD. As it was such a beautiful evening, I then accompanied Lieutenant Commander Flying (2), Alan Fowler, up to the Flight Deck to put the Queen to bed (i.e, with appropriate ceremony we hauled down the White Ensign for the night).
It was a beautiful sunset, with the sun sinking behind clouds turned golden and a sea like glass. Even the cranes and gantries here in the Naval base seemed to be touched with magic. Beautiful.