The fact that today was Sunday had the usual nil effect on the workload we coped with out here, and I was very busy, both in the Operations Room doing CCAs for the Harriers during a Flyex, and in the Air Office, where a positive mountain of typing has grown of late. Additionally, Wings (Commander (Air)) has acquired a nasty habit of giving me one-line jobs that would take a team of strong men months to do, if they proved possible at all – sort of: ‘I’d like the sun to rise in the west tomorrow, Peter. See to it.’ This has substantially increased my workload, as can be imagined.
We have been getting a bit of feedback from the FOST staff on the initial checks they have been doing on our procedures. One comment was that on the Talkdown frequency (the one which Paul Harvey and I man), there were far too many ‘air traffic niceties’. As Dick Brunwin – he’s both an ATCO and the senior fighter controller on board – said when he heard it, and bearing in mind that both Paul and I are fully qualified ATCOs, that made about as much sense as saying that too many London buses are red.
The Commander went on the box tonight, to give the ship’s company a bit of a brief about where we are likely to end up. I missed it, as I was in the Operations Room controlling at the time, but by questioning those who did manage to catch his pearls of wisdom, it looks as if we will proceed exactly according to plan, and go straight down to the Falklands. I, for one, wouldn’t mind all that much, as I would quite like to see what sort of a place our troops have been fighting – and in some cases dying – over, and it now looks as if we will be back in the United Kingdom by about the middle of November.
More news when we get it.
A more entertaining programme by far was the late film on BBC2 – ‘Fistful of dynamite’ with Rod Steiger and James Coburn. It started at ten and finished at half-past midnight, and I saw most of it, though the TV room was occupied by others for the first thirty minutes, watching the ITV Falklands Tribute, which, apart from the last section, looked worth watching.