Page 45 - Demo

41focussed during the day. We used to fish for a while, not catchingmuch, and then went to a nearby pub for a sandwich and a beer. The pub had no mains electricity just a generator out the back. We became very friendly with the landlord and his wife. At one point we came in very wet as we had been caught in a heavy rain shower. The landlady immediately lent us some of her husband%u2019s clothes and dried ours on a rack by the fire. We had great difficulty understanding the locals as they spoke with a very strong fenland accent. Indeed, one of the regulars who we could understand used to translate for us from time to time. Towards the end of the course, we arranged a darts match between our course and the locals. Unfortunately, it was a very foggy night so although we had enough for a team, we did not have so many supporters. The landlady put on a spread which was usually paid for by a raffle. When we asked about this, she said it was on the house that night and there was no raffle. The result was the best anyone could hope for as both teams were convinced that they had won. It depended how you scored it. We had started playing singles but as we were running out of time then played doubles. If you counted the matches won then one side had won. If you counted the double matches as 2 then the other side had. The course ended in January 1968 and I got my first choice of postings onto the Shackleton.But, and there is always a but, there was a 6 months wait for the maritime Operational Training Unit (MOTU) course to start. So, after some leave we went down to St Mawgan to find out where we would hold. At the time there was a major foot and mouth epidemic going on and travel to Northern Ireland was somewhat restricted. Indeed, you were not allowed to take your car there unless you were on the permanent staff. Mike Blee and I were asked where we would like to hold and we immediately said Singapore. We were told that was not going to happen and so we said we didn%u2019t really care apart from not Ballykelly in Northern Ireland. We were told to come back after lunch and were then