Page 66 - Demo

62Dubai and then had to start up whichever engine we had failed. What would often happen as part of my training would be that the captain would put his hand back to the engineer holding out the finger of whichever engine he wanted the engineer to fail. The engineer would then switch the fuel off to that engine. The pilot would have to detect which engine had failed by noticing the yaw which showed which side the failed engine was on. He would then slam the appropriate throttle back and if nothing showed on the RPM gauge that was the engine that had failed. If the engine was live, then the RPM would flicker. And so, on this occasion after landing on 3 engines we went about restarting the failed engine before taxying back for a take-off. Whilst doing this, theAir traffic controller asked if would like to come up to the tower for a cup of tea. We said sorry we didn%u2019t need too as we had our own butthanks anyway.There were no bridges across the river in those days in Dubai so you had to bargain with a boatman to row you over. After much negotiating it always came to 4 chips. Only once did we get it down to 3 chips but then had to pay 5 to get back. Dubai was a very poor place with professional beggars who had had their limbs broken at birth forever begging around you. Sometimes they had little wheeled sledges that they raced about on. You never went alone and always kept together. Sometimes at weekends we would hire a dhow and go fishing often catching small sharks. We would take a load of food from the mess and a large polar box full of beer and ice. At the end of the day there would be a lot of negotiating on what we would sell the remaining beers for. The locals were not allowed to buy alcohol, but they would get it when they could. They also would check their fishing traps on the way back. These were like huge lobster pots and once they were pulled up a young lad would go in and throw out whatever fish were in it. I thought they were quite brave as if the trap went over the side when they were in it then they would be the bait! On one occasion the rope to the trap got caught