|
BALANCE
As a once-famous but now infamous rocker once said, It's good to be back. And damn, do I know how that feels! After a tortuous journey courtesy of RAF Airways, I arrived back in blighty early on Sunday morning after four days on assignment on the Hellenic paradise that is Cyprus. OK, I jest - the Soveriegn Base Area which is Royal Air Force Akrotiri if we're being pedantic. I'm trying to work out why a flight which took a shade over 4 hours to fly from RAF Brize Norton to RAF Akrotiri should take 5.5 hours to do the return trip. Had I gone of my own volition, courtesy of British Airways, I would be £125 worse off but would have had the luxury of travelling from a major airport, in comfort and on time. However, as I'd travelled as a guest of the Military, I went at their expense via a 'Trooper' - one of the RAF's ageing VC10 airliners which it operates out of Brize to bases across the globe. And luxury it ain't. Reverse seating arrangements, an 07:00 departure ex-Uk necessitating an 04:15 wake up call and less leg room than in the back of a 2 seater sports car all conspire to create less than ideal conditions. The icing on the cake was the annoucement when we left Akrotiri that the flight was diverting via Manchester to drop off a family on Compassionate Leave before finally flying on to Brize. So a marathon 14 hours after arriving at the terminal in Cyprus, via Manchester, Brize, Swindon Railway station to Paddington and thence underground and overground to home, I finally stumbled through my front door on Sunday morning. The reason for my trip was this lady: Squadron Leader Nicola Smith, the 35-year old Officer Commanding 84 Squadron, the RAF's only permanent operational base left outside of the UK. She is the RAF's first female operational Squadron Commander and having been appointed in March 2002, was some way ahead of the Royal Navy's appointment of its first female Captain.
I was on assignment for two reasons: to write a feature on her, and how she's fared since taking command of the four Griffin SAR Helicopters, 15 officers and 50 odd men of the squadron, and secondly, to write a piece on the work of 84 Squadron RAF, who provide a 24/7, 365 Search and Rescue service to the countless visiting Fast Jet squadrons who take advantage of the year round weather and good visibility available on Cyprus. They're on a 15 minute response when the fast jets are flying, ready to scramble should any of the pilots have to eject. And I've had a fabulous time. Arriving on Wednesday, I was met at the airport and escorted to the Officers Mess where I was accommodated for my stay. Lovely quarters - spacious, modern and clean but no TV, no internet, no phone. The Mess however had a bar, a lovely lounge with the day's papers, a TV room and Cinema room so no excuse for staying in - I showered and dressed and headed off to the bar where I was soon made welcome. Thursday saw me being driven to the Sqaudron for an 07:00 start by an RAF corporal who had mistakenly been briefed that I was a Colonel on secondment to the MOD and who displayed embarrassing deferrence to me throughout our drive. Despite my attempts to put him straight, he insisited on bracketing every sentence with 'Sir' with the same after each alternate word thrown in for good measure. On arrival, I was briefed, issued with my flight suit and introduced to the officers of the squadron before being taken out to the line for our first sortie - a one and a half hour 'trooper' flight where, with another aircraft, we had to move 90 troops on excercise from one location to another. This is me flying front from the front left seat:
And this is Nicky, in her operational role as a search and rescue pilot, flying alongside me. She's got a great sense of humour and isn't averse to playing on her sex, such as when we had picked up one lot of squaddies. Dirty, tired and scared (some of them had never been in a helicopter before), Nicky stuck the aircraft onto autopilot, lifted her visor and turned to look at the guys - the last thing they were expecting was a woman pilot and the look on their gfaces was a picture. Nicky might be the first woman to achieve this role since the legislation was changed to allow it, but perceptions and mind sets are going to take a little more than a government bill to follow suit.
The temperature was in the low 20s with perfect visibility - ideal weather for helo flying. We took off in formation and spent the sortie flying tactically at low level, through valleys, over cables and around hills - superlative work and some outstanding flying.
The best bit for me though was the sortie we undertook in the afternoon - a 90 minute flight which saw us convene with a Royal Navy pursuit boat in the Mediterranean.
I was hooked up to the Griffin's winch and after taking a deep breath, step out into the blue where I dangled beneath the Helo on a steel cable. I was gradually lowered as the aircraft crabbed towards the boat before being delivered onto the deck, at which point the helicopter flew off (it returned for me later!).
After that, we flew all over the island, landing here, there and everywhere, dropping me off onto ledges on sheer cliff faces before 'rescuing' me and winching me up into the helo. We flew low, banked steeply and I had a pretty wide grin on my face throughout.
Friday was fairly leisurely by comparison right up to the point at 15:00 when I wandered over to the Mess to watch Sky News. The TV room was deserted, but I felt a tap on my shoulder and saw Neil, the Squadron 2 i/c. "C'mon mate" he said. "Come with me". I followed him through a quiet and serene mess and into the garden where a glass was thrust into my hand and I saw 15 or so officers from all over RAF Akrotiri - all in uniform, all off-duty and all raucously drunk. I was introduced to all, made welcome, plied with G and Ts and come six when we retired to the bar, I was barely able to stand. Still, I was still more sober than everyone else! It all went wrong when Emma, a Fl Lt amongst our number and Trish, a Sqdn. Ldr, bought a case of Veuve Clicquot. As a guest, I wasn't allowed to reach into my pocket and I had a fantastic time with a brilliantly social group of men and women. Our numbers were swelled later by a group of pilots from a Tornado Squadron who were visiting the island for training but by then, I was barely able to remember my own name. Shocking behaviour, but I was in good company! I made my excuses at 22:00 and headed back to my quarters for an early night - I can handle a hangover but not when I've got a nightmarish flight planned for the following day. So now it's back to reality. Back to sub zero temperatures and being a house husband. Back to writing, and the school run, cooking and TV, Gin and Tonics before dinner and my own life. I don't think I'll ever get used to the reality of all this, the way my life segues from normality to someplace else - but I don't think I'll ever get bored of it either. It's good to be home. |
|
|
1.3.04 14:32 |
|
|
A SIXPENCE
Is what my life seems to be turning on at the moment. I had a nice quiet week planned to recover after my jaunt in Cyprus, but the phone rang this afternoon with an offer to fly to Glasgow on assignment next week for two days. Not terribly tough work: fly up one day, stay overnight with a press officer who is both a mate and rather good company, and fly back the next day. Flights, dinner, bed and beer on them and a short 600 word story and pictures is all that is required on my part. Okay, so it's not the Carribean, but it's work and it's about a subject which interests me - and anything which hastens the journey towards summer and occupies my mind has to be a good thing. Plus, I've never been to Glasgow so it's some place new. Any suggestions for somewhere to go of a night time or places to see? Should have a couple of hours free when I arrive and I'm staying in the city centre so all suggestions welcome, ta. |
|
|
2.3.04 17:51 |
|
|
BANNED ON THE RUN
Just found this on the Reuters website... "Masturbating" lingerie advertisement banned Wed 3 March, 2004 15:07 LONDON (Reuters) - A magazine advertisement for lingerie that showed a scantily clad model apparently masturbating was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for being offensive.
The ad for model Elle Macpherson's range of lingerie, which appeared in Vogue fashion magazine, featured a woman seen through a keyhole with her thumbs inside her underpants. The woman's face cannot be seen.
"The Authority considered that, because it implied the woman was masturbating, the advertisement was likely to cause serious or widespread offence," the ASA said in a statement on Wednesday after receiving a complaint.
It said the advertisers had been asked not to repeat the approach. Vogue said it received no complaints about the ad.
Bendon UK, the company behind Macpherson's lingerie range, said the advertisement depicted an intimate moment and that the photograph was "feminine, luxurious and stylised".
In 2000, the ASA ordered French designer Yves Saint Laurent to remove billboards for its Opium perfume that showed alabaster-skinned supermodel Sophie Dahl reclining in the nude.
Wait until the print media pick this one up. Cue a 'Why-oh-why/look at the state of the moral decline in Britain'-type piece in the Daily Mail, countless reproductions of 'offending' image in broadsheets (but only in the interest of completion, of course) and acres of coverage in every from of publication the length and breadth of Britain. Er...including this one. So another PR coup for the agency involved, massive sales for Elle's Lingerie (what do you call a body sold by 'The Body', anyway?) and another stretching of the boundaries of acceptable taste. Give it a couple of years - there'll be nothing left that we haven't seen in print or in close up on TV, so we'll be unshockable. What will the arbiters of taste ban then? Oh, and in the spirit of completeness, the image above has nothing whatsoever to do with the banned advertisment. Wouldn't want to give it any more coverage than it deserves now, would I? Oh, alright then. This is the offending advertisement. Go decide for yourselves...
|
|
|
3.3.04 16:49 |
|
|
INSIGHT
I've written before of the child-like awe I feel at some of the assignments my work has led me to undertake in recent years, but I would be the first to admit that it isn't all military hardware, adrenaline and fun. There is another, more cerebral side to some of what I do however, which never sees the light of day on here because it just isn't 'sexy'. That's not to say however that it isn't without its own particular brand of fascination. I do what I do principally becuase I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge, a motivation to learn more about the everyday events which make up the life we live. I'm an observer - of people, society, culture. They're all elements of life which fascinate me and I want to know more. I want to drown myself in every element of information pertinent to the subject at hand, examine it, try it and so, understand it. It's a privilige that I can do so through my work, moreso that I can use my work as the encyclopaedia which gifts me the knowledge I seek. This past month has seen me deliver a raft of features to my editor which have shared as ever, one thing in common: they were all companies, brands or people which I had been aware of and wanted to learn more about. Not the 'more' that I could find through press releases and books. The more which means I can become an overnight expert having immersed myself in an accelerated learning process, the better to filter out that which is unnecessary and leave behind sufficent for me to write entertaining, accurate and informative copy. Science and Technology, Trade and Industry, Society and Culture, Celebrity, News, Nature - if it's unusual, prominent or desirable, secret, different or relevant, I want to know. And two of those I did last month nicely illustrate the dichotomy between highbrow and lowbrow, or the scientific and the cultural of the diverse range of topics I cover. Martin Baker Ejector Seats and Bombay Sapphire gin make unusual bedfellows but they form two staples of what I submitted last month. I first became aware of Martin Baker when I blagged a ride in an RAF Tornado a couple of years ago. I was dependent upon that seat for my life should anything go wrong from the minute we taxied from the hangar, through the supersonic, high-g flight that followed, through to the landing. The ludicrously wide parameters that the seat had to be able to operate within fascinated me. I wanted to learn more. Last June, Lt. Cmdr. Robert Schwab RN, a Royal Navy Sea Harrier pilot became the 7,000th life saved in almost 60 years of Martin Baker building ejector seats. Nobody else in the business even comes close. And whilst everything's relative of course, 7,000 is no small number. When each of those units represents a life saved, it becomes all the more remarkable. In the fast moving world of defence flying though, nothing stands still for long and at the time of writing this, a further 46 people have ejected and survived since Lt. Cmdr. Schwab's unplanned exit last June - six in 2004 alone. (Schwabb is unusual - this was his second ejection in his career, that first having occurred in 1984 whilst landing a Hawk whose landing gear had collapsed).
Almost every military jet has an ejector seat, an amalgam of extremely sophisticated hardware, software and pyrotechnics which must operate in harmony on demand - in all operational scenarios. The first time, everytime. The seats, which cost up to US$150,000 apiece, are constantly evolving to meet the increasing demands of the world's air forces and Martin Baker's engineers must juggle the seemingly conflicting demands without compromise. With an increasing number of female pilots in the cockpits, the modern ejector seat must be able to cope with a spread of weights between 47-111Kg, ejecting each seat and its occupant with the same degree of force. Pilots' helmets are becoming ever-more complex and with the increase in capability comes an increase in weight - and a commensurate increase in the likelihood of neck injury. Today's fighter jets too are getting costlier - with Europe's new front line, multi-role Eurofighter Typhoons costing in the region of €62.9m each, pilots are narrowing their ejection options ever closer, fearing that their careers could be adversely aaffected should they throw away such a large chunk of the defence budget rashly. Pilots hold on ever longer, ejecting lower and at obtuse angles generally only when every other avenue of escape has been exhausted. These factors all drive development and Martin Baker's most recent seat designs use an on-board electronic sequencer to sense various factors such as speed and altitiude to optimise control of the operation of the seat. Emergency ejections have been made under conditions ranging from ground level to the highest at 57,000ft and from a standstill to the fastest at over 800mph. The ejector handle between his or her legs really is the option of last resort for today's fighter pilot.
The other extreme was Bombay Sapphire gin, a brand I'd gradualy become aware of by stealth. I'd never seen it advertised, but I'd noticed its distinctive blue bottle in shops and supermarkets and then, one week earlier this year, I heard it being talked about on four separate occassions by friends or business associates. This was an assignment without parallel - arrive at Vinnopolis in London, meet with the brand's chief 'mixologist' who would take me through the brand's history and the distillation process before getting me very drunk on a range of cocktails, prepared and drunk in a bar that looked like something out of an advert for uber-cool - I felt untidy just standing there. I was then entertained to lunch by said Mixologist and the Bombay Sapphire PR before being despatched with a bottle of the stuff to drink at my own leisure. Oh the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune! What I learned interested me. Crafted from triple-distilled Scottish grain spirit, Bombay Sapphire is infused with the delicate aromas of 10 carefully selected botanicals, the selection and balance of which is based on a secret recipe dating from 1761. Most other gins are produced using between four and six, of which juniper is the most dominant. Whereas many other gins boil their botanicals with the spirit, Bombay Sapphire has a unique distillation process using Carterhead stills and a process of vapour infusion. The brand owns four unique Carterhead stills which are all distinctive to the rounded, subtle taste of this particular gin. The stills allow the spirit vapour to pass through the botanicals which are held separately from the spirit in a perforated copper basket, allowing the delicate aromas to be fully absorbed as the infusion processes take place. The result, as you'll know if you've tried it, is a complex yet unexpectedly clean, crisp and subtle taste sensation which isn't dominated by the alcohol - a wonderfully balanced finish. Generally, I have no idea as I start one crop of features, what it is that I'll be focusing on for my next crop - the process is a little like trying to grasp clouds if one thinks about it too hard. I tend to rely on my subconscious and let it aborb life as I observe the goings on around me on a day to day basis, the people I meet, read about in the news or pass in the street. Every idea originates somewhere but it ebbs and flows through my mind, burnished, cleaned and filtered before taking life as an illustrated feature. The picture that illisustrates my previous blog entry for example, was an image that I used to illustrate a feature about the rapidly-exanding UK lingerie market and that was an idea that took life when...actually, there are some elements of what inspires me that you don't need to know about! Suffice it to say that not only do I not regard what I do as work - how could I? - but as an education in every aspect of that which makes up our everday life and culture. To some degree, I have no interest in earning money any longer - it's the journey, rather than the destination which keeps me on this track. Long may it continue. |
|
|
4.3.04 13:06 |
|
|
A TOUTE AL'HEURE
Well it's not often that things work out like they have. There I was sitting at my PC surfing the web yesterday when an email popped up from the editor of a magazine which I thought had ceased to exist. "Hello, could we commission a couple of features from you? Need them, like, yesterday." Done and dusted - bought two existing features from my portfolio, sum total of work done by me - ten minutes to locate them on my hard drive and burn to a CD. By some bizarre twist of fate, said editorial team are based in Scotland not a million miles away from where I'm going to be this evening so are coming across to meet with me and collect the disc. And who said you don't find work by doing nothing? Quiet weekend, although we spent an age browsing in Marks and Spencer's Food section on Friday and marvelled at the self-service check outs where you scan your own purchases and pay via the machine. Yes, I know, we should get out more, but I do love M and S food halls. For all that though, Saturday night was a decadent night in (A slept over at a friend's) - we had a Thai take away (if there's a nicer dish than Thai crispy beef with holy basil, I've yet to try it) with a half bottle of Champagne for an apperatif followed by a knock-out £7.50 Chilean Cab Sauv which you could have eaten with a knife and fork. All went well until I awoke on the sofa at 02:00 and realised that I still had my contact lenses in - not ordinarily an issue except my eyes were drier than the bottom of a budgie's cage. Removing them before falling into bed was no picnic either - akin to massaging one's eyeballs with a brillo pad encrusted with diamonds. Don't try this at home kids! Yesterday was marginally more productive - after months of prevarication, I finally activated the account which I set up on Ebay last year. Spent the morning listing the various redundant items of computer, motorcycle and electronic gadgetry laying around the office and for which I no longer have any. I've listed the first of many items for sale, so if you've a mind to, click on the EBay button which I've added at right. The bike's going to have to go too - I can't justify £4,000 sitting around in the form of a 600cc race bike when the last time I rode it was getting on for 5 months ago. I'm off now to catch my flight, although this one's just a short trip - I should be back tomorrow. I'm not taking the laptop - hardly worthwhile for a 24 hour press trip, this will be just a change of clothes, washbag and camera kit only. This is how I like to travel - Heathrow to anywhere at someone else's expense and with hand luggage only. Check in online, seat's already assigned and all I need do is show my face. Perfect. Look after yourselves, and once again, could the last person to leave my blog turn off the lights, please? Thank you. |
|
|
8.3.04 12:27 |
|
|
WORKING FROM HOME
Great trip to Glasgow, a memorable night in Sauciehall Street and a profitable trip away but it's back to normality now, occasioned yesterday by meeting a friend for lunch over from Europe. Lovely time, spent too long in Starbucks and drank too much coffee, but hey, could be worse, it could have been alcohol. Got a meeting in town today but tomorrow it's back to working from home hence the image above. Alright, who am I kidding? This is for every 20sixer (Roach, JoJo et al) who knows the reality of home working. I've given up trying to convince people of the reality so now I just give in to the stereotype and nod sagely whenever they say "Working from home? Yeah, right!". We know the truth, right? |
|
|
11.3.04 10:39 |
|
|
A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY REPEATING
Last October, I had arranged a Mercedes' SL500 to review for one of the magazines that I freelance for. Not one of the most stressful elements of what I do, it must be said and something I was rather looking forward to. So I was more than a little disappointed when the press office called me 48 hours before it was due to be delivered to me to say that the journalist who had had it previously had wrapped it around a tree and it was thus unavailable. No matter, they arranged for a replacement and a fully specced, £82,000 SL500 was in the diary for delivery next Monday. As is usual, I'd arranged a photographer, negotiated some difficult to access locations for the shoot and sorted out a long-away hotel to review on the way. Spoke to the press office 48 hours ago and it was all confirmed. Then, twenty minutes ago, I got an email from the press office... "With reference to the above booking, I'm afraid to say that the above vehicle is now unavailable due to extensive damage on return from another booking. Unfortunately we have had a few scraps recently and we are only covered by third party insurance so it is serious when our cars are damaged". Bugger. Arse. Best laid plans and all that. Looks like next week has just taken on a somewhat less rosy hue and I am faced with cancelling all the arrangements that I'd taken great effort to put in place. Once, I can understand, but twice, so close to the event? For fuck's sake! Excuse me whilst I go off and exhaust my vocabulary of expletives... |
|
|
11.3.04 16:28 |
|
[next page]
powered by
20six.co.uk
