It's a Small World

[sisemen]

News item on Oz TV about the Herc inquest. Up pops an "aviation expert" to give his opinion and it's one of my ex cadets at Cranditz. It really is a small world.

Who out of your past has popped up in unexpected places?

[Pontius Navigator]

Well there was a well known military aviation expert who didn't so much as pop up but slipped off the chair at the outbreak of GW 2. As Mrs PN acutely observed, 'he's p1ssed.'

[Fitter2]

Not precisely my own past, but a recent acquaintance was puzzled by why my name sounded familiar. Turned out he did work experience as a draughtsman at Doxfords (steam engine design) in 1946, under my grandfather (same name) who was head of the drawing office.

Recalled him as being a perfectionist and hard taskmaster, so that gene got lost somewhere.

[wwoody01]

Whils't on a sabatical at the Deid earlier this year, gave a lift to some guys waiting at one of the bus stops. Turned out he was a Yank Controller/LNO at Kabul, ex Upper Heyford who knew my ex SATCO who was at UH as a RAFLO many moons ago - like you say - small world, but maybe a close-knit one. Edited, not an aquantance I met, but a link nver the less

Woody:)

[taxydual]

A bar, Washington DC, late '70's, me in uniform (wearing beret at the request of my hosts, special forces blah).

I meet my mothers next door neighbours son. Unbelievable. 10 mins of 'what the hell are you doing here?' etc etc before RTB to hotel. Exit bar, only to be instructed by 2 men in cheap suits to 'step away from the vehicle'. This request was backed up by ironmongery of the Smith and Wesson type.

After much British bravado (ie crapping myself), I found out that my mothers next door neighbours son was a major drug dealer in DC and I had walked into a federal anti-narcotics raid.

From spotty Yorkshire schoolboy to international drug dealer (him, not me), shows you what O Level Geography can do.



Further to this, the next morning explaining to the Brigadier at BDLS what had happened, it turned out that I had almost blown the operation by calling the guy by his first name. His name was Marshall. As I pronounced it, as in 'MARSHALL, what are you doing here?', various shady characters left the bar.

Talk about Dodge City.

[KG86]

On holiday in Malta, chatting to a complete stranger, a fellow Brit. Discovered that we both had a Service background. Whilst trying to work out if our paths had crossed, I mentioned that I had flown Wokkas in FI.

He said, "You will be telling me next that you were the pilot that brought down the feeder wire to a tall aerial near Port Stanley."

I replied, "Yes I was."

He replied, "I was the guy who had to climb up 200 ft to re-attach it!"

It is indeed a small world.

[sunshine band]

My secondary school maths teacher left school- we never knew where she went to until I was at Brize and went into PSF one day- she was OC PMS! Miss Kellechan, the cat did really shred my homework...

SB

[davejb]

Standing with the family at the entrance to Disneyworld in Florida in the early 90's, found I was standing about 6 feet from a nav I'd been on a crew with ten years earlier. In all that time we'd only managed to move about 4 feet further apart, it would appear....

[Airborne Aircrew]

In Belize I knew a Staff Sergeant from the Army, (7 RHA)... Drunk/drank with him across two tours.

A couple of years later, (not having seen him), I'm in a pub in Guildford on my way to Surrey Chief Constabulary and trying to work out how to get there, (no car and the place is 15 miles out in the middle of nowhere. All of a sudden I hear... "Ginge... Ginge... Well **** me..". It's the SSgt... We have a beer and a chat and he's leaving the Army and is looking into joining the police. He's on a tour with a Major and a bunch of other soldiers and they are on their way up to the Chief Constabulary in a big shiney Army bus with lots of seats... A quick chat with the Major and I have a lift... :ok:

Now that's a small world... 4000 miles, two years and were both going to the middle of nowhere again... :D

[Blacksheep]

I was Duty Engineer on the ramp at Bandar Seri Begawan. Stood at the bottom of the 737 airstairs, waiting for the pax to de-plane when my old boss from Northolt stepped out of the door. We simultaneously pointed at each other and said "What the devil are YOU doing here!" He was seconded to the RBAF as a "Brown-Job" Major instead of being a proper Sqn Ldr. I think he was more surprised than I was.

[Winch-control]

Small world indeed, I walked into Freemantle emergency department (Western Australia) to hand over a patient to the triage nurse, and was greeted by John Mcarthur, ex RN PO Medic at HMS Gannet, who was also handing over a patient! Needless to say John still talks the talk... and we have even done a couple of shifts together since. Bloody hell, you come 8000 miles to get away from it all and......he must be thinking the same!

[DON T]

Playing football for RAF Changi against RAF Tengah, put in a blistering tackle on their winger, put him right in the air and then had to apologise to Alan my mate from school four years previously who also lived in the same street as me.:uhoh:

Also bumped into an old school mate at 2 am outside the Red Lips Bar in Hong Kong.

[Wader2]

I once agreed to see a mate at High Wycombe for a beer but unfortunately that day he was in London.

Later, at Baker Street I went on to the wrong platform. Train got in and stopped with a single door directly opposite me. My mate got out and of course didn't see me as how would you expect to see someone in 10 million people!

[Cubanate]

While on exchange with USAF some years back, attended the RAF Week at the USAF ACSC at Maxwell AFB, AL and was hosted by a USAF major. Making small talk at start of evening, was asked if I'd been to the States before. Said I had, blah blah, DC, Illinois etc. Turned out major was from Illinois, so I asked if he knew Knox College in Gaylesburg. He did. My uncle was Prof of Math (!) there I said. He looked at my name badge and told me to wait there. He soon came back with a lady and introduced his wife. Turned out my uncle taught said lady and she knew him well. Unfortunately I hardly knew him as he left UK when I was 5 and died in '79 when I was 18. I learned a lot from her that night about my uncle, happily before a certain flt lt came in with a 'grocery cart' full of G&Ts to celebrate his promotion.:eek:

A couple of years later, bought a farmhouse near to a cow shed being renovated by an industrious bloke. Next time he turned up for work, I went to introduce myself as the new neighbour. Mutual pointing - turns out he was on my entry at OCTU!

[The Real Slim Shady]

Was training a new intake of pilots, their first day with company doing CRM etc, and at coffee one of them says " You don't remember me do you?"

"No" says I.

"You handed over the Squadron standard to me in CHOM in 198x. I was an engineer then"

[StopStart]

Whilst in the University canteen many years back I struck up a conversation with young lady who was talking about her time living in Australia. Having lived there myself in the 70s I asked how she'd come to be out there. Her father had been on exchange with the RAAF. Funny, so was mine. Her father was the SMO at a certain RAAF base. Funny, so was mine. She'd lived at 98 XXX Street. Funny, so had we. She'd left 1976 and been upset at having to leaving her beloved back and white cat behind. We'd moved in in 1976 and had been delighted to inherit a black and white cat......

[Brain Potter]

It would've been beyond belief if you'd met her in a university lecture theatre!

[Union Jack]

Sitting in a city-centre pub in Bath some years ago, enjoying lunch with two friends, one of them quietly pointed out that a raffish looking individual in the corner kept looking covertly at me. Equally covertly, I turned slowly round and the creature with long blond hair, a fetching purple shirt, and a fringed suede leather jacket quickly looked away, but continued to take quiet little looks in my direction.

Needless to say, my friends teased me mercilessly about this throughout lunch and, as Blondie got up to leave the pub, they went into stitches as “he” came up to me and spoke the immortal words of the world’s worst chat-up line, “I think we’ve met before. May I ask you your name?” Perhaps not surprisingly in the circumstances, I automatically switched to “no need to know” mode and, somwehat stuffily in the circumstances, asked why he wanted to know. By this time my friends were absolutely beside themselves with suppressed laughter.

“Oh,” he said, “I’m sorry to say that I don’t recognise your face, but I would recognise your voice anywhere”. Belatedly, I switched to “I’ll tell you who I am, if you tell me who you are” mode, following which I quickly discovered that Blondie and I had served together in HMS BELFAST when he was an engineer officer and I was a sub lieutenant - twenty-eight years previously! Well, at least it’s nice to know that I hadn’t changed out of all recognition ……..

Jack

[StopStart]

F*** Off Potter. I was and remain, one of the UK's top academics. You not been sacked yet?

[Airborne Aircrew]

This is long and involved but I'll try to keep it short.

Flying into San Francisco to meet my brother from Hong Kong and my other brother and his mate from London to watch the Oakland Raiders on Sunday and the San Francisco 49ers on Monday night.

Leave Detroit and change planes in Minneapolis. The Quarterback of the Raiders is on my plane. I sit next to a young couple who I don't speak to until we
re on finals in San Fran. They live there and, it turns out they have tickets to the Raiders game on Sunday. I laughingly say I'll see you there.

That night the four go out to Fisherman's Wharf, (tourist trap, no reason for locals to be there 'cos the beer is pricey). We're on the lash in a pub when the couple walk in... We have a beer and say "see you at the game" and they leave.

Next morning brother wants to go to the NFL shop on Fisherman's Wharf. Off we go and bump into... Yep... The couple... Same joke about the game and away they go.

Sunday afternoon... 60,000 people in Network Associates Coliseum... We're sat near a set of steps coming up from below. No sign of the couple... Of course...Just after half time loads of people coming up the stairs back to their seats... There they are... They have seats 6 or 7 rows behind us and offset by one block...

Wait... It gets better... There's a really obnoxious twit about 6 seats across from us... Real toothless redneck with too much beer and too much mouth. Next night we're at 3-Com stadium waaaay up in the nosebleeds... Suddenly we hear "Hey, Raiders Fans..." It was our Redneck...

Wait... It gets even better... Next morning I'm at the airport to go home, (via Minneapolis). I'm having that "final smoke", (don't do that now), when I hear "Hey, Red".. I turn to see a man I've never seen before. He says "You were at the Raiders game on Sunday, you were at the 49ers game yesterday"... He had had seats within a few yards of ours at both games. So I jokingly respond "After this weekend.. don't tell me... You're going to Minneapolis"...

His seat was the row in front of me in the window, I had the aisle... :D

You were warned it was long...

[radar101]

In the same vein, In the mid 1980s I was SDO at Cranwell and thus had to sleep at York House Mess - not my usual. As I walked in a noted a visiting truckie nav who looked familiar. As you do, we went through our service careers trying to match up. Stations? IOT? OCC? .... Finally, having exhausted that we went even further back: We had sung in the same performance of Pirates of Penzance at University about 15+ years before!

Yep, small world!

[BEagle]

I was and remain, one of the UK's top academics.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a341/nw969/Internet/zxzxz.jpg

Oh no you b£oody aren't, Stoppers! A fine ex-student of mine, I would admit, but you most assuredly saw through the bolleaux of that course you were doing in favour of beer, babes and Bulldog flying! Don't try to deny it! As for inheriting pussy from someone else, well, no surprise there!!

One frequently went flying in the FunBus from Turkey. Often we took various Spams along for the ride over 'I-raq'; either they were curvaceous and friendly (and female!) or were just along to get enough points for yet another 'Gee, I'm brave' medal.

One day we took some staff bloke flying. In the boring bit between AAR sessions keeping a look out for SAMs etc, I mentioned to this bloke some other Spam I'd known years earlier - a Colonel who made LeMay and/or Schwartzkopf look like a wet wimp.

It turned out that the Colonel was this bloke's daughter's godfather. Now there are quite a few Spams in the USAF, so this was some coincidence. But what the bloke found far more interesting was the fact that I'd seen the Colonel's ravishing 17...OK, 16...probably - at least I hope so..:E year old daughter in a body fitting swim suit* in Hawaii....:ok:










*Still have the photo somewhere.....:E

[roon]

December last year. En route to NZ for Christmas/ New Year Hol with T+S. Stopped off in HK for a few days, and walking along the board walk watching the laser show, I saw an old buddy from years previous (Pusser's Grey, 1990ish). Despite shouting "oi, FLOBS", he failed to notice me in the crowd, so I figured I had missed a serious beer and anecdotes session.
Fast forward a couple of weeks. Sitting in the waiting area/ bar for the Milford Sound cruise (don't I know living?), who should wander in but same old self-loading baggage. Sadly, we were not embarking on the same fun-ferry, so another onslaught on the liver was narrowly averted.
And by the way, it turned out he had joined up with my wife's brother back in 1986.

[DrumMachine]

Phoning from the section to get an insurance quote from some random company based elsewhere in the country; on giving my postcode, the lady asks 'are you at RAF ****?', 'yes', I reply, 'do you know my brother, **** Smith?' she enquires, 'yes', I say, 'he's sat next to me!'.

Or..

Sat with the family in a restaurant in Paris when in walks OC Ops, in uniform! :confused:

[trap one]

Was in 96/7 in Malaya, Ex Flying Fish in the 5 star hotel downstairs bar that the Hotel had reduced the prices in so as to keep all the drunks away from the well paying customers. Mixture of E3/F3/GR1B/Nimrod/VC10 M8's at the bar, when in walks a Brit. Turns out to be an GR1B Pilot who had paid £2500 each for him and his new bride to honeymoon at said 5* for the 2 weeks that "Flying fish" was on for.

[The Real Slim Shady]

Many moons ago as a mere slip of a lad I was dating a young lady from Texas whose father had flown B52s.

Talking in the Scruffs Bar to the USAF exchange officer who had also flown 52s in Nam, turns out that not only were they on the same Sqn they had actually flown together.

[Yellow Sun]

An RAFG Station Commander was an old acquaintance of mine from training days. It happened that I bumped into him in the WOC one day when passing through his patch and we spent a pleasant few minutes reminiscing. About 2 months later I was walking through the Mens' Outfitting Dept. of the local branch of John Lewis the sales assistant who was wrapping a pair of trousers at the desk as I passed looked up and grinned broadly. I did a very quick double take before I realised that it was my RAFG staish acquaintance. He was in the middle of his induction course with John Lewis.

YS

[John Farley]

In April 79 I was in China on business and taken by my hosts to see the Great Wall. It was very hot so I took off my jacket and my white shirt was very conspicuous among the (in those days) sea of grey suits. I was walking down a slope and could see a similar sole white shirt among the grey coming in the opposite direction about 100 yds ahead. I soon realised it was John Cunningham who I had not seen since 1975. I put my jacket back on and keeping as low as possible waited until he was alongside me and quietly said “Hello John how are you?” He had not seen me approaching and was turned to stone in mid stride. Eventually he managed five words “What are you doing here”

[chevvron]

Late '85 on holiday in the Gambia. Got chatting to a bloke in the hotel who's taking his 'last' holiday before IOT.
Summer of '86, camp with cadets at Rudloe Manor. Mid week, a Plt Off who appears to only have No 1 uniform is seen wandering about the mess on a 'holding' posting. You guessed it same bloke.