The RAF once put me in the position where I was posted from Hampshire to Yorkshire but couldn’t provide a MQ at the new station. I applied for a surplus MQ but the best the system could provide was one thirty miles further away from the station I was being posted from, which was pointless. To make it even more difficult I was then given notice to quit the original MQ because of a shortage at that station. We bought our own house in the local area of the new station. Two years later I was detached, then later posted back to the original station and as expected I couldn’t get a MQ there.
I then commuted by car from home on a weekly basis. Because the house we had bought was a very few miles short of the minimum distance for claiming motor mileage (less than ten miles, if my memory is correct) it was at my own expense. However, a colleague in a similar position then asked me to car share and I agreed. I used to drive past my house for another fifteen miles or so and drop him off at his own house, located very close to the Yorkshire base I had been posted from. He could claim motor mileage as my passenger because the distance was just inside the minimum.
It was around this time that I made my decision to leave the service at my 38 point, rather than continuing to a full career at 55.