The Initial Forecast Course was [inevitably in those days] all male, eleven AXOs and one Chinese. Most of us wore grey flannels and dark blazers. Teaching was on a chalkboard. The senior instructor had a pet, simplified, model of a little chunk of air, he called it the unit cube, each axis one centimetre. To save him trouble, we painted [I painted] a cube on the board. Which went well not at all. I think we were at it for half a year, with much emphasis on punctuality and how to brief. Even now, in my dreams, I am late for the mass briefing. Theory and practice were well mixed, afternoons spent playing at station Met. Offices. Come the final exams the Chinese gentleman came top of course.
Postings must have been tricky because no sensible S Met O wanted a rookie on strength, but I fell lucky and went to the shiny new office at shiny new Gatwick, which had taken the flights and work from Croydon. Gatwick had a senior and a junior forecaster on watch, such that I had a succession of mentors. Like all workers, I soon learned to copy the good guys. In those days we prepared dedicated cross-sections for booked flights. Ken Richardson drew beautiful Constable-like cloudscapes so I emulated these, but always added an eagle among the Cbs. Rastus Racey drew charts with isobars like flowing rivers, and I tried to copy that too.
Captains were briefed individually, there were no despatchers or Ops staff, so we met famous faces like Douglas Bader and Sir Malcolm Campbell. The Independent newspaper launched, with flights to all quarters of the UK. Like Lars Porsena of Clusium, the messengers were sent forth, east and west and south and north, but this time by charter from Gatwick. Fortunately it was benign anticyclonic, so one bland forecast and a sheet of TAFs sufficed for most, and I was trusted with the whole job. The Channel Isles were fogbound, but the captains said they would line up with their usual church towers and deliver. Fingers crossed, and 100% success.
S Met O took a deep breath, rolled his eyes and signed -off my competency.
Now the infamous Postings people put the dartboard on the wall, picked up a handful of arrows, and the one marked LB stuck in the space called RAF Nicosia. In those days there were more overseas jobs than volunteers, Met. was slowly withdrawing from Home and Empire, and there were lots of stick-in-the-muds who had never left Lincolnshire or Yorkshire or HQ for an entire war. Neither my wife nor I knew where Cyprus was ………. I thought it was off the coast of East Africa.
Postings sorted passports, jabs, flights in no time so a green rookie junior forecaster and his 20 year-old beautiful wife arrived at Hendon on 1st April 1961, to sever all contact with home except by letter.