Seldom fit summarised thus: I sincerely hope life in the big bad world has more to offer me when I leave in 4 years time. As I will retire the day I leave the RAF.. I do hope I can find something more enjoyable and fulfilling to do with my life rather than continuing to post in here on a thread I no longer really belong to and on subjects I no longer have anything worthwhile to add.
Chesterton said; 'If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly'.
So I am pleased to have been able to exceed your expectations here. I am pleased too, that the years following your retirement hold higher expectations for you than those preceeding it obviously do.
By the way, I have a chum who runs a business in Bermuda. One of the bains of his life is helping old folk who have a dream to sail the world and to pickle themselves in gin. Let me know your plans would you? I shall tell him that you're not like all the rest and that (hey), you put in enough years in RAF Pergatory for the right to now do what you want in civvy street without suffering ignorant, crass, bigoted, myopic, and bitter and twisted invective from small minded and inadequate cretins with chips on their shoulders.
I hope that whatever you do, however much help and advice you ask for and whoever you hang around with in your new life, that you aren't treated with the pointless hostility that you reserve for me. It certainly isn't becoming of someone with the experience that you clearly have.
I wish you all the best.