"Stumpy" Faulkner
Does anybody remember my ex – best mate Graham “Stumpy” Faulkner? Sadly he died 20+ years ago in a car accident but he used to regale me with tales of the Scimitar whilst we spent every day off for 4 years building a boat in the early 80s. Rumour had it he was involved in an ejection in the Indian Ocean but since his name doesn’t appear in the list of ejectees on the Project Get Out and Walk website I may have this confused in the mists of time.
Stumpy was a larger than life character – the life and soul of every party and a stalwart of the BA BAC 1-11 flight in Berlin where he supplemented his income by relieving all and sundry of their allowances in the hotel crew room of an evening at the interminable poker games.
I have seen a photo of him being presented to the Queen Mum at the recommissioning of a carrier (Ark Royal?) in Birkenhead (near where he was brought up) in the early 60s as a baby faced sylph shaped midshipman pilot – ten years later he was as wide as he was tall but a giant sized character and an excellent friend, long gone now but never forgotten. His funeral was the biggest piss-up I ever attended, as he would have wished, along with dozens of others and conducted by the RC padre from his time at Lossie.