Danny:
Chugalug,
I hadn't realised (your being 20 years my junior), that we'd served together for almost the whole of your time (except that I retired a year before you left).
I suspect that the key to my leaving is in your parenthesis, Danny. Ostensibly I PVR'd because I was told that I'd done all the flying tours that I could expect and was destined to stay on terra firma from thereon in. In reality I could see that the times they were a changing, and in ways that were not to my liking. I would humbly suggest that your departure, and those of your ilk, had much to do with that.
Looking back, all these years later, I have no regrets and would happily serve my time again. Equally certainly I would also leave again as I did. Like most of us who served in that period, I feel privileged to have done so when we had so many aircraft, so many stations both at home and abroad and, most importantly of all, a leadership that had truly earned their positions, and were an inspiration and an example to all that was sadly lost when they were gone.