Frohlich Weinachten.
Chugalug,
Rest assured, Sir, we are not Making Mock of your Misfortune (and in any case you came out of it with Honour Unsullied) - but "you 'ave to larf", now really, don't you ? (after it was all over, and you and your crew suffered no harm, except perhaps the "loadie", who may have had rope burns from sliding down that ship's hawser), which I still think is a prop holding the tail up !
Of course your Berlin trip must still have been at the height of the Cold War: I am surprised that the Staatspolizei did not try to intimidate you on the Autobahn (I don't think they had Wartburgs, probably something more potent [Skoda Octavias ?] for the job - read somewhere that young Luftwafffe pilots were forbidden to own them because of the accident record).
Yes HMC&E were a bit of a bind. When I bought a Renault 16 in UK in '72, they did me for Import Duty plus Purchase Tax on top of all (? too early for VAT ? - should know !). As that was tax-on-tax, I thought it a bit hard (put quite a dent in my Lump Sum, too !)
Thank you for your You Tube of "Berliner Luft". It's a fine, bouncing march and really gets the Berliners going. There are umpteen versions on the web by the Berlin Philharmonic.....D.
Wander00, airborne artist and MPN11,
You learn something new every day ! So there were other examples in Britain, too..D.
a a, we've long suspected that "14" wasn't quite right - now you've "come clean" - but 53 miles at an average of 15.6 mph at age 54 ! What are they feeding you on ? Even when I was 14, and nobody thought anything of 50 miles "on yer bike", we reckoned 12 mph was good. Now, even if I could remember how (do you really never forget), and I still could , I'd be too terrified of our broken, pot-holed roads even to try...D.
mikehallam,
Your:
"I've a feeling the whole idea of timed lights was dropped and in the UK we succumbed to wholesale deployment of roundabouts, nowadays reduced to vestigial white circles".
I read that, in Germany, the Traffic Police greatly admired our Roundabouts (Kreisfahren ?) as the result of an accident was usually "nur blech" ("only tinware"), instead of the deaths and injuries which came from crossroad crashes....D.
Now, in my capacity as Old Man in The Corner,
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our PPRuNers and Readers .
(with a special Thanks to our Moderators, for leaving us alone to play).
Wishing you All The Best, Danny and Family.