.. The Drilling Engineer lecturing you, the Radio Operator, about how you should handle helicopters was four years old when you started Air Traffic Control training at Shawbury. And he genuinely thinks QNH is a designer drug.
.. You realise that age and experience have given you the patience to just smile and not throttle the arrogant little waste of skin.
.. Some of the helicopters you use offshore are classed as "old". And they are over ten years younger than you.
.. Every aircraft fleet you served with in the Royal Air Force are now soft drink tins and razor blades and their squadrons are either disbanded or numberplates for something far less than they deserve.
.. You can got to a museum not far from your house to see the front end of the very first Nimrod you flew on as a fourteen year old Air Cadet .. Twenty eight years ago.
.. Your brother passed out at Halton in front of a jet that you last saw on your squadron in RAFG.
.. Your nineteen year old daughter see's a photo of you at your pass out parade, when you were two years younger than she is now, and is genuinely amazed that you had hair back then. Or at all on further questioning.
.. You clean out your Nan's loft to find all your old albums. Said daughter has no idea what an LP is and, on seeing the cover of your copy of Michael Jacksons Thriller, says "That isnt Michael Jackson .. Michael Jackson was white".
.. You know what Betamax was. And it damn well was better than VHS !!
.. You still think of a Snickers as a Marathon and Starburst as Opal Fruits.
.. You can remember a time when the only thing close to a fitness test in the Royal Air Force was measured only by stamina in the bar, binge drinking was a way of life and not a negative social condition, banter was mandatory brutal and damn funny, mission statements were something only NASA produced and your mates from back then, and who shared all the good and bad times with you, still share the mindset you enjoyed and admired so much. And then you realise that maybe being old isn't such a bad thing ..
