Thought I was up for at least a carpeting, if not Court Martial.
You may remember I posted a few weeks ago about a former RAF Catalina pilot who was due to give a talk about his time during WW2 flying over [words missing - it turns out that he flew on the North Atlantic on anti-submarine patrols and Murmansk convoy escort duty].
I was away in the meantime, and when I got back I looked up the relevant website for details, only to discover that seating was limited and the event was fully booked. Aaargh!
My first, orderly civil service reaction was to send an email enquiring if there was a waiting list in case of cancellations. But then I realised a more direct "up the middle with smoke" approach was required. So I just turned up on the night, hoping there would be a spare seat, and bingo!
It took me 80 minutes battling my way across rush-hour Dublin to get there, to find that the room was almost completely full. However, there were still about five seats vacant, all of them in the centre in the front row (Danny will be familiar with this seating pattern from Mass). Bingo again!
The speaker, Ted Jones, was utterly delightful. Born in 1922, but you would take him for a sprightly 74-year-old.
I approached him after the talk, told him about this thread and asked him if he uses a computer. Unfortunately, he said no, which is really regrettable, as he is such a bright, lively character that he would be a wonderful asset here.
I thought of recording his talk, took out my phone, hesitated, then thought again and switched it on, not even sure if it would record an hour and a half's talk in one go. When I spoke to him I told him I had recorded most of the talk and asked if he would mind if I transcribed parts of it for this thread, and he immediately said "no problem".
It gets better. His talk was introduced/chaired by the Officer Commanding the Irish Defence Forces Archive, who expressed an interest in having Ted's memories properly recorded for an oral history project being carried out by the military section of the National Museum. Ted is actually English, and moved to Ireland in the mid-1940s because his wife was from Dublin, so it's not clear if his story would come within the terms of the history project, which concerns the Irish Defence Forces, but I'm hopeful the rules might be bent.
I'm travelling again shortly, but plan to try to follow up on this when I get back.
At the very least, I should be able to post some highlights of Ted's story here - the recording volume was low, but I think it should be usable.