Just a note on Mac Cutting, I don't remember him being at the Victory reunion, which was arranged jointly by me as CO and Frank Nowosielski, who was at the time my First Lieutenant, and we could not have done it without the help of Sandy Jones who was at the BBC and go the message out on all local radio in UK! Where was social media when you needed it,
For Spud, Bryn Telfer was with Intrepid as Commander (he got a mention in dispatches for all that), he was tasked with getting the ship out of semi reserve then the captain Peter Dingemans took over. At that time I was senior warfare officer of Fearless having joined on April 2 1982 as a pier head jump! I then left the ship in late June 82 and worked ashore in Stanley for 6 weeks before joining Invincible as First Lieutenant which is where I met Mac Cutting for the last time. He had relieved Ginge Trent ( I did not know him) Mac Cutting and I together with David Strike had a great mini reunion in Sydney Christmas 1983. I was then, in that crazy world, sent to drive Abdiel, great ship ships company of 128, up to 150 when we had MCM commander on board. So what with that and a commando sqdn, 845 as staff officer and other jobs, I had a somewhat different life from the Met branch. Yet when I sit down with Dave Pegg and we talk about our time in the Branch we realize we were lucky to be in a great branch, smallest in the RN and great job satisfaction, only difference between us, he got Herbert Lott awards for recorded marks in his Met 2s and then again in his Met1s and a uni degree in oceanography whilst at Northward in the oceanographic section, Sups and execps throughout his time then on leaving a HND in electronics followed by his own building company...meanwhile I finally passed Met2 with aver pass and Met 1s with 71% (Bogey Knight got 72%!) and just sats (one Mod). But my best ever job remains Tiger 61 - 63 joined at 17 to an empty office and used W7 to fill it up! I think I was one of the last to have that draft as a single met..long hours...Sorry all bit of a rant but wll adds up to a great 33 years....Saw Yeovil met office on box last night, nobody plotting charts!!! Temp on my screened patio yesterday 44.1C!
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