April, 2008

As some of you already know, this website is run from an ancient Pentium-IV steam-driven 
PC in the basement of my house. It's fairly convenient when I'm on night shift and have 
some nights off work, for I can clatter away on the keyboard and even play a CD without 
disturbing the rest of the household, and it gives me something to do instead of watching 
the stupid box. 

With Christmas and the New Year out of the way, this year I was looking forward to some 
earnest catching-up, both with website updates and e-mail. Unfortunately I had reckoned 
without Mother Nature and the present government, which seemed to both conspire against me.

Our house is heated by an oil-fired furnace, the highest consumption usually occurring in 
the months January through March when the outside temperature generally doesn't get above 
freezing point even during the day. 
For the past thirty years our local oil supplier has regularly delivered on time, somehow 
using some kind of oil-supplier algorithm that helps him formulate something called degree-days 
into fill-up dates. We generally get the tank filled once in November and January, twice in 
February, twice in March, once in April and then sometimes nothing until October.
I habitually scan the chit stuck in the door after the January delivery, which not only 
indicates the next delivery will be the second week of February if my extrapolation is 
correct, but also that we have enough credit, obtained through regular monthly year-round 
contribution to his profits, to see us through the summer at least. Although we sometimes 
appear to have a fairly large credit with him, we don't mind since it allows him to buy 
forward and he passes the discount on to his regular customers.
This year, however, we got a really nasty shock. The January delivery came on 23rd, but 
the price of oil had risen so steeply that instead of being secure for the rest of the 
summer we in fact had used most of the balance and didn't have enough credit for the next 
delivery, usually only ten days away!!
Within a few minutes both zone thermostats had been turned down drastically and a chart 
posted on the oil tank gauge to show daily usage. What a fright! 
Several years ago I re-plumbed the lower zone in our house to run two small additional 
radiators in the basement, which has kept that area comfortable so long as you wore a 
sweatshirt and thick socks in the very coldest weather. Turning the thermostats down 
had the effect of lowering the basement area temperature to just above freezing, and 
even with skijackets and two pairs of thick socks it just simply wasn't bearable. 

The net result was that the website PC was left to run by itself in the cold for the rest 
of the winter without any attention from yours truly. 
Even upstairs in the house in late February the room temperature had the uncomfortable 
effect of reminding me how our house in Wiltshire almost froze in 1947 during the big 
blizzard when we ran out of coal for the kitchen range, which was the only form of 
downstairs heat.
Gina and I would huddle close to the TV under sofa throws and swap childhood memories about 
the Jack Frost patterns on the window panes and how even in the nineteen-fifties our mothers 
would allow the use of the family paraffin heater in our bedrooms only between our bedtime 
and the grow-ups'. 
Well, we shaved enough from our regular oil consumption to make it through to the next 
scheduled delivery, taking on just over half of what we would in a normal winter, but 
costing us a lot more than usual. 

Now that it's Spring and the outside temperature has risen above freezing point again 
I've been venturing downstairs periodically and look forward to getting the website 
into the shape I had envisaged for it last year. 
A couple of minor observations. 
This winter, even though the sun shines in there all morning, our cat hasn't slept on 
the old downstairs office window sill. And we didn't see the usual ladybirds 
hibernating in small groups in the workshop. Obviously it was too cold down there even 
for them.

If you have any news, stories or latest events you'd like to share I would 
very much like to hear from you, especially if you served at the same time as me 
in Blandford or Arborfield about 1958, or in Napier Barracks between 1959 and 1966. 
Or maybe if you're looking for somebody already in these pages?

My very grateful thanks to John Bosher and Mick Toogood, whose valuable assistance and
encouragement drove me to start this, to Chris Fagan for some technical and 
personnel details, and to those of you who have contributed photos, stories and personal 
memories. 

Also, many thanks for contributions from children of the members who served with us 
but who are no longer with us.