This will be quite long ................but its all true...............
A long time ago - waaaaaaaaaay back when I was only just bout 20ish and i had left my first husband. It was a fairly brutal break up, and it would take another 3 years to finally go through the process. I as a bit of an emotional basket case (who ME???? LOL) and to cheer me up and distract me, my mate asked me to drive her home to Newcastle for a weekend. I didn't really want to go, but she talked me into it so off we went. On the Saturday night she was adamant that we were off out to South Shields for an evening of dodgy cocktails and disco dancing (VERY dodgy looking cocktails LOL). Anyway, as I was going to be driving the next day, and its a bloomin long way back to Plymouth, I didn't go mad. Right at the end of the night, we were stood outside this kebab shop (I know, it gets worse LOL). This guy came up to me and said can I have your number. Yeah right says I.....he's, liken o, i am being serious. Pointed out that he was sober - unlike his mates, and I pointed to Sheelagh and said ditto now bugger off. Anyways, he kept on and on and i said right, you can have my address thats it, no number nothing, if you write to me i might think about writing back, but seriously don't hold your breath, i'm not interested. (Actually he was gorgeous, but I just wasn't in the mood for being chatted up - still being emotionally raw from the break up) Anyways, he wrote hisaddress down on the back of a Benson & Hedges fag packet, I wrote my address on the napkin from the kebab shop (such a class act am I) and we all went in different directions in taxis. I forgot about it until we got back to Plymouth and was unpacking and found the crumpled up ciggie box in the bottom of me holdall. I showed Sheelagh and she's like you should write to him. Anyway when I looked at the address he had given me it was written really neatly and he was, likeme, in the Air Force. Stationed at RAF Halton on a mechanical engineers fitters course. Some crafty admin detective work and I soon found out the course was a genuine one and dropped him a line saying sorry if i was a grump, not normally that rude, fee free to write back, but no funny busniess, I wasn't looking for a romatnic relationship, but that friendship would be welcome. Did I hear back from him? no of course not! proving my point to Sheelagh and I thought nothing more about him.
About 6 months later Sheelagh talks me into another adventure, off to Halton for the junior ranks christmas party, its all cool, nothing can go wrong, her mates got our tickets and we can sleep on roll mats in the girls block living room - its all squared away, we just have grab our quilts, get there and meet her mate and we are all sorted! Easy right - WRONG LOL- we get there, and i've got a migraine, so she talks to her other mate who works behind the NAAFI bar, i get thrown in the NAAFI staff TV room witha pint of water and told to stay there til i can see staright and i've stopped throwing up. An hour later I give up, the party really starts rocking and I leave the room to try and find Sheelagh. As I walk through the bar I bump into the first guy I ever went out with properly, you know the sort, the the swine that broke my heart the first time and still wanted to be friends afterwards. Aww crap, but still bumping into him has a purpose, he is the Party committee member for admnissions and in I walk without having to pay (As sheelagh and our tickets are no where to be seen this side of the entry door at the party), he buys me a lemonade and blackcurrent as he introduces his drop dead gorgeous fiance and tells me I look a bit peaky should i really be out on the tiles PMSL.
Sheelagh apears to be holding court in the middle of the dance floor, so I hovver round the bar area talking to Glynn's dolly girl when suddenly out of nowhere up pops mister wonderful from Newcastle. Sheelagh starts waving her hands in the air like noones business and runs over and gives him what felt like a twenty minute telling off for not writing back to me. I send her back to the poor bloke who's tongue is still lolling on the floor after her and he and I go and sit outside in a quieter bit of the NAAFI. And we sit and we talk an we talk and we talk til the party is over. At which point he asks me which block we are staying in and, AKA Mister Ben and the shopkeeper, Sheelagh reappears and says oooh, I forgot to tell you Erika, me mate has buggered off homeearly for Christmas to Ireland, you're either going ot have to kip in the car or tap off withsomeone to get a bed for the night, I don't know the combination for the WRAF block sorry mate, I'll meet you at 8 to get back to Plymouth, and off she skips with a different bloke, winking at me as she departs.
Oh god, i think to myself, now he is going to think that I want to go sneaking about the lads blocks with him just so I can stay warm and get some kip before the drive back - NOT HAPPENING!!!!!! LOL. So before he can even annoy me by asking, i tell him, well thats that then, i'm going to me car. Feel free tocome and wake me up at about 7.30 if you can find me inthe car park, breakfast and a coffee would be good before we head down the road.
He's having none of it. If you are going to stay in your car Erika, then I am going to stay with you. Bless. So off we trot to me car, he buys me a coffee from the cunningly placed burger van thats parked out the backof the NAAFI exit and we sit inthe car on the coldest night of the year three days before Christams leave starts and talk some more. I learn that he broke his leg playing footie and had to be shuffled onto a different course because he missed too much course work. That he's actually an OK guy, normal regular and not the deranged psycho stalker I thought he was in Newcastle and more than all of that, what i learn is that he lost my address, forgot my name, and has put RAF St Mawgan done as his first, second and third choice of posting when he finishes his course the third week in January, and that he REALLY wants to get to know me, to be my friend, and lets see where it goes.......and I want that very much.
We spend the whole night in that freezing car wrapped up like little cacoons in the quilts Sheelagh and I brought with us, and he didn't try anything on once. We exchanged addresses again, properly and neatly written in my address book, and on a piece of paper which i watched him put in his wallet. When Sheelagh pitched up to go home on Sunday morning, he held my hand and made me promise to write to him, swearing that he would write to me and post the letter whilst I was on the drive home. And yup - I swallowed it like a kipper LOL.
We got home, and Sheelagh was on and on about him for days. I wrote him a short note and posted it on the afternoon we got back, I really wanted to hear from him again.
No letter ever came from Halton, and my letter was returned to me, not known at this address. Not to be deterred, and feeling likea bit of an idiot, I asked my friend in the records office to contact her mate in the Halton records office and find out where he had been posted too - idle curiosity and all that. After 3 days sleuthing, Jan came back with the verdict that I had sent her on a wild goose chase looking for someone that didnt exists, and she was a bit pissed off with me. Impossible, ishowed her the address that he had written himself in my address book. Name, RAF Service Number, Course name and number, and the correct address and postcode for RAF Halton. Everything was correct. Then I remembered that he had said he had broken his leg and got mustered off one course, onto another one - she new a medic at Halton Training school, she'd get to the bottom of this, if only so that i could get and address and write him a strop-o-gram. Noting, nadda, nil, zip - Dave Thompson of Eng Mech A course number whatever did not exist at RAF Halton, had never existed at RAF Halton, and was not (and never had been) in this mans Royal Air Force!
Sheelagh told me he was an angel, who came to me to get me back in the mood for dating after the distater and pain of breaking up with Ian.
At first I laughed at the suggestion, but over time I came to agree with her. If he was just a bloke, trying it on, being a lad, he wouldn't have sat in that car for nearly 8 hours freezing his ass off to get absolutely no where, he would have given up after an hour and gone to his block and his nice warm bed. If he was a Jack the lad he would not have begged me to be sure and write to him and he wouldn't have been the complete gentleman that he was. To this day I have no idea what happened to him, where he vanished to. I do wonder, even now, if I dreamt it all and made it up in my mind, but I can't have done - up until I started making wedding plans with Kayleighs dad I kept his address in my address book and Sheelagh who was as frustrated and mysitified by it all would ask over and over again for me to write another letter and see if it didnt get returned. Even Jan in the records office was stumped by it, because we had all the facts relating to real courses and dates at Halton. Another thought to throw in the melting pot is that back then The terrorist threat to the military was a lot higher from the IRA, so getting into Air Force Stations was a security hurdle in itself, so it can't have been someone NOT in the air force, as he simply would not have been allowed in - and anyway,when we were in newcastle, he showed me his ID card and a credit card as proof that he was the name on the fag packet.
So what do you think? Was it an angel to make me feel good and get my life back on track, or was its an interloper just up to lads tricks? LOL
Love Erika xxxxxxxxx
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