From: "Andy" <as-AT-spelthorne.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Resolutions/Is there a doctor in the house?
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 17:23:45 -0000



>Hmmm. Reminds me of back when I was defending you all from the Twin commie
>Monoliths.

Did I ever thank you for that? At the time the only US citizens I knew were
patriotic rich boys taking extended study leave in the UK. I think they were
preparing themselves and educating themselves to be more effective fighting
machines, just like Bill Clinton.


>Everytime a U$ chopper would go crash from our airfield all of
>the supply sergeants would burn up the phone line trying to find out if
>the thing burned completely.  If it had they then made up a list of every
>item they had missing and would crank out a flight inventory listing all
>of the items, claiming they were on the crashed and burned chopper.
>carp


On the same lines, but with fewer implications for NATO and the safety of
the West [though Vietnam was still in full swing] and with slightly more
realism about the contents, I used to work in a customs and excise bonded
warehouse for beers, spirits and wines, owned by a company called Capital
Wines and Travers who have since gone out of business. When the booze came
out of the bonded warehouse to go to the main packing place, there were
frequent forklift truck accidents involving breakages. As soon as the sound
of breaking glass was heard, people would miraculously appear from all
corners of the site, and in a wonderful display of mutuality and comradely
co-operation, without any overt organisation or leadership, some would
trample the broken glass into the concrete so that you couldn't tell how
many bottles were broken, others would distract the security guards, others
would keep watch, and one or two would liberate as feasibly large a number
of unbroken bottles as possible [to be written off as breakages] into the
surrounding trees to be re-distributed to the community later. Never any
arguments about pay off etc. A marvel of informal organisation against
capitalism and the state.

Thus many a person was introduced to the delights of vintage port, amazingly
strong polish vodka, aging brandy, continental beers of all persuasions,
fine wines, burgundies, clarets etc etc.

One of the best aspects of this job was checking the wines for secondary
fermentation. Shake the bottles and the corks go off like a bullet. We got
really accurate over about 20 yards. I suppose it was just gun envy.

Andy