Agree – but nice to make it this far for us Octo’s. Hope there are many more happy years for you both.
You both look really good we have another 7 years to catch up to you
Hello dear Kiwi’s and greetings.
I knew this lovely couple way back in 1972 [wow, that’s 50 years ago, when Neal travelled to the UK to undergo the famous, demanding and arduous RN RCI Course. He brought with him his wife Mary Ann, Grant his son and his mother-in-law. I was the course instructor so it was down to me to look after Neal’s wants and requirements, and my dear wife Beryl, looked after the family helping them to settle in, and to come to terms with our strange habits and customs. Neal passed that course with flying colours, and using that word again, thereafter he was a flier in everything he did and touched, naval and civilian. Much later on, Neal and Mary Ann did a European tour part of which for us, was the sheer pleasure of hosting this super pair with a couple of nights stay over at our pad in Southsea near Portsmouth. They were lovely then and all these years later, we can safely say they still are. True 80 is just a number but there are numbers and numbers and they shine, literally. BZ, and may they still be around and doing well when they are nonagenarians and plus. May lady luck be your constant companion. Greetings and much love. Beryl and Godfrey [aka Jeff] Dykes UK.
Many congratulations to Mary Ann and Neal! They haven’t changed a bit. Well, maybe a bit, but the bits that we can see are in fine fettle. It’s now 50-years since we met, when the world was a slightly different place and our naval careers, which were on parallel paths, converged with the RN RCI course at HMS Mercury. Neal and I were two-thirds of a three-man syndicate at time in our lives when what went in stayed in, mostly, and readied us for the years ahead. To have struck up this friendship was a stroke of luck, for me, and it was indeed a privilege to have had the opportunity to have studied with Neal. To be selected for that highly sought-after course meant hard work, and, with Neal’s dedication and professionalism, we made it.
Ironically, the greatest challenge of the course had less to do with the mysteries of radio theory, the darker corners of communications equipment, or the finer points of management, and more to do with preparing for ceremonial divisions. One Friday, we each went home to change into No 1s, and, stopping off to collect the freshly booted and spurred Neal, I was alarmed at the sight through a window of Mary Ann and her mother holding a knife and fork to his throat. Was it what it seemed or just a bump in the road of domestic harmony? Filling myself with fortitude and pluck, I enquired through the letter box if everything was alright. Long story short, the ladies, it turned out, were simply assisting in fitting a stiff, detached collar to Neal’s shirt in readiness for divisions, the cutlery serving as improvised means of leverage. The anatomical structure of Neal’s thyroid cartilage serving as a fulcrum.
Happily, we all survived, the collar, more or less attached, and the RCI course, more or less in step when marching past. Unhappily, all this occurred many years before we were all armed with cameras, permanently connected to everyone on Earth, and viral was something pathological. Despite all that, we remain in close touch, in a shrunken world where communications are far superior to what we ever knew or imagined, and we are still here.
Again, congratulations my friends, with much love from an uncharacteristically hot England.
John and Joan Littlefield.
Congratulations Neal – you still have that grin I remember very well during our time at Northhead.
Agree – but nice to make it this far for us Octo’s. Hope there are many more happy years for you both.
You both look really good we have another 7 years to catch up to you
Hello dear Kiwi’s and greetings.
I knew this lovely couple way back in 1972 [wow, that’s 50 years ago, when Neal travelled to the UK to undergo the famous, demanding and arduous RN RCI Course. He brought with him his wife Mary Ann, Grant his son and his mother-in-law. I was the course instructor so it was down to me to look after Neal’s wants and requirements, and my dear wife Beryl, looked after the family helping them to settle in, and to come to terms with our strange habits and customs. Neal passed that course with flying colours, and using that word again, thereafter he was a flier in everything he did and touched, naval and civilian. Much later on, Neal and Mary Ann did a European tour part of which for us, was the sheer pleasure of hosting this super pair with a couple of nights stay over at our pad in Southsea near Portsmouth. They were lovely then and all these years later, we can safely say they still are. True 80 is just a number but there are numbers and numbers and they shine, literally. BZ, and may they still be around and doing well when they are nonagenarians and plus. May lady luck be your constant companion. Greetings and much love. Beryl and Godfrey [aka Jeff] Dykes UK.
Many congratulations to Mary Ann and Neal! They haven’t changed a bit. Well, maybe a bit, but the bits that we can see are in fine fettle. It’s now 50-years since we met, when the world was a slightly different place and our naval careers, which were on parallel paths, converged with the RN RCI course at HMS Mercury. Neal and I were two-thirds of a three-man syndicate at time in our lives when what went in stayed in, mostly, and readied us for the years ahead. To have struck up this friendship was a stroke of luck, for me, and it was indeed a privilege to have had the opportunity to have studied with Neal. To be selected for that highly sought-after course meant hard work, and, with Neal’s dedication and professionalism, we made it.
Ironically, the greatest challenge of the course had less to do with the mysteries of radio theory, the darker corners of communications equipment, or the finer points of management, and more to do with preparing for ceremonial divisions. One Friday, we each went home to change into No 1s, and, stopping off to collect the freshly booted and spurred Neal, I was alarmed at the sight through a window of Mary Ann and her mother holding a knife and fork to his throat. Was it what it seemed or just a bump in the road of domestic harmony? Filling myself with fortitude and pluck, I enquired through the letter box if everything was alright. Long story short, the ladies, it turned out, were simply assisting in fitting a stiff, detached collar to Neal’s shirt in readiness for divisions, the cutlery serving as improvised means of leverage. The anatomical structure of Neal’s thyroid cartilage serving as a fulcrum.
Happily, we all survived, the collar, more or less attached, and the RCI course, more or less in step when marching past. Unhappily, all this occurred many years before we were all armed with cameras, permanently connected to everyone on Earth, and viral was something pathological. Despite all that, we remain in close touch, in a shrunken world where communications are far superior to what we ever knew or imagined, and we are still here.
Again, congratulations my friends, with much love from an uncharacteristically hot England.
John and Joan Littlefield.
Congratulations Neal – you still have that grin I remember very well during our time at Northhead.
Well done you two.