Team training in 1993, what a flight this was, as you are about to discover we were nearly sent back to the UK before we had even put our feet on Cypriot soil.
The whole team arrived at Heathrow for a BA flight to Cyprus for a winter training trip at Kingsfield Airstrip.
On arrival at the airport Charlie Hartigan’s girlfriend " who worked for BA " had the whole team upgraded to first class, with that we were escorted en mass to the first class lounge and the mother of all bars ( free bar ), so telling the guy's
to have a drink but don't kick the arse out of it and 3hrs to wait before boarding was pointless, anyway the word went around to screw the nut........yeah right.
After 3 hrs and a few light ales, we carried as much " duty free’s " from the bar as we could carry and chinked our merry way up the gangway and poured our self’s on the airplane.
During take off I fell asleep, where the TSM Bob Baker who was sat next to me decided to amuse himself by drawing all over my face in black ink, I woke up 10 minutes later needing to take a leak, so pushing my way through the grinning group of beer swilling bandits made my way to the loo enroute there I came across a little lady struggling to get a case down so I reached up to help her, when she turned to thank me this loud high pitched blood curdling scream came out of her mouth, which made me and every one around us jump and look at me ( like I've got 2 heads )
The photo was taken at this point, to the teams obvious delight, at this point Gerry Zemlo pointing in photo went back to his seat and sat down reclining his chair the woman behind him took offence and really started causing a fuss, so a complaint was lodged the Team Commander Captain Terry Carroll was called and Gerry had to do some serious brown nosing to appease the woman "even though he was innocent of any charge".
We landed at Larnaka and on leaving the aircraft as the ( large ) woman was going through the door when a voice popped up from the general din " Yer fat cow ", well it turned out ye ol large moma was non other than the British Embassador's wife to Cyprus.
Gerry got the blame for it but every body knew it was squealer (John Wheeler), the next day TC and Bob were hauled in front of the
Embassador ..........................and shredded...... suffice to say there were no Ferrero Rocher offered.
We did a lot of Hospital and School demo's to get back in the good books, which worked well.
The rest of the trip was great, loadsa sunshine and jumps with no more hic up's,
and I thought you had forgot about THE FAT COW.........