NEWS UPDATE AND NEWSLETTER PAGE

1.  News Upate

Treasurer - Sadly, Ron Davis our long time treasurer is having to retire from the post due to ill health. Dennis Patterson is taking over the role but the precess is complex so please be patient while we carry this out. A vote will be requested at the next AGM. You can contact Dennis if you have any questions but please give him time to settle in. His details are in the newsletter.

Membership List - Our membership list is now available on the membership page, go there and click the link.   Unique and private information such as address and official number have been omitted.  If you wish to contact anyone or you see a mistake get in touch with Brian Cox. July 2009.

Second appeal - If there are any members who are (or would like to be) golfers get in touch with Brian Cox.  Maybe we can set something up in the future.

Charity - Since returning from the reunion I have been in touch with Rachel Cousins and as they are once again doing the Commando Run I have suggested that we pay the £1000 we voted to Help for Heroes (H4H) via the girls again.  Rachel has agreed to have ‘HMS Collingwood Association' printed on the their team tee shirts this time so we will get some publicity from it.  Also Rachel has made a very nice mention of us on their website so please visit it and if you like you can make a private contribution.  The new website address for 2009 is www.justgiving.com/wivesdoitwetanddirty2

In the end its for the H4H charity which is a worthy cause.

Naturally I have kept your committee informed of all this and have their full support and agreement.

Membership - The committee has also agreed with a change to our membership rules, which I have been considering for some time.  I have proposed that we offer an associate level of membership to our association.  This will be by invitation so that we can bring our friends and colleagues onboard if we wish.  The new rule states that:-

Associate Membership is open, by invitation, to persons who are in sympathy with aims of the association.  Normal subscriptions are payable.  Associate members will have full voting rights and can stand for election to all committee posts except Chairman.

We will ask the next AGM to vote on this matter but in the meantime I think we must start offering this Associate Membership to any interested persons.  If you have any comments please contact me.

2.  Newsletter

Our Newsletter 'The Shipmate' is published three times a year and the following article from Bill Bailey will appear shortly.

The Blue Station Card

It was 1969 and we were ‘Mech  Apps’ (Mechanician Apprentices), recently returned to Collingwood after 18 months at sea, and about to commence the 2 year Mech’s  Course.  Duty watch was one in four; no big deal for most of us, but there were a couple of married men in the class, and they were RA,  so they wanted to get home every night to their married quarters in Rowner. Blue station cards were only awarded to a privileged few in the whole establishment, for having extraordinary skills, such as cinema projectionist or ‘tilly’ driver. No one in our class had a blue card, which of course was a source of irritation to the RAs.

Early in the course, Bob Furniss got tied up and brought his bride down from Yorkshire to live in a small rented bungalow on the Redlands estate at the back of Collingwood. A blue card was now top of the list of ‘must haves’ for him.  He explored the possibility of joining every available scam going in an effort to gain one of the elusive cards, but to no avail. He persevered, and one day got the whiff of a buzz, that the Bandmaster was looking for hands to join the Collingwood Band – AND this would entitle them to a blue card. ‘Brilliant!’ , thought Bob. However, there was a slight problem; he couldn’t read music and he couldn’t play a note on any instrument.  Not to be daunted by such a small item of detail, he went to see ‘Bandy’, a fully fledged Bootneck sergeant, who had served for many a long year in various Royal Marine bands. Bob explained that he had been a life-long afficionado of brass band music, and always attended the Black Dyke Mills Band concerts when he went up the line to his home town of Bradford. He expressed a sincere desire to learn how to play, and explained that he saw this as his golden opportunity to make a lifetime achievement and to make a positive contribution to the training establishment. Had anyone ever been so desperate for a blue card? Anyhow, Bandy bought it, but the only thing he could offer Bob was a position as a potential trombonist. “Perfect”, said Bob, as he took possession of a battered old trombone, and a copy of ‘Book 1 – Trombone for Beginners’.  Bandy also handed Bob the holy grail, the coveted blue card, with instructions to practice at home for a month, then to attend the weekly band practices where he would be brought up to the required standard as a bandsman.

The following day, Bob attended at the regulating office and flashed his shiny new blue card. He proudly announced that he had joined the band, and he was duly removed from the duty watch and station bill. He could now come and go as he pleased, and he had the prospect of having most of the next two years with no duty watches, and almost every weekend off, except for the occasional band performance. Things were looking rosy in Bob’s garden, and he was about to get another stroke of luck.

During Bob’s first month of solo practice, Bandy got a pier-head jump and was unexpectedly drafted. Bob had never been seen by, and was not known to his fellow bandsmen. He had never attended a muster or practice with the band, and so far as he could gauge (which turned out to be correct), his details had not been included on Bandy’s list of bandsmen. Accordingly, when the new Bandy arrived, Bob was a total non entity, so far as band duty was concerned. Bob made no moves to introduce himself to Bandy and the band, and he totally 'forgot’ to attend band practices! The trombone gathered dust in Bob’s wardrobe at home. It seemed that the only people who knew that Bob was in the band were us, his classmates – or so we believed!

Alas, the day of the first of several ceremonial divisions arrived. The class fell in, along with dozens of others on Collingwood’s massive parade ground. The class leader reported ‘all but one, present and correct’, and stated that one of our number was absent, in the band. Of course, we were all in best No 1s, and Bob had been seen shortly before the parade, heading in the general direction of the band hut, similarly dressed, and obviously prepared to march on with the band. We were never close enough to the band to be able to see them clearly. We wouldn’t have seen Bob in any event, as he wasn’t there!  He had found for himself a secret caboose where he could make himself scarce, but we never knew that.......and, at that time, Bob certainly wasn’t telling anyone.

The class was drafted to Whale Island and HMS Vernon for several weeks of instruction on weapon and missile systems. Bob’s RA status and trusty blue card were honoured there. He went home every night from Pompey to Fareham, and was always bright eyed and bushy tailed the next day – well, almost, when he hadn’t been overdoing it with his home brew. Meanwhile, the rest of us were doing duty watches and there was no escaping the first, middle and morning watches, even whilst on course, at those nasty dabtoe establishments.  We eventually returned to Collingwood, and another couple of ceremonial divisions came and went. Same procedure for Bob; he had a better number than the skipper!

Towards the end of Mech’s Course, a really big day arrived. We were visited by an admiral, and following admiral’s rounds of various departments and accommodation blocks, we had the world’s biggest ceremonial divisions.  We fell in on parade as usual, and Bob was reported as being absent from the class on band duty.  Meanwhile, the guard and band were beginning to muster near the parade ground, preparing to march on. Coincidentally, an RPO was skirmishing in the Mech Apps’ accommodation blocks, looking for whatever crushers can find. Lo and behold, he found Bob, who was resplendent in his No 1s, clutching his trombone! Now, you’ll bear in mind that Bob was RA, so he didn’t belong to any of the grotts in the new four storey accommodation. He would clearly have some explaining to do.

“What the **** are you doing here,” bellowed the RPO. “You’re adrift!”

“I was having a problem with my trombone, RPO, but I think it’s alright now,” replied a rather startled Bob.

“You’d better move yourself at the double, the parade is about to start,” was the crusher’s response. Luckily for Bob, the questioning never got any deeper.

Bob didn’t delay. It was in his best interests not to engage in further conversation with this member of the regulating branch. At the double, he bolted for the edge of the parade ground and made it to the rear ranks of the band, just as Bandy was calling them to the ‘Ho!’ He muscled into the centre of the rear echelon, and got some funny looks from his fellow bandsmen as they had to adjust their ranks and dressing to make room for him. Perhaps they simply thought that a virtuoso Mech App trombonist was joining them for an impromptu performance? Ah well, no time for discussion or debate, as the command, “Guard and band, by the centre, quick march”, was given.  And they were off; drummers drumming, buglers bugling, clarinettists doing what clarinet players do, and at least one trombonist who was miming for England! The band eventually took up its usual position, in front of the dias, in the centre of the parade ground.  One tune followed another as the guard and classes were inspected. Bob was trying to keep a low profile, out of the eyeline of Bandy, who waved his baton as he pored his beady eye over his flock of musicians. And then Bandy pinged him! The more that Bob looked down or tried to hide his face behind the head of the man in front, the more that Bandy swayed from the vertical to keep him within view. Bob got that horrible feeling of the bottom falling out of his world, or was it the other way about? It looked as though the game was up for Bob, but he continued with his faultless trombone mime.

The band, of course, were the last to march off the parade. They halted outside of the band hut. The order to dismiss was immediately followed by Bandy’s rather firm command, bawled directly in Bob’s direction, “You. Report to me!”  Bob, hanging on to his trombone, stood to attention in front of Bandy. “Who are you?” twitched Bandy. Bob sensed that all was not well.

“I’m learning trombone so that I can join the band,” replied Bob, trying to avoid any incriminating response.

“Learning? What do you mean, learning,” barked Bandy. “Play something. Play something for me, now!”

Bob duly raised the trombone to his lips, and squeezed out a rather discordant rendering of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, as featured in Book 1 for trombone beginners. There was no chance that he could create a tune remotely resembling anything that the band had played.  The steam, by now, was escaping from under the Bootneck’s helmet.  After shaving off at Bob, for what seemed like an eternity, he finally got Bob’s explanation.  Bob simply told him that he wanted to be a musician, but after much long, hard practice, he didn’t think that he was cut out for it, and he couldn’t grasp the intricacies of the trombone. He apologised profusely, but said nothing about his blue card or how he had avoided duties for the best part of the last two years – and Bandy never introduced that as a topic for debate. Bob handed back his trombone, but still managed to keep his blue card for a few more weeks, until Mech’s Course had finished!

Postscript:  Bob told this dit at one of our recent annual class reunions. He had kept it under his hat for almost 40 years.

John E ‘Bill’ Bailey

Ex-OE Mech’s Course 59