Dear Sarge, I was shipped off to my grandmas when I was young as my mother had to have two replacement discs in her spine which at that time was a ground breaking operation. My grandma lived on Blubberhouse moor in Yorkshire which is a very dangerous place, to say the least. It has claimed untold lives as people will not obey the signs when it tells them not to go onto this bit of the moor as there are bogs, they do, never to return. You cannot really compare the prices here to the USA as wages and things are different. Due to our very strict meat hygiene laws meat is expensive, whereas vegetables are very cheap. Petrol\gas is $9.50 a gallon and anything you buy has Value Added Tax on it at 17,5%. But the wages match the cost of things, For instance a bus driver will take home just over $1200 for a five day week and that is 6 hours a day! A computer help-desk person is on about $65,000 a year and a good secretary about $80-90,000+. I have been all over the world and this happens everywhere you go, some things that are cheap where you live are expensive overseas and other things are not. In Germany Electrical goods like stereos and cameras etc., are ridiculously cheap, yet a loaf of bread costs a fortune!
I think the best time I had was when I was sent to my Uncles at Bovington Army camp in Dorset. He was a Regimental Sergeant Major so was like God to everyone on the base. he was an extremely big and fearsome man, luckily we got on as I was in the Army cadets so knew the rules. It was great being with him as he had ultimate power and even the officers shook when he was near them.
I remember once that he sent me to the back door of the Sergeants mess to get him some beers and a stroppy Lance Corporal was rude to me and refused to let me have his beer. So i went home and told him and he was not amused as he was looking forward to his beer, he went mad (not at me), stormed up the mess with me and took me in the front which I am not allowed. He ripped this Corporal to shreds and jailed him for seven days I had know trouble getting his beer for him after that!
Sarge I won the World Rowing Championship in coxed fours whilst in the Army so have a Gold medal. two silvers and a Gold medal I won at the Chelsea Flower show, which is the most famous in the world, and many other things. I am not rich and neither do I wish to be, but I am happy and have a wonderful wife and money cannot buy that!
I was awarded an Honorary PhD. for my work on a saltmarsh, not that I use the title, I just was given it through hard work.
Sarge nobody said it was going to be easy.; in fact I feel sorry for people who get everything handed on a silver plate to them, for to me they have never lived.
Regards to all.
Neil.
p.s. I found this old picture of us in Germany. I am the last one on the right on top of a Scimitar on the radio with a map in my hand.
