Importance…

I do try, but generally, my admin is shocking. I know you’d expect a member of the RAF and the armed forces in general to be good at admin, and to be sorted and stuff, but sadly, I think I am a little bit to ‘right brained’ for that.

My worst thing is paperwork…I try, but I lose paperwork. And the very worst for me is car paperwork – insurance documents, MOT’s that sort of thing, so that each year when the old Car Tax comes around, I have a mad panic trying to find the right bits of paper so that I can get my Tax disc…

But I know that this isn’t true for everyone, and I have a theory that the amount of paperwork you have is inversely proportional to the importance you place on it. So, there I am, with wads of paperwork…a form for this, a paper for that…and they end up all over the place. Each important paper has an important place for it…not that I can remember where each one is.

But I was shown a different way out in Afghan. The main bulk of my job was dealing face-to-face with locals, with their problems, their desires for building projects, claims for damages caused by our troops out on the ground.

And bits of paper were amazingly important to the locals. And with a piece of paper, even though the vast, vast majority of the people couldn’t read what was on the paper – be it in English or even written in Pashtu by one of the interpreters, it was the most important thing in the world.

Even when comparing it to money – it was worth more to them. It became power. It became credibility. It became a promise.

The usual case would be, for instance, a patrol would walk across a field, and a farmer would come up to them and ask if the government would help to build a well for his farm and the surrounding compounds. In the area we were, at the time, there was very little government representation and so the locals would use the British as a conduit to get information to their representatives. The Patrol Commander would give the farmer a bit of paper with the details on – exactly where the well would be, who would be building it, how many people would benefit…and so on. And then the farmer would LOOK AFTER THAT BIT OF PAPER.

And when I say LOOK AFTER, I mean guard with his life. It became more important than we would treat our passport. More important than anything. Despite it being just a scrap out of a notebook that was scrawled in tricky handwriting because writing is difficult in thick gloves, with a rifle in your hand bent on a knee in a field, it was treated like some ancient and valuable manuscript by the Afghan. The local would then keep it safe and bring it long to a ‘projects clinic’ held by me at the Check Point where I would collate all the details of potential projects, interview the local, and write a submission for the project to go off to the government so that they could make a decision about which one to build.

I often was giving out these ‘chits’ as we called them and once I had written it down the local would always treat the paper the same way, in fact the farmer would always do exactly the same thing.

After giving the chit to the man, he would always look at it, as though he was reading it. Smile broadly, and wave it a gently in the air. He would then reach inside his jacket pocket – local farmers out there always worse a single or double breasted suit type jacket over the top of their traditional ‘dish-dashes’ (even in the high summer) – and pull out a small plastic bag. Maybe like a money bag used at the bank. Or maybe like a ‘plastic pocket’ that students use at collage, maybe just a thin, clear, plastic bag. He would then take the paper and fold it just once or twice, and then place in reverently in the bag and return the bag to his jacket and pat the pocket saying ‘Manana’ (Pashtu for ‘thank you’).

And the following Monday morning at the projects clinic the man would turn up – having come straight from farming in his fields, often barefoot, most of the time with filthy hands, covered with the rich Helmandi soil, and sit down in front of me and fish out the paper and pass it to me.

I was always amazed that even though the farmers lived in very poor conditions, with very poor houses, often un-educated, that the paper would still be pristine, perfect. The paper was more important than anything.

The movement of pieces of paper was amazing, and the importance placed on them was incredible. ‘He wants a chit’ would be one of the common phrases that the interpreters would say to me, so much that I quickly learned what it was and often, when they were asking for a chit for damage (that often hadn’t actually been caused by us) to a compound or a field, then I would, without the need for a ‘terp be able to say ‘Ya! Ya chit!’ – (No! No Chit!) and go on our way.

Project chits were important to the locals, but by far the most important to them were when I had to give out a cut for genuine damage. Take, for instance, early in the tour of the Rifles lads, who were learning to drive the massive Huskey vehicles through the tiny, twist-turny streets of the villages. Occasionally the drivers would not quite make it round a bend without clipping a building and damaging it. Here the local would rightly make a claims complaint. He wall might be knocked down or his door frame damaged. And as we had caused the damage we would have to pay to put it right.

The proper procedure would be for a claims form to be raised and given to the owner of the building and he would go along to Lashkah Gar to get his money to repair. I would fill in this form, providing evidence of the damage and proof that it had been caused by us and then give this to the local. This paperwork – several pages of form (god bless bureaucracy!) would be treated with reverence folded and placed in that same small plastic bag and looked after as though lives depended upon it.

It’s a good lesson really. Maybe I should follow their lead. They never lost any paper. They always knew where to find the important paperwork. They wouldn’t spend hours searching through drawers and folders and envelopes searching for their MOT documents…to make sure that those bits of paper that are really important to me are kept safe…I should just get a small plastic bag…

Hard…

“We choose to go…not because they are easy – but because they are hard!”

John F Kennedy and his speech-writers were spot on.

It’s easy to do nothing. It’s easy to just sit here. It’s hard to get out there and do stuff. But am I tough enough. Since I started my training for the London Marathon in April, I have seriously upped my running mileage. Even in the early weeks of my training programme I have doubled my running distances and it’s already having a bit of a toll.

You see as regular blog readers will remember from ages ago, I have dodgy-knees. Like many in the Forces (and not just the RAF I noticed, during my time working with the Army) I have developed injured and painful knees. Now this MAY have been brought on by a family history of dodgy knees – my Mother, Brother and one of my Sisters have a similar problem – but it might also be due to spending the early years of my working life on my knees crawling around under Tornados.

The worst job I remember was fitting one particularly heavy box to a door panel that was as close to the centre of the underneath of the fuselage as you could get – a box weighing some 15kgs. It had to be man-handled into position whilst you were on your knees under the middle of the aircraft. And these were back in the days of very little H&S and Protective Equipment – knee pads. And after fitting the box in place there was the usual myriad of connections and wires to fit to it.

This though was fairly easy compared to the Armourers who used to have to crawl underneath fitting the Missiles to the aircraft. I pity their knees now…

But anyway, the running. Despite getting my trainers fitted correctly to match my running gait, despite replacing the insoles inside the new trainers with shock-absorbing insoles, despite wearing knee strapping…the running hurts. But it’s got to be done. I could quit. But why? A little discomfort that will go as I increase the strength in my leg muscles and my legs get used to the increased milage? It’s worthwhile.

Because I must push myself. As I said it’s easy to NOT go running. It’s the hardest thing in the world at times, when I have not been sleeping well (another issue), and I have an hours journey home to see my wife, and still have work to do in the office and have to help my wife look after my 2 year old daughter. It’s hard to get out there. It’s hard to build up the enthusiasm to get the running gear on and go. And it’s hard when you know that it hurts, and that it will hurt.

But this is where Kennedy’s quote come it. I chose to do this. Not because it will be easy, but because it is hard. I have had an easy life. It’s been fairly privileged, and I have had pretty much what I wanted when I wanted it. I’ve not really had to struggle for a lot. But whilst what I am doing appears hard. There are always people out there who have it harder.

There are carers who simply can’t just decide to stop caring for their sick, ill or injured loved one…and who get no respite, day after day, day and night. There are those who are sick themselves – facing huge struggles to try and get better; to overcome life-threatening illnesses. A struggle that they just can’t give up…or else their life will be over.

There are those who are injured. People I know, people I worked with, people I shared time with, out in Afghan who were injured out there. Double amputees who face the struggle to try and rebuild their lives. They can’t just give up. They HAVE to go on.

So whilst it appears hard to me…it’s not really. In relation to these and their struggles mine is a trifle. Just put your trainers on and get out there…and that is when I do, I am doing it to aid the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund. Please take the time to drop by my sponsorship page, because the RAFBF is helping those people I have listed here. They are helping the people who have serious, hard, sometimes insurmountable struggles.

Yeah, my knees hurt and my legs are aching, but I can still run. The feeling of being out there, in the air, the wind, the cold, the pounding on my feet on the roads, the music from my iPod in my ears…it’s not that hard…it’s fairly easy. And with a bit more training and a bit more strength work on my legs the pain will go. And if I keep running and you keep donating then maybe we can help some people let go a bit of their pain. Get some respite, get some care…get themselves a little bit better.

Beginning of (another) Great Adventure…

Life is an adventure.

I believe this quite firmly.  I think that we can either get on with life or it can just fly past us.

I didn’t always think this way. Once I was quite happy to potter on and let life happen around me.  It wasn’t an adventure, it was a meander. A gentle sway through the world.

And this is ok.  If that is you, then fine! That is what you want – good for you.  But (and this is getting a bit needlessly ‘Trainspotting-esque’ here) I chose not to think that way. I choose to live life to the full.  To do as much as possible.  To get a lot of ‘experiences’ in my bag so that (a) I can bore my grand-children to death about it and (b) hope that it might make me as better and as good a ‘me’ as I can be.

That was why I chose to go to Afghan last year.  It was a year long marathon that took me well outside my comfort zone.  It pushed me to the edge of me physically – and one rainy night on the Training Land just behind Corunna Barracks it pushed me to the edge of me mentally.  I was close to quitting that night. But I got a lot of support from the lads and lasses I was with and I had a sleep and a laugh at the situation I had gotten myself into and realised…THIS was living.  I realised that in the long run I wanted to go to Afghan to prove to help the people over there.  And if that meant it tested me to the limit, so be it.

Me Versus Afghan.  Me Versus IEDs, being shot at, living in the back of beyond with few comforts.  Me seeing things and doing things that would scare my mum (if she’d have been around to see it) and me testing myself against myself to see if I can measure up. Sort of Me  Versus Me.

And I did all that.  I found that at times I didn’t measure up to what I wanted to be, but HEY! Life is an adventure and it takes you to places. That means it’s also a bit of a journey (oh God, this is getting all ‘X-factor’ now!) and we learn things on the way. I am not at the end of my my adventure (life) and so I still have things to learn about myself…so I can do more stuff and learn more about me and embody my maxim that ‘Experience isn’t something you have – it’s something you use’.

I want to keep pushing myself and keep testing myself. And that is why I have just started another adventure.

I am running the 2012 Virgin London Marathon.  In April. The 22nd. That’s just 107 days away.

Now I am not a very fit guy. I am not a fast guy, but I like to think I have stamina.  I don’t go fast, but I plod and I get there.  And I need something to drive me – to push me on.  So running a marathon is not too crazy an idea for me.  I might not do it fast, and it might hurt me to do it, but I think it is – like going to Afghan was – an achievable aim.  It holds risks (not life-threatening obviously) and challenges, and it needs me to become more focussed, more determined, more dedicated – AND THIS IS A GOOD THING FOR ME.

And I am doing it for a charity too of course.  I am doing it for the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund – who’s aim is to support the RAF family whenever and wherever it is needed. My family has a bit of history with the RAFBF – my father received help from them in the past when he needed it.  He was still serving at the time and a family tragedy meant that he needed help and support. The RAFBF provided that help and support. So I feel we sort of owe them.

And if I can help them and that help is by running a marathon…then I will! And of course this means that you can too.  When I was in Afghan, blog readers and Twitter followers were very kind, generous and supportive.  From messages of goodwill through to sending me out ‘welfare’ and ‘goodie’ boxes (which I enjoyed eating and sharing around with my fellows at the Check Point) you all helped and supported me out there.

And once again I ask you to help and support me.  You can of course provide me with encouragement and support – and call me out when I don’t want to go for a run on a wet and windy Sunday morning – but you can also support me AND the RAF Benevolent Fund by sponsoring me to complete the run.  You can visit my charity donations web-page here - www.virginmoneygiving.com/RAFairman Please, anything that you can give would be amazing and will go a long way to help those people who are part of the RAF family who require a little help in their time of need.

And of course, as I undertake this adventure – this journey – I will be keeping you informed on here with tales of my training, and if possible stories of how the RAFBF has helped and continues to help those Airmen and Airwomen who need it.

It’s Not What’s Under The Tree…

‘It’s not whats under the tree than matters, it’s who’s around it…’

I heard that on an advert tonight as I was trying to think of a way of starting this blog. And I realised…

The tag line is right. It doesn’t matter what’s under the tree, what goodies, what loot, what gizzits you get. It’s who is there to share them with you.

I have had a hell of a year. It’s said that age brings the years on faster and they seem to go by at greater speed as you get older. Well, if that is true, I must be a hundred years old. This year has spun past me a a rate that I can hardly handle. It’s spun past ME. For other people in my family it crawled. For my girlfriend it dragged and dragged. For my eldest sister, it consisted of pretty much 6 months of constant and continuous worry and anxiety. And all this was my fault.

I was the one who was out in Afghan, or preparing for Afghan, or travelling to Afghan, to thinking about Afghan. And I was the lucky one who was there to have it first hand – in full glorious technicolour, widescreen…IMAX, with Dolby stereo and digitally enhanced surround sound. With smelly vision. IN 3D.

For me it was a blur. It went past so fast it felt like I was spinning and although I write this on the 17^th December, to me, it feels like sometime in, ohhhh, about September – a very cold September I’ll give you, but it just doesn’t feel like the end of the year. It can’t be. The time has just whoosed by me so bloody fast.

One moment I am in a field on Salisbury Plain. The next walking along a dirt track in Afghan. The next I am in a shopping centre in Woking. Bizarre.

March to July to November. The blink of an eye. And it’s odd, because even though it went so fast for me, each event seems seared onto my memory. Of meeting my first Afghan local. A man named Buykhan. He held a bird in his hand – a small Starling sized bird, with it’s wings clipped that he ckept in a cloth cowl over the end of his arm. We chatted through my interpreter and I told him my little daughter would love to see the animal and then every time in the future, up to almost the last day I was there, he kept offering me a bird to bring home.

And then there was a guy named Darro Khan; a quiet reserved elder who I had the greatest respect for. He was a retired Afghan National Police commander, who was now making his living from farming the rich Helmandi soil. He spoke to me about the school we were trying to get built – in the face of what seemed like a roadblock of opposition from the Insurgents (who see schools for what they are – a way of eductaing the people about the world and giving the children options for the future) and from many unscrupulous local contractors (who see it as an opportunity to suck money out of the rich westerners).

Darro stood there and thanked me for what I had tried to do. For continuing the work of my predicessor in keeping th ebuild going, and for passing it onto my replacement who would complete the build. He said that the school was a sign of the fact that Afghan was growing, and was developing and was changing. That people wanted the school and they wanted their children educated. He said that he had grown up in a country at war, and he didn’t want that for the next generation. He wanted peace and the only way to make sure that peace lasted was by building schools and educating the children.

He’s right, and whilst I was disappointed not to have completed the build of the school and not to have seen children being taught in there regularly, it is on it’s way to being complete and one day, you never know, a future President of Afghanistan may be eduacted in there. Or a doctor. Or an engineer. Or a nurse, or even maybe a mid-wife. People who will build and keep Afghanistan growing. That’d be something.

And here I am now at home. Sitting looking at the twinking lights of the Christmas tree. Taking a sip of a beer and listening to a bit of Jonah Lewie on my iPod. I am a lucky lad. Upstairs, my wife to be is putting my daughter to bed. I am so very lucky to have all this. Tomorrow I see my (almost) grown up kids, and the rest of my family. My brother and sisters; my nephews, nieces and my grand-nephews. We gather to fullfil a promise to my mother that we would meet, coming together from all over the country at least once a year. To be thankful that we still do have each other.

And we still do. But in this I am so very lucky. I went out there and I did some stuff with a lot of other people who were better than I, and I came home. I will gather around a tree with my family and thank all that is holy for all the blessings of a family; my worrysome eldest sister, my grumpy brother, my other sister who struggles to make ends meet. I’ll raise a glass to each one of them.

Each year, I have taken to writing a Christmas blog and it being a list of those who have died that year. This year I don’t intend to. This year I will tell you about just two.

One was a Corporal who was the 2ic of a multiple – a patrol of men – who shared a Check Point with me. He loved Spurs. He was one of the most professional soldiers I met out there, but he was also one of the funniest men I have ever met. I would often see him walk past the front of my tent to go and pour a bucket of cooling water from the well over him on the really hot days and I remember sitting next to him on the internet machines as he spent time looking for a new, bigger car for his growing family. He hit an IED, and died, whilst guiding an EOD team in to exploit a cache of weapons found by an earlier team.

The second was a Lance Corporal and was a battlefield replacement, sent out to fill the gaps caused by other injured men sent home. He was one of the Joint Fires Team and was based at a Check Point I had helped establish in May, but one I then very rarely visited. As a mortar controller, it meant he was often on patrol and he was a regular visitor down at the CP where I lived. A livewire and a chatterbox, he spoke enthusiastically to anyone who would listen. I remember chatting to him about him being one of the few who would wear gear strapped to his leg. He was shot, and died, whilst out on patrol in the North of our Area of Responsibility.

I will drink to the memory of these two lads who I had the honour to serve with. And to their families who must miss them each day, but even more at this time of year. These two were better men than I could ever hope to be. Braver, stronger, fitter. They were, as the motto of their regiment, The Rifles, says, Swift and Bold. May they rest in peace and their families gain some peace and solace.

No. It’s not what’s under the tree that matters. It’s who’s around it. And sometimes those who aren’t. Please, enjoy your Christmas with your loved ones. But remember those who have fallen, and those who continue to fight, who aren’t around their trees with their loved ones. And on Christmas Day, raise a glass to them all.

Merry Christmas.

Crosswinds…

The weather recently has been truly terrible for some. Down here in the south of England it’s not been too bad, but in the north of Britain I understand that the storms have been really bad, with very high winds – so high that even a wind turbine exploded because of it and there is a fabulous picture showing an aircraft making a landing where each wheel touched the ground one after another; left wheel, right wheel and then nose wheels…rather than the more standard main gear and then nose gear. It certainly makes for a bumpy landing, AND it certainly takes a lot of skill on the pilots behalf to do.

I saw this sort of landing for myself once, but done by a much smaller aircraft – the Tornado F3 jet. It was back in my days working on 29(F) Squadron and we were undertaking a ‘trail’ back home from a deployment out in America. I was lucky enough to be selected to be on the ‘Trail’ rather than on the main body of transport home.

The trail is the route that the aircraft take to come home, particularly if it is a long journey. It normally consists of an ‘Advance Party’ sent on a Herc C-130 or C-17, the ‘Main’ consisting of the majority of the squadron being deployed and the aircraft themselves, and then a ‘Rear’ or ‘Sweeper’ party following along. Generally the Main Party of ground crew fly straight home in one go and the Advance and Sweeper look after the aircraft on route.

I was on the Advance and we’d flown ahead of the F3′s to arrive and set up a servicing team for when they arrived at each stage of the route home. We’d been in Vegas for 6 weeks (OH! the hardship!) and the trail back was a mission. Vegas to Little Rock in Arkansas for a refuelling stop, Little Rock to Bermuda for an overnighter (It’s a tough life!) and then Bermuda to Larges in the Azores for another overnighter, with the final hop being the Azores back to the UK and the base at Coningsby.

We arrived at Larges airport and found it to be…well…the best way to describe it was as just a massive flat expanse of tarmac. The ‘pan’ was just about the biggest concrete area I had ever seen, with pretty much nothing for what seemed like miles in every direction. It was a bit…desolate. The C-130 had parked itself where it had been directed and we waited for the jets.

It was already breezy.

As the afternoon wore on and we made the preparations for the aircraft to arrive (unloading a few boxes from the pallet on the Herc containing earthing leads for the aircraft, chocks and a few tool kits) the wind slowly picked up. We then received news that not all the aircraft had taken off from Bermuda. One had gone unserviceable there due to an engine fault and was being worked on by the rear party. That would follow along with the Rear Party aircraft (which luckily was capable of air-to-air refuelling (AAR) it as it went along). The rest – 5 aircraft were inbound along with the VC-10 tanker that had done their AAR.

Well, actually given a twist of fate, the VC-10 is actually FASTER than the F3′s were. The VC-10 has a ‘Super-cruise’ that means it can fly faster and higher than an F3 when cruising long distances. It basically meant that it had done it’s job of re-fuelling the smaller jets in flight, and then had left them behind and flown on to the Azores. It landed a good hour before the F3′s were due.

But this itself, had created a problem. The wind that I had talked about had also picked up out in the Atlantic and it was a head wind. It meant that the jets were fighting against the wind and were using more fuel to make progress against it. A LOT of fuel. And it transpired that they were using more fuel than they had thought and that the only place they could make it to with the fuel load they had left was the Azores. They couldn’t divert. Which was now a real problem, as the wind on the ground at Larges airport was now dangerously strong.

And it was a cross wind. The one runway at Larges was roughly at 90 degrees to the direction of the now very strong – almost gale force winds. The storm clouds were gathering, and looking really nasty and menacing, like they were planning to do some serious storming about. We, on the ground, decided to hide inside the Herc. Whilst it wasn’t raining yet, it was clear that within a very short time it was going to rain. A LOT.

People anxiously looked at the sky. And then at their watches. They looked out towards the west to see if there was any sign of the gaggle of jets. Nothing. Then the rain began. A short sharp shower. Thankfully we stayed dry on the ‘Fat Albert’ as it pelted down, and it was just a short shower. A precursor of what was to come.

And then a vehicle turned up. It was the ‘Follow Me’ van that would direct the jets to he parking slots next to us. I asked if I could sit in (I was only a young Junior Technician back in those days) and was told I could have a ride along to bring the jets back. I could also be on hand should there be any problems with the jets between landing and taxiing their parking slot.

With the Portuguese driver and a liaison officer we drove to the end of the runway and awaited the jets. He turned to me and said that the jets had a serious problem. The air traffic control were going to shut the runway! It was considered to be too dangerous for aircraft to land given the stormy conditions and the cross wind.

The only problem was that there was no-where else for the jets still airborne to go to. They were now on the vapours of their fuel tanks and given the Azores location in, pretty much the middle of no-where in the Atlantic, they had no fuel to go anywhere else. ATC couldn’t shut the airfield. The F3′s would simply HAVE to land there. Wind or no wind.

And then there they were. Five small dots on the horizon. Getting slowly larger. They wouldn’t even have enough fuel to fly over the airport and get an idea of the conditions. They would just have to come in and land. Or try to. From my viewpoint at the end of the runway I could see how they were being buffeted by the wind and how the gusts were blowing them off their landing course.

And how the pilots were having to correct for this by flying as much into the wind as they could.

Take a look up from the screen you are reading on for a second. Imagine a straight line along the floor stretching out in front of you. That’s your 12 o’clock. That’s the runway. Stick your hand out and imagine that it’s an aircraft about to land there. Normally the aircraft glides down in the straight line on top of the runway – called a glide-path – and lands on it. An imaginary line coming out of the front of you hand (itself an imaginary aircraft) lines up with the OTHER imaginary line that is the runway.

But the wind was blowing from the side, meaning that the aircraft was being blown by the wind to the side, so the lines no longer match up. To over come this the aircraft flies into the wind to correct for being blown sideways. Still with your hand out in front of you (don’t worry people around WON’T think you are mad in the slightest) imagine that the wind is blowing from your left.

So like the aircraft did, fly your hand into the wind and turn it to the left. Now imagine that the wind is really strong…really, really strong, and you’ll have to turn your hand quite a lot to the left to overcome it.

This is what the aircraft were doing. As well as being blown sideways they were now also descending, AND being hit by gusts of wind and turbulence that also pushed them up and down.

Like on a rollercoaster they flew in and down…crabbing their way through the sky at, from my view point, what looked like about 30-45 degrees to the runway. This was now really dangerous…because this angle was too much for the runway. If they touched the ground at this angle then they runway simply wasn’t wide enough for the aircraft to be able to touch it’s main gear down and then drop the nose and then steer to the right to get back in line with the runway…they’d simply shoot off the side of the narrow strip of tarmac…and crash!

A really. bad. thing.

So as they came down, one at a time, I saw quite simply the very best bit of flying I have ever seen (well, ok second best – that belonged to a Flt Lt Lee Fox who beat up the pan at Cyprus once), but was repeated five times by five different pilots.

Each one came in like the first, crabbing through the air, buffeted and blown and battered by the wind. At what looked to be terrible angle to the runway…but just at the very last minute…hell, last second…the pilot, just as the mail wheels were about to hit the floor slung the aircraft around into line with the runway.

Quickly the nose wheel came down and the aircraft decelerated down the runway to where we were waiting.

Each jet came in and did the same, each one making the best landing possible given the atrocious conditions. I marvelled at them. It must have been a hell of a ride…but not one I would particularly like to have taken. And by the faces of the pilots who, to a man, looked completely wiped out from the experience, not one they wanted to repeat.

You can keep your Red Arrows. Flying into an airport on reserve fuel, into a crosswind, after flying for hours across the Atlantic…and landing into the beginnings of a storm. Those guys were the real deal. For once, as we carried out the servicings of the aircraft as the crews were driven off to find a beer somewhere, I didn’t begrudge them that beer whilst I was still working. They’d bloody deserved it.

Frothing…

We all try to get our healthy amount of fruit and veg – but it can be difficult at times to get all the vitamin C that we need, and so, just to make sure each day I take an Effervescent Vitamin C tablet to help boost my immune system.

And the story I want to really tell you came into my mind this morning as I took another one of those tablets. Out on patrol in Afghan, as the EOD search team were checking out and clearing a compound we were moving into, the CO’s TAC multiple – basically the Company commanders tactical ‘HQ’ team which I was generally part of when we went out – took a breather by a stream.

We’d been out for a long time that morning, leaving before sun-rise, and it was getting close towards lunch. It was, as usual horrendously hot, and we took the shade that we could to escape the burning sun under some trees. We lounged around on the floor, still wearing our body armour, but removing our helmets and daysacks, propping ourselves up against them. Everyone was thirsty and hungry, and we took the opportunity to get some water down our necks and munching on the snacks we had taken with us.

One of the lads in the team then popped open a tube and slipped a tablet into his water bottle. He explained that it was one of those Isotonic rehydration tablets that you can get. He said that it also added a nice orange taste to the water too. He shared them out and we did the same, dropping a tablet into our water bottles to get a bit more hydration going, each tablet fizzing and bubbling away in the water. Us enjoying the taste and feeling of drinking something – anything – other than ‘just’ water.

And just as he was putting the tube away the Company Sergeant Major came over to let us know that the search had finished and we would be able to move on in a few minutes. And the guy with the tablets offered the CSM one. ‘Want an Isotonic tablet?’ he asked as he offered across the tube.

‘Ohhhh that’s a big tablet’ said the CSM ‘It’s not a suppository is it?’ he added as he popped it straight into his mouth!

Everyone was speechless as he instantly bit into the tablet and his mouth filled with froth as it started it’s natural job of effervescing – using the moisture and spit in his mouth as the catalyst instead of a bottle full of water.

‘Nooooooooooo…’ cried the OC and then, like the rest of us fell about laughing as the froth got worse and filled the CSMs mouth. Looking like an end stage rabies-sufferer the CSM started to cough and he spat the tablet out, trying to also spit the froth out, and reaching for his drinking tube to get some water to clear his mouth.

Crying with laughter we explained that the tablet needed to be dropped into water and dissolved before drinking and he continued to swill his mouth spitting out small remnants of the pill and gobs of more froth.

Coughing and spluttering the CSM added ‘Good job it wasn’t a suppository then, I wouldn’t want THAT going on up my arse…’

It’s a Lifesaver…

It’d been a long morning. Up at about 03:00, dressed and a smidge of breakfast, and then leaving the CP at about 04:00.  Still dark and quite cool, we moved off.

This was the start of Operation Omid Haft. Our Company was to move north and establish a new check point right up at the top of the Area of Operations bordered by the NEB Canal. The Helmand Green Zone of Afghanistan is essentially bordered by two bodies of water – to the north the NEB, to the south, the River Helmand.  To move there, in force, we needed to be out before the enemy were aware that we were coming and catch them unprepared.

So off we went. Moving across the countryside we were heading into unknown but not totally uncharted territory.  Our patrols had probed the area in the past and had an idea of where to cross the irrigation ditches and go through the fields.

But progress there was particularly slow.  The Quad-bike that was following us was overloaded with kit, spares, ammo, food and water. And the multiple following us was finding it difficult to get across the ditches, even though it had bridging equipment and 16 guys to assist it. This was slowing us down.

Then to slow us down even more we had a casualty to deal with – an partial IED detonation, but still requiring about an hour to sort out, with from blast to moving back off again.  Treating the casualty, moving him to a Landing Site, setting up the HLS, putting him on the MERT and then collapsing the HLS and re-organising the multiples back into the right places, with the right people in them all took time.

And then being really careful about IEDs slowed us down even more and we were rightly checking every hedge we were about to go through and every ditch we were about to cross slowed us down even more.

All of a sudden it was about 11am. Out for 7 hours, making slow progress, the heat of the day was rising.  We should have been in the village where the check point was to be by 10am, and it was still over a a kilometre away. And then we were hoping to meet the local elders before we started on the check point…it was still going to be a long day…

We found ourselves on the edge of a village. The sun baking. The ground totally open and dry.  The poppy and wheat harvest had started and the wheat in the field had been cut down and so there was no cover at all.  We moved to a BUND line (Built up Natural Defence – basically a bank built by the locals when they had constructed the irrigation ditches) and sheltered behind it.  But this still wasn’t great.

We were facing directly onto the village and this BUND only provided protection from the south, where there was a cemetery.  We sat there feeling exposed and nervous.  The gentle wind was from the south and so we were getting none of the benefit of the cooling breeze.  All that could be heard was the flap of the flags and streamers from the cemetery and the occasional snap of the Multiple commanders radio conversations.

The sun baked. I took slurps from my camelbak – a bladder of about 3l of water inside my day sack with a drinking tube coming from it.  I had been expecting it to be a long trip and had filled the bladder AND had brought an extra litre of water in bottles.  Thinking wisely (for once) I had used the bottles first, one 500cl bottle in each of my trousers pockets which I drank from as we moved along.  Once these were emptied I stuck them in my day sack and started on the bladder. Sucking on the drinking tube as we went along to try and slake my thirst.

The multiple commander really didn’t like where we were.

Slowly the multiple moved through another hedge line and over a ditch into another field.  This felt much better.  It was sheltered from the sun by trees and once we’d done our checks we could move down into the cover provided by the ditch along the shrub line and relax for a bit whilst the other multiples moved into position.

I slid down into the cover and checked around for any indication of IED components. With nothing seen I relaxed for the first time properly for hours. I shrugged off my day sack and sat chatting to the medic sitting a few feet away from me on my right. I slurped at my drinking tube…and then the worst thing…the slurping sound of a straw at the bottom of a glass. The water came through in fits and starts. Not enough. I opened the sack and looked.  Of course, the bladder was empty.

Bugger. ‘You got any spare water, Tommo mate?’ I asked the medic.

‘Nope. I ran out about 20 minutes ago.’

I asked over the multiple radio system – the PRR – and no one had any spare. This was a bad thing.  We still had a long way to go until we were certain of getting fresh clean water.

I looked down at the irrigation ditch. It was filled with stinky, filthy, muddy water. NOT a good idea to drink. Then I saw the quad-bike. Spare water.

‘Boss, I am going to get some water off the quad-bike.’ I shouted, and he nodded.  I walked over to the bike and asked for a Jerry-can of water for our multiple.  The driver shook his head.

‘What? Have you run out too?’ I asked.

‘Nope. The water isn’t drinking water.  A lad was tasked with filling the can with water – and of course did.  But he used the water from the well and not drinking water from bottles – the dip-shit. I’ve had to empty it out as it’s not drinkable.’

Bloody bloody bloody. Pointless. Hopeless.

I went back to the multiple, my explanation met by groans from the thirsty lads. I sat back down.

‘Here you go Alex. The multiple 2ic (second in command) tossed me a flask-like bottle.  Blue with a drinking spout at one end and a screwcap at the other. ‘I’ve got a Lifesaver bottle.’

And it was a lifesaver. This was a special bit of kit that was just coming into wide usage. It was a water filter that allowed you to turn ANY water (or so the Environmental Health guys who had introduced it) into drinking water. They claimed that any muddy puddle could be put through the device and become pure drinking water – with no nasty bugs that would make us ill and send us down with the dreaded D&V.

I undid the screw top and moved down to the muddy water, putting the bottle into the dirty puddle. The flask filled and I returned to my day sack. I followed the instructions and pumped away at the bottle – almost like a plunger in a coffee pot, but pumping over and over and over. This built up pressure in the flask and when it was not possible to pump anymore I opened up my water bladder in the day sack and then opened the other end of the Lifesaver.

Fresh, clean water poured into the reservoir. I repeated the process again and again and again.  My reservoir bladder filled with water.  I tossed the flask to the next guy who did the same, and eventually the multiple replenished their water supplies.  The filthy nature of the ditch was gone and the water in the bladder on my back was now fresh, clean and drinkable, and most miraculous of all, it was relatively cool…

I made a vow there and then – to get hold of a Lifesaver bottle of my own to sit in my own day sack.  This would weigh a lot less than carrying spare water and would be invaluable.

Back on the patrol though, we had a job to do.  The Mutliple commanders radio snapped into life again, and he gave us the 2 minute warning to move off. We had a Check Point to establish, and a lot of work to do before the helicopter was going to be able to come in with it’s underslung load – with it’s vital supply of clean bottled water.

That Lifesaver bottle was going to be used again I felt…and it really would live up to it’s name. It really would save lives.

Tell…

Everyone has a Tell.

If you play Poker you need to find out what your ‘Tell’ is.

Your ‘Tell’ is the thing you do…the involuntary body action you make when something happens. When you see you have a good hand – or when you KNOW someone else has a good hand. You might do this elsewhere; not just at the poker table. You might do it when your boyfriend strolls in a little bit drunk after being out with his mates. You might do it when your team scores at the footy. You might do it when you get stressed by something. The thing is it is an thing that you do as a reaction to an important event and people who know you can read you to look for your tell to give them a heads-up that you have had a reaction to something.

My tell is rubbing the back of my neck. Well, the top of my back actually. That bit of the C-Spine, just below the nape of your neck. If you see me rub that…then something is going on in my head. My girlfriend knows it and will straight away ask what is going on…ask me if I am alright.

Tonight I was watching a TV show about medicine and medical treatment of wounded people out in Afghan, and they did a segment talking about OP Minimise.

Op Minimise is the codename for a total shut down of communications from Afghan to the UK. The welfare facilities are brilliant – getting on the phone to call home is fairly easy (if a bit hit and miss with connection if you are using a satphone) and the internet is always there if you are in a location big enough to support a couple of laptops. But these are all shut down if a member of the British Armed Forces is seriously injured or has sadly been killed.

It’s to stop inadvertant release of the name of someone before the family is told. It’s a good thing, because it means that the family of a casualty gets the correct information first hand, delivered from someone who has been properly trained to deliver it. Rather than by reading someone elses Facebook status. The bad thing of course is that until the family has been properly told then you have no contact with home.

And if you are a regular contactor of people at home and you don’t send an email for a day or so (Op Minimise can last for days, and when lifted can be almost immediately reinstated for another event), then people at home get worried. Of course the important thing for the people at home to know, and I made sure that I told all my familiy before I left was this – if you hear about someone being killed on the news…then it’s not going to be me.

The terrible irony is that no contact means that people worry – but the reason for worrying couldn’t be more wrong. If their loved one has been hurt then they will know about it. They are worrying for no reason. Sadly, someone elses son or daughter or father or sister has been killed.

Pretty much as soon as a casualties status is known for certain, Op Minimise is called. It takes a few minutes to get around, but in a small camp like the Patrol Base I was in, within about 3-4 minutes of the call coming through the two laptops plugged into the net were shut down and the two SatPhones disappeared from view.

You might be sleeping and wake up to a minimise and walk into the Welfare tent to find the laptops off. Or you might come in from a patrol with a desire to phone home and find the phones have been locked away. And instantly you feel bad. You feel selfish for wanting to call or email home when you can’t and you know the reason is that someone is being told news that will shatter their lives.

You walk into the Ops Room and ask the fateful question ‘What’s Minimise on for?’ Hoping that the news will be that it’s another AO and it’s not something that has happened in your own Area of Operations; that it’s not someone you know and then…well…due to the nature of the job I was out there to do, I knew people in every AO.

In every Company location there was one of the lads or lasses that I had done my pre-deployment training with. Even if the incident that had hurt someone was far away, there was still a chance – a remote chance – that it could be some one that I knew. So it didn’t really matter. But you’d just want to know whether it’d been a shooting or an IED…or even a vehicle crash incident…

You’d track the events, the techniques, that the enemy were using. Making mental note to watch for one thing or another – amongst the plethora of things you already watch for when out on the ground. On hearing the reason or the injury – if it was an IED – you’d mutter ‘The dirty bastards’ or if it was a shooting ‘The necky bastards’ under your breath and walk back to your tent.

But that wasn’t really the worst part. The very worst part of Op Minimise is when it’s lifted. This is initially a relief. You can phone home. You can jump onto Facebook. You can send an e-bluey. But then you realise that it has been lifted because someone at home has been told their son or daughter has been killed. Or their father has had a double leg amputation and their lives will never be the same again. You realise that your ‘joy’ is someone else’s heartbreak. Guilt. It feels horrible. It feels like the worst thing in the world.

And here’s where my ‘Tell’ comes in. Tonight, during the show they showed a scene where the presenter was talking to camera and they played the tannoy announcement of the Op Minimise enforcment starting at Camp Bastion.

Now I didn’t spend a long time at Bastion. I spent the vast majority of my time in Afghan in a small Patrol Base in the Green Zone, but I passed through Bastion a couple of times, and when I did, sadly Op Minimise was started and, at Bastion, people get to hear about it mainly through the network of huge tannoy speakers that dot the site. Spoken at a speed designed to carry across distances it is a simple and slow message, spoken by a pre-recorded slow and steady, but above all calm and clear female voice: ‘Stand by for broadcast. Op Minimise’…a gap of 3-4 seconds…’Op Minimise’…gap again…’Op Minimise.’ Gap again. ‘Op Minimise is now in force.’ Gap. ‘I say again….’ In the gaps the voice echoes away across the camp, just gone by the time the voise starts up again.

And tonight, when I heard it, I got the shivers. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. And I did my ‘Tell’. I rubbed the back of my neck. For far longer than if I had an itch. My fingers scraping over the skin. Trying to scratch an itch that wasn’t really there. For 8 or 9 seconds I scratched away.

For an instant, despite the wine I was drinking. Despite the comfy sofa I was sitting on. Despite the different surroundings, I was back out there again listening to that broadcast. I felt the same guilty chill. I felt cold. Sadness. Guilt. Some poor sod. Someone’s mum breaking down. Someone is going to have to explain to their child that Daddy isn’t coming home. My skin prickled. A shiver down my spine. The gut-wrenching feeling that someone, somewhere had been lost.

And then a voice. ‘You ok?’ My girlfriend…back to the real world. Back to the hear and now. With a jolt and a gentle sigh of relief I realise where I am, and what is going on. No need for those feelings. I am back home. I am sitting watching the TV on the sofa with my girlfriend. Upstairs my daughter is sleeping. Home. No need for guilt. And then…

Then, sadly, the very next thing that popped up on my laptop screen was an RSS news notification ‘that a soldier from the…serving in the….region of Afghanistan has been killed. The family has been informed.’ This means that yet another Op Minimise has already been and gone. That out there people will have had feelings similar to mine. That despite the distance and the time…the same thing was going on again and again.

And even sadder, it won’t be the last time that it does…I just hope it’s the last time it causes me to do my tell.

________________________________________________________________________________

PS – After the post went live, I was contacted by a member of the family of someone who had, sadly, been through informing process and the ‘other’ side of Op Minimise – being told that their soldier had been killed in Afghan.

It is interesting, and sad, to note that they themselves felt they should do a similar thing, and not post anything on any social media, notably Facebook, until all the family have been informed.

Surreality…

I was driving along the back road by the open fields last Saturday, and noticed a single car parked up. Further along, in the middle of the field next to the road a solitary figure was slowly wandering about…with a set of bag-pipes.

I thought this was a bit commical, but it reminded me of a situation about 20 odd years ago when I was living in a coumpound in downtown Dhahran during the First Gulf War. It was literally a civilain compound used by other aircraft types based at Dhahran which had been taken over by ourselves and used by us for the duration. For a bit of security we had a guard on the gate, and this particular day it was my turn to pull the duty. With another lad, we took shifts in standing at the gate of the compound – a simple barrier that had been hastily installed across the driveway into the camp. Along this driveway was a small line of trees and on the other side of the trees, between the road and the main building of the site was a basketball court.

This was frequently used by guys off shift to relax and un-wind and to get a bit of exercise and fresh air, but given that Saddam Hussein had just set fire to the oil wells up in Kuwait and the smoke from those fires was drifting south over us, mixing with the clouds to create a really dull day.

But on this day it was still being used. However, there was no baskets being ‘dunked’. Instead one of the lads from 43 Sqn (based in Scotland at the time) was out there…with his bagpipes.

Even though I was on 29(F)Sqn the deployment out there was a mixed squadron, from the two, and we’d even flown out together, with this guy ‘piping us’ onto the Tristar that took us to Saudi Arabia. (That was a bit of a surreal thing – and a notable forst for me to be honest, walking up the steps at the back of the Tristar in the early hours of the morning to the strains of Holyrood…) But here he was now, taking an hour or two to practise his skills.

The thing was it was causing a real stir in the neighbourhood. It was a sound that was totally foreign to the locals, in everyway. Imagine hearing the skirl of the pipes for the very first time. And then imagine you are in a fairly scruffy back-street of an Arabic country, on a dull day. Surreal doesn’t cut it. To make matters worse for the locals who were gathering at the gate to find out exactly what the noise was, the basketball court was behind a 7 foot high wall, and the trees by the drive were screening the court from view from the open gateway.

People in full Arabic dress stood there with a puzzled look on their face. The local workers (mostly Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Indonisian) came up looking bemused. Eventually I had to bring the fellow out to the open gate so that people could see just what he was doing, and what he was playing. When they saw they stared in awe. A totally surreal moment.

I get those surreal moments again now. For instance I am sitting in a coffee shop as I type this. I sat and turned my MacBook on and stared at an empty desktop screen. It’s a picture of me in a Check Point just about to go out on patrol with a bunch of the lads. And then I looked up. People were going about their normal lives. A woman over in the corner feeding her baby. Two old ladies having a natter. A man reading his newspaper. Me in a coffee-shop. But only a month or so ago I was in Helmand. I was dressed like ‘that’. Thinking about the patrol to come; the heat, the kit, the weight, the mud, the corn.

It’s a million miles away. It’s surreal how reality changes. And how it changes so bloody quickly. Your world is full of one thing and then suddenly it is full of others.

Over there, believe it or not, life is fairly simple. Despite all the things to think about, they are pretty much all in the same vein. It’s all about looking after yourself and the others you are with. The world gets very small. Your cares and cancerns get less and you become focussed on only a few detailed things. Your contact with home can be broken at any time and you just get on with things.

Objects become important. Your rifle, your body armour, your kit. You spend time adjusting your kit and spend even longer discussing it. You talk about what you are carrying, how a bag weighs and feels on your back. It’s madness but you can spend an hour just discussing the design of a rucksack…

And then you come home. Those objects that you touched everyday; that were your life are left. When I returned I left my kit for a week or two, and then decided that it needed to be sorted; which items needed to be kept, what items could be returned to stores.

I ended up tipping a bag of kit about on my bed and then just sitting there for 5 minutes looking at it. Just two weeks before this had been my life. I would have gone mad – literally mad – if my notebook had gone missing out there, but it had just sat in a bag for two weeks. It was essential for me to do my job out there. It had everything, notes, prices for jobs, phone numbers, names, contact details – EVERYTHING. But now, this was an item that now felt different, odd. It’s weight wrong. The material of the cover cold and dead. Out of context. It didn’t fit into my life anymore. Did I need it? Yes. Do I need it anymore? No. It has suddenly become part of my history. It’s value changed and shifted. It’s purpose skewed.

Does this apply to me too? I am certainly different having returned from Afghan. I have learnt a hell of a lot about myself. You tend to do that in stressful situations – the old ‘Comfort-Stretch-Panic’. You learn and grow when you are being stretched. And some of the things I learnt about myself I didn’t like. Some of the things I do. But getting used to that, and accepting it, is hard.

I have found I have lost a bit of patience, patience with people, with my family, with my baby daughter. But when you have concentrated so much on one thing – yourself – for a long time, it takes a while to adjust back. Just getting used to things around home has been hard too. It’s difficult to settle back into a routine. You feel like something is missing. Something is wrong. But you can’t quite put your finger on what it is. Just something… Even doing the little things like taking a shower feel…different. There’s a reason for this.

They are.

Everything is different. It’s a different world. It’s 4,000 odd miles away, and in places, a couple of hundred years back in time. Showering and shaving outside, no mod cons, little things like washing your clothes taking twice as long to do.

And that’s ok, as the thing about it is that it’s miles away. But it’s not where I am anymore. I am home. It’s time to put the thoughts and feelings of all of it in a box marked ‘Afghan’ and put it on a shelf somewhere in my mind and leave it there, but able to be brought back out at the times when I need it, and at other times just let it lie.

My patience will come back…patience with Lily – a nearly-3 year-old is never easy to cope with at the best of times, but the person I have to have the most patience with is myself. My girlfriend, despite being quite poorly and in pain, has been fantastic. She’s given me patience and time and made far more allowances for me than I deserve. Truly, she’s been amazing, and now I need to just remember that it was a huge adventure, but now it’s over and I should just accept the changes in me. She already has. And of course because she loves me she’s done it unquestionably. If she can love me, then I can love me too.

I went, I did, I came back. It’s time now to accept the new me, and get busy living my life…as surreal and as complicated as everyone elses is…

Remember…

It’s an odd world we live in.  Events often unfold around us and we find ourselves in situations that are banal, interesting, exciting…sometimes even noteworthy…perhaps momentous.  The stock that we, and indeed our society puts on these events is down to the interest and importance we place in them.  What might be momentous to one…is banal to another.

I have found myself part of the Imperial War Museum’s War Story Exhibit.  When I was on my R&R I was asked by the IWM and the RAF to take part and to be interviewed on camera.  I was at first a bit shocked that I had been asked, and then a bit proud to have been…and then…

…and then I went along to the opening of the exhibition.  Well actually I went along to have a look at the exhibit before the grand opening, to check it out on the quiet, but then that evening I went to the opening event where the great and the good – and me – spoke great words, and I wandered about in pretty much the same bemused way that I did that afternoon.

There I was. Me. In the exhibit.  Me on camera.  People can go up and choose to listen to the words I spoke about things that happened to me in Afghanistan this year.  About what happened when the lad got blown up in the IED blast.  About what it was like to go outside the wire for the first time.  About what I did when I arrived home for my R&R. And they can watch me and listen to me chatter away about these things.

But here’s the thing.  I am there in the Grand Hall of the Imperial War Museum.  Alongside a First World War Tank.  Under a Spitfire.  Next to a Polaris Missile.  There’s a picture of me on the wall there.  On the same wall as a picture of a group of airmen from the 1940′s – dressed in Mae Wests and flying suits, clearly airmen from the Battle of Britain or similar.  There are other pictures and exhibits around the hall.  All things and people that are greater than what I.  Even the other people in the exhibition are greater and better and did more than I did.  They speak of the firefights they were in.  Of the friends they lost.  Of the fear of combat.  I just went to Afghanistan and did some stuff was NEAR to someone getting IED’d, was shot at from a long way away and with ineffective fire – most of projects and work I did didn’t even get finished by the time I left.  And then I had the balls to blather on about it to anyone who would listen.

I am truly humbled to be part of that exhibition.  I am also a bit embarrassed by it too.  Why do I deserve to be there? I don’t.  It’s just because I can’t keep my bloody mouth shut that I am.  Others should be there.  Someone better, someone who did more.  Someone who saved someone else’s life, or found a thousand IEDs, or built something that actually worked out there should be in it. Not a gobby chancer like me.

And then the time of year it is struck me too.  I was lucky to go out there and come home unhurt. I won’t say unscathed by it, because one of the reasons that I haven’t blogged for a while is that I have had a huge writers blog brought on by the fact that I feel guilty about not having done more out there.  I went there and did my best, but, I can’t help feeling that my best wasn’t good enough.  I could have done more.  I went there saying it was a test for me…and I can’t help feeling like I failed that test.  At least I didn’t live up to my  own expectations.

You see others out there – that I knew personally – who were better than me didn’t come home.  I met Dooner and JJ From 1 Rifles out there and instantly was amazed about how brilliant soldiers they were. But they didn’t come home to meet their families again.  Several other guys – including one other, Danny – all brilliant, brilliant soldiers got themselves hurt with life shattering injuries, and me, a daft Raffy who struggled with the heat and the kit and the gear and the going made it through unharmed.

And I am the one in the Exhibition Hall of the Imperial War Museum.  It’s more than bizarre. It’s more than wrong.

My record will be there for a year, their record will be in their families lives forever.  Theirs SHOULD be in the countries lives forever.  They did amazing, brave, heroic and self-sacrificing things.  I did not.

Remember them, and remember every other British and Commonwealth soldier, sailor, airman and marine who has given everything they can for this country.  And remember that for every one of those who died, there are many, many more who are still suffering, either physically scarred by battle, mentally battered by war, or just now aged and infirm and unable to help themselves anymore.

Please remember everyone of them this November 11th (and again on Sunday November 13th). It’s only a few minutes of your time, and if you can maybe a couple of quid into the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal too.  I certainly will be thinking about them and their families this year…and not thinking about much else.