What a great bunch of blokes!
I know that London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. For those of you who are now confused, the United Kingdom consists of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. England makes up about 83% of the United Kingdoms’ population. The people of England were descendants of one of the Germanic tribes, called the Angles, who settled there in the 5th and 6th century. Since the year 927 CE England has been a unified state. From England we get the English language, the Church of England and English Law which is the basis of common law that exists today.
Now, all of that, I read in various books and articles. I really have never been to London or England except to pass through Heathrow airport on my way to or from the Middle East. The airport it pretty much like any other major airport in the world except that the names on the shoppes are different. There is also a lot of smoking going on. They have designated smoking areas which are basically, 10′ x 10′ rooms surrounded by big air intake systems with no roof. The purpose of the system is to suck the smoke out of the air before it affects the rest of the patrons in the airport. They fail miserably!! If you’ve ever smoked you will understand that everyone who has just gotten off an extended flight or is about to get on one, needs to get their nicotine fix. They won’t be able to smoke on the flight which may last up to eight hours or more, and when they land they will have to stand in customs lines, again without smoking. So everyone who smokes runs to the smoking areas. To make things worse the Europeans smoke more than anyone I’ve ever met. So the air intakes can’t handle all the smoke and you can find the smoking area by the smell, long before you can see it.
So I may not know anything about London or England or Great Britain, other than what we learned in school and see on the news, but I do love the people. During my last eight years in the Air Force and for four years as a civilian on government contracts in the Middle East, I had the opportunity to meet, work with and get to know a lot of Brits. I love these guys. I’ve never met a Brit who was not friendly from the time we met. They would give you the shirt off their back if needed. I’d think it would be just the opposite after what happened during the Revolutionary War, but we don’t talk about that around them.
No matter where you were or what the conditions were like, the Brits were always able to have a good time. While I was in Saudi Arabia for a nine month stretch, I thought I would go nuts from boredom. One weekend I had to make a trip to Oman and on the return flight I met a Brit by the name of Mike. We hit is off and exchanged local phone numbers before we each headed in different directions. I figured I would never hear from him again and more or less put it out of my mind. The next day he called and asked if I could meet with him. We set up a time and location and sure enough there he was. He took me to the compound were the company he worked for housed their American and British workers. There was a party going on like you wouldn’t believe. They had Filipino nurses from a nearby hospital, music, snacks AND alcohol, which was illegal in Saudi Arabia. It turns out that they made their own beer, wine, gin and whiskey right there in the compound. I was bored no more.
There are a couple of things about the Brits that everyone should know, in case you ever have to spend time with one or more. First, every single one of them can drink you under the table no matter what you or they are drinking. But don’t worry, they will see that you get home safely. Second, they love to party. Every meeting that I had to travel too or which included Brits, ended by going to a bar, where they commenced to drink you under the table. The surprising thing is that, no matter how much they drank, they showed up for work the next day as if they’d never gone out and at the end of the day it was off to the bar again.
The third thing you need to know is that they love to fight almost as much as they love to drink. I’ve seen two Brits get into a fist fight almost every time they got together. The funny thing is, they were good friends and the fights were never again mentioned after they were over. Most times they would just brush each other off and go back to drinking as if nothing had happened. Now, if YOU want to fight with a Brit for some stupid reason, then say something bad about the Queen. I suggest you arrange for medical help in advance.
There is one incident that I will never forget simply because it was so unexpected. I was in Muscat, Oman in 2002 on an Air Force contract supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. I had a wonderful Brit working in the office with me by the name of John Adams (no relation). From time to time, some of the guys on the contract would bring their wives over to spend a few weeks. John had just returned from his vacation in the United Kingdom and decided to bring his wife back with him for a short stay. John and I had been friends for awhile and spent time in each others villas drinking beer and shooting darts. So it was not unusual when John invited me, and a couple other Americans, over to his villa. When we arrived we were astonished to see a full blown Thanksgiving Dinner complete with turkey, stuffing and sweet potatoes. We had all forgotten it was Thanksgiving Day back home since we were used to not being with our families on special days. That made it all the more unexpected. It seems that a group of our British friends had gotten together and had some of the needed goodies sent to them from home and other parst were bought locally. What a great bunch of blokes!
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