The Teatime Islands by Ben Fogle

Author:Ben Fogle
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141946221
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

4. The Falkland Islands

‘Oi, you’re that f****** bloke off the telly,’ guffawed the guard at the main gate. I smiled and handed over my documents. ‘What the f*** you doin’ ’ere?’ he continued.

‘I’m off to the Falklands,’ I replied as politely as possible.

‘Who sentenced you to that?’ he said in between mouthfuls of Cornish pasty. ‘It’s a shite hole. I spent four months there, and I ’ope I never see that f****** place again,’ and with that he stamped my papers. ‘Enjoy yourself,’ he said with a broad grin across his face, ‘I didn’t.’ At which he broke into gales of laughter.

The Falklands experience begins in a fashion that, given their history, is entirely appropriate. Check-in is at one of the UK’s largest military airbases, RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.

Brize Norton isn’t exactly your Heathrow or Gatwick. The terminal consisted of a large hall. Gone are the shops and duty-frees, replaced by a battalion of imposing vending machines that cough and sneeze out rather nasty-looking plastic cups full of Cup a Soup and dishwater tea. The two check-in desks are staffed not by smiling check-in girls with pouting red lips, but two thoroughly fed-up uniformed RAF personnel.

The flight board was also a reminder that we weren’t in your average airport. Instead of Los Angeles, Miami, Barbados or Madrid, the flight board read as follows:

AFGHANISTAN

DIEGO GARCIA

GIBRALTAR

CYPRUS

DECIMOMANNU

BELIZE

ASCENSION

MPA (FALKLANDS)

I queued up in the austere hall, conscious of my uncropped hair and uncamouflaged bag. ‘The Falkland Islands?’ stuttered the check-in assistant as he read my ticket. ‘You sure?’ he laughed mockingly. ‘Why would you want to go to that cold pile of shite?’ he asked sincerely. ‘Haven’t you had enough of cold wet windy islands?’ I could tell it was going to be a long journey.

The RAF rather euphemistically call their passengers ‘walking cargo’. The load on my flight could be broadly divided into two camps, the happy and the utterly miserable. The former tended to be dominated by returning islanders and visitors like me, while the latter seemed to be made up entirely of soldiers weeping into their cans of Coke at the prospect of a Falklands winter.

My name was called and I marched out on to the busy tarmac and towards the huge grey hulk of the RAF Tristar aeroplane.

Apart from her grey livery, the Tristar didn’t appear very different from any other plane. The interior was fitted in the same way as most commercial airlines, except that there was slightly more leg room as some of the rows of seats had been removed to make way for military stretchers. Contrary to what I had been told, there were loos. However, a few tell-tale signs throughout the flight gave us gentle reminders that we were not on a conventional flight.

Absent were the stewardesses and in their place half a dozen surly-looking RAF men wandered up and down the aisles in their green jump-suits without much enthusiasm. I don’t suppose any of them joined the air force to become Air Stewards, offering ‘coffee, tea, tea, coffee’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.