Fat Boy Slim and the Blue Horizon

I've been thinking about some old photos that I've just posted up on a website dedicated to my former life in the Royal Navy's medical service.

These particular photos were from an impromptu concert we organised one hot summer's night in Gibraltar - we used to call them "Sod's Operas". This is a contraction of "Ship's Operatic & Dramatic Society", itself a pretension pricking monika under which increasingly drunken sailors performed increasingly marginally acceptable turns, some well rehearsed and trotted out every time, others less well thought through. Oh, happy, carefree days! My heart aches now to think it has all gone.

Anyway, I had to write captions and names on the photos. You need to know that the community at the Naval Hospital in Gibraltar was very small. The regime was very relaxed and benign back then and we were essentially one big gang who worked, played and partied together all of the time.

Imagine my shame then when I couldn't remember all of the names (we're not talking about many here). If you had told me at the time that within 20 years I would not be able to name everyone in the room that memorable night I'd have laughed in your face. Each of us would have given the other the shirt from our back, these were friends for life surely? Sadly though, you would have been right.

Such an intense time, such colourful, firm friends and yet...and yet. My name is Robert and the only bit of twisted comfort I derive is in the thought that I am probably in lots of other peoples photos from those days marked as "Tall, gawky lad. Roger???".

When I was a young man I took a decision to become enigmatic. I came from a small town and had joined the navy, meeting socially for the first time both boys of my age with alledgedly greater life experience and also girls.

My new man of mystery persona was to be built on two pillars - I would train myself not to smile and would avoid having my photo taken.

What a divvie! To my credit I successfully achieved my goals in large part, but to my regret now I also recognise that this changed me inside - something I hadn't predicted. My plan was to make myself more interesting by being different but in truth I was a shy boy and by being dour (I liked to think it was stone faced but it really wasn't!) I actively discouraged the interactions that would have allowed me to be accepted by my peer group and develop emotionally.

What really happened of course was that lots of the girls thought I was odd, cruel (part of my never smiling routine involved making pithy "I don't care if the truth hurts" remarks) and aloof, and the lads did not see in me the "life and soul of the party" signals that would have encouraged a wider circle of friends.

I'm not looking for pity here - it was a juvenile mistake that got out of control for a few years. It would be nice to think others might learn from it though. An old manager of mine once told me that taking corrective action on things was analagous to steering a supertanker. Done early it required little effort but the longer the tanker is allowed to go off course, even by a fraction, the greater it's distance off course becomes.

I allowed my course to become so significantly different from most of my peers that in the end there was no way back. Rather than just acting stoney faced, I became like that. I was hurtful to women I both worked with and had relationships with and my circle of male friends was very, very small. Because of my lack of practice in relationships, platonic and otherwise, I didn't develop the approriate social skills for a long time.

I thank goodness now that anyone showed any interest at all in such an "up his own arse" kind of person. I still maintain strong friendships with several people from those days. Luckily, I saw the error of my ways after a few years. The problem then became identifying the opportunity to change. Then I had a stroke of luck and had a chance to correct things and present myself differently. Firstly when I joined a ship of total strangers and later when I had a long foriegn posting, working with a mix of old a new work colleagues.

As a result of the changes and allowing myself to have more fun I eventually met my current partner. We've been together now for over twenty years.

Saved in the nick of time? Yes, I think so. 30 year old teenagers with the hump hold few attractions to anybody...