To the Island

1 Yesterday was Reunion day, the day of the Christmas Island reunion. Once again, I put on my Grapple tie along with a blazer. To the station, to the RAF Club, a place which one chum described as 'home from home'. And so it is. A place where a chap feels at home, you understand. A place where some 40 other chaps, each wearing the Grapple tie, assembled yesterday for the first of the reunions after last year's concluding one.

1.1 Yes, you have read the previous sentence correctly. Last year, the reunion was held on the fiftieth anniversary of the first successful thermo-nuclear test. There was a top table. Lord Carringdon was the guest speaker. An AVM presided, as he had done for years. Fifty years on, though, the reunion was to be the last one of that kind. Yet the small organising committee, without the AVM, organised yesterday's, less formal event.

2 As ever, the event was just a pleasure. We sat at five circular tables in the ballroom. Instead of being served at table, we lined up for a plate of curried meat and things. The conversation was as lively and as reminiscent as ever. One of the chums had visited the Island since last year's reunion: he and his wife and his daughter spent a week there. There was little to do, yet each was tired by about 2100 and slept well until they rose about 0600. A week out of life.

3 I chatted to an elderly man - we're all elderly - who was a navigator on the Canberra, piloted by our AVM as a young man, which sampled the air after the burst. He spoke about the flights, about his time on the Island. Soon after he returned to the UK, he left the RAF and joined a local police force where he remained for 30 years. Yet it was his time on the Island which remained with him. We all have clear recollections of the Island; we remember our time there as a special time. (For those who contracted cancers of one sort of other, time on the Island was bad time.)

4 In my role as the Master Blogger, I spoke about our Grapple Reunion blog. It will be our standard channel of communication. So everyone should join. To those who are hesitant about IT I offered the best of advice, namely, ask your grandson or grand-daughter.

5 And we concluded with an hour-long film (on DVD) of Grapple Zulu, a collection of tests, ground and air, which included the first successful air burst, the event which we celebrated last year. At the end of the hour, there was a round of applause. And everyone was given a copy of the DVD.

6 Look on the Court page of today's Daily Telegraph. Look for Service luncheons.

7 Maytime, springtime, Island time.