Steve,

Thanks mate. I’m sorry to hear about Julie’s mum.

It seems we all have these things going on outside the forum that other posters are not aware of. I guess that is why sometimes people get feisty or moody, we forget the real world exists.

It takes real trust and friendship of others to bring real world problems in and share them here. But I think that proves this is not an exclusive group, a million people could read what I’m about to write in the next week or so if they wanted.

It is great to have a network of friends in the virtual community – a communitythat takes you outside of your real life sometimes. This forum community unwittingly did me a great deal of good last year, and none of you know it. I had the worst year of my life in 2004- two very good mates, one of whom was a very close best friend indeed – committed suicide within two months of each other. I went absolutely to pieces. It all went downhill and my studies at uni went pearshaped because I lost motivation and the ability to concentrate. I became terribly depressed. I used to wonder about depression, why people got it – it is a terrible thing. I can usually handle things fine, I’m not taken to depression, but this threw me over that huge cliff into it. Everything seemed depressing around me, because all my mates were feeling the same thing as me, all of us were mourning and trying to understand (though they never knew the second guy, only I did, which made it harder for me too). A whole lot of other crap started happening too, other friends dying (naturally, old age), the cat died, money problems, etc. and life became a blur of one bad thing after another.

I guess I just didn’t want to focus on realities for a while. I turned to the virtual world to take my mind off it all.

The creation of my website and the work that went along with the research of it really helped keep my mind active, but it was this forum that was one of the few refuges I had where things seemed better. The people were all nice, many made me smile or laugh, and it took me away from the bad reality happening around me. I

didn’t have to think about those things. If I went out and saw my mates, we’d always get drunk and end up depressed, and dwell on the what ifs, etc. It’s natural and part of the healing, but it is very hard. But stepping into the virtual pub with you lot made me happy. It truly helped me through a rough time. Somehow all that stuff didn’t matter a jot in the world of the forum.

Last year was bad, and I had hoped that this year would be a turning point. But Dad got sick around Christmas time and was diagnosed with cancer in late January. My first thought was, there goes the better year I’d hoped for out the window. But the thing is, I am finding that my personal character has really built up over the past year. I feel normal again, able to take the stresses of these things life shats on you. I know things are bound to get worse now that Dad is starting his treatment, but hopefully it’ll turn out for the good. I know one thing, I doubt I could feel as bad again as I did last year, and I have a lot of you guys and girls to thank for unwittingly pulling me through a very tough time. Cheers, thanks to you all.

A special thanks to Stve Patterson and John Parker especially who showed me such a great time recently when they were in Auckland, that is what this forum is about. Meeting amazing people.

Dave
I can tell you exactly what depression feels like.
Because I’ve suffered from a fair portion of it in recent years.
I won’t go into all the gory details (there are friends here who know more than I would have ever thought I could have told) but it’s bl**dy awful.
I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

Contact me anytime if you need to know about how to deal with it.
Later
Andy

Mr Holmwood.
you have recently had a visit from our registered inspectors, Mr Parker and Mr Patterson.
You can now consider officially ‘cliqued’–sadly you’ll wear the scars forever more.
Cheers
Andy

I thought Melv had finally got laid, but dumping the Orange coat.
That really is an achievement. 🙂 🙂 😉 😉 🙂 🙂

“So perhaps before folks start getting arsey with each other on here, perhaps they ought to remember that this ain’t the real world…”

except that for those of us who have got to know each other off board, it is partly ‘real world’

I’ve kicked off bigtime over the last few days, at one person in particular and for reasons I shan’t go into here and now. Not a moment of madness, but a great feeling of anger after continued baiting. So be it. Thing is, I do generally behave on Historic as this is the serious side (well..) where some decorum is called for. Hence no pub on here (though it’d be the Red Lion).

So there is banter as well as aviation news and history. So? That’s perhaps because we make the effort on this board to get to know each other personally, we get together. Yes, we are predominantly UK based, but that only means that we can get together with ourselves – others can do it elsewhere as seen in the Colonies just a few weeks back. I am very pleased to have got to meet or know people like Ashley, Moggy, Kev, Ian, Dave, Robbo, Mike, Andy and even Damien, Andrew-O, JDK, Steve (even if he is a Yank), Steve Y, Bruce, Digby, Airgage, Bentwingbomber, and so on, and to have been in PM/email contact with Dave, Phil, Frank and the other Johnny-Foreigners. It’s a melting pot. But we each have good days, bad days, days of anger and days of inspiration. That’s why we live here and not, for example, on RAF Commands or places like that. This is a pub with books, not a library.

Mark
we are not worthy.
Great thought.
Andy
PS If this pub doesn’t serve Shepherd Neame you’ll never get Patterson in here.

I’ll just state the view that I’ve always held, and will continue to trot out whenever arguments arise on here:

This is an internet forum. It ain’t real life. We all know where the ‘ON / OFF’ button is, and we all have the choice of whether to read posts and respond to them.

Today I feel that way more than ever. There is much, much more to life than this forum. Trust me on that. We had some news two days ago which has knocked us for six. Unlike our pc, it doesn’t have an ‘ON / OFF’ button.

So perhaps before folks start getting arsey with each other on here, perhaps they ought to remember that this ain’t the real world…

Steve
whatever it is I hope it turns out OK.
Cheers
Andy

But I think there is a huge difference between all these wars and World War Two.

WWII was a war that had to be fought to preserve life, to save the world from evil. It had a very just and noble cause, and made a huge difference to how the world itself was shaped. I don’t believe the other wars were as important. They were all political – the wars started because politicians disagreed. Even World War One. But WWII was much more, it was a struglle against tyranny, oppression, genocide, a cult regime lead by a powerful madman.

After WWI the world was not a better place, it was in fact worse than bfore the war in many ways. It never proved anything. After the other wars I mentioned I doubt it would have mattered much to the rest of the world if certain coutries had won or lost. I mean the Commies won the Vietnam war, but we are no better or worse off for it, so it was futile. Korea is in almost as much mess now as it was in the 1950’s. The Gulf War made things worse.

Dave
I think you might be taking a slightly simplistic view. The men of 1914 thought that they were going to fight tyranny too.
The real enemy in both wars was Prussian militarism, sadly it took two wars to crush it (three if you count the war of 1870).
In the end it really took two non-european countries (Russia and America) to remove it’s cancerous stain from Europe.
We do have different perceptions in Western Europe (and the Commonwealth) about the two world wars and somehow feel that the first one was worse in some way than the second.
Actually WW2 was far worse than WW1–it’s just that in the west we didn’t tend to see the worst excesses of it–thankfully. That went on in Eastern Europe.
We better stop here as we’re way outside the ‘brief’ of an historic aviation forum.
Cheers
Andy

Ihave been the victim of some vicious character assassination recently. Then the buggers sat in my front room, drank my Scotch and said it to my face!!
I always try to the attack the arguement rather than the person. But I will not pander to people who should know better being idiots and under no circumstances will I ever be politically correct. A spade shall always be called a spade. I have no problem with agreeing to disagree.

Oh, and very nice Scotch it was too.
I think I know that John was aiming his comments to those that had ‘a dig’ at a certain individual in recent times.

John is perhaps a little more sympathetic to people than many of the rest of us.

Me? I’m just a sycophant and a clique member 😉 😉 Now If only I knew what sycophant meant.

Cheers
Andy