The crew approached the animal warily and he appeared to be docile but they’d heard tales of how bulls could easily be spooked. Cherry, who had been inside the station reading a magazine whilst manning the phones, ambled out to see what was going on. He walked up the animal and patted him on the head between the eyes. Unfortunately Cherry was still holding the magazine and the bull took violent exception, jerked his head up to ward off the offending object and snorted violently.

The sudden movement almost pulled Thomas over so he immediately released the leash and the firemen scattered star-burst fashion. The bull, which was heavier than their combined weights, his rolling eyes wide showing the whites, lunged sideways then, uttering a low moan rising to a bellow, selected a target and suddenly charged. There was a resounding crash, the animal shuddered as did his victim which remained strangely unaffected. The bull began to inspect more closely and sniff his prey but the seven foot concrete fence post remained sturdy with only some chips revealing the steel reinforcing rods!

    Cherry, still clutching his copy of ‘Country Life’ said, “He’s a bit frisky, isn’t he?” The firemen immediately burst into hysterical laughter as Thomas quickly gathered up his now subdued charge and started for home. “People”, he shouted, “You’re nothing but a bunch of effing imbeciles!” The firemen thought that was a bit rich; what fool takes a bull for a walk amongst the general public without taking extra precautions? The pair slowly wended their way home, the animal no doubt looking forward to the tranquillity of his field, the birds, bees and buttercups, Thomas looking forward to a double Scotch to soothe his nerves.

The incident proved that the security fence, erected in 1960 round the Experimental Hangar which contained the secret P.1127s, was least bull-proof!

    In the early 60s the Station was visited quite regularly by a member of the Security Police, a rather loud, enthusiastic, over-the-top character who, it seemed, came to spread gossip, or was it to be nosey; or was there another reason? His visits, of sometimes over an hour, became quite annoying and we found him a bit overbearing so we resorted to a series of practical jokes involving his patrol motorbike going walk-about. Each time he didn’t realise it was gone until he was about to leave. However, George persisted and soon became quite adept at finding his bike and we were running out of ideas when somebody had a new one.

 This time he searched everywhere several times and was becoming very vocal when he realised that a group of fitters was watching his antics from the Experimental Hangar. They were laughing and pointing upwards; the bike was hanging thirty five feet above him from our hose drying mast!

    The final crunch came one day when the fire crews were out on flying standby. George needed to converse with them so he joined the crash tender crew, climbing aboard as he had done many times before. He seemed to enjoy winding them up by parking his bike up against the vehicle. The driver had told him previously, “It’s not safe”, “Mind the paintwork.” or “Leave it on the grass”, but George would have none of it. Again the driver warned him but the cop just carried on with the banter.

A Hunter joined the circuit to land so the vehicles’ engines were started as usual. Half way down the runway the aircraft suffered a tyre failure and slewed onto the grass. Both vehicles instantly lurched forwards to join the Hunter and George jumped off quickly, surprised at the sudden activity. He turned round to find the mangled wreckage of his patrol bike splattered on the road. George didn’t visit the Fire Station for several months after the incident.

    When we received new vehicles we designed and fitted equipment stowage ‘in house’ at the Fire Station, for several reasons, time being the most important. When new equipment was received we couldn’t afford to wait several weeks or months for the costing, approval and inter-departmental wrangling, nor could we release a vehicle for the Maintenance Department to work on due to the constraints of flying. If either the rescue or the crash tender was deemed ‘off the run’ then Air Traffic Control had to be informed and all flying stopped.
    We had developed a pretty good workshop with a large bench equipped with two vices and a good set of tools had been acquired both officially and unofficially or brought in from home. We had developed a team of fabricators; Tom was ace at this and could look at the equipment and storage space and come up with a solution. Brooky having panel beating skills was also handy with a soldering iron and welding torch. I soon became a good scavenger, begging, borrowing and raiding the scrap compounds for timber and metal, parachute harnesses and quick release clips.
    It was whilst we were fitting out the Range Rover 6x6 that George the cop paid us another visit and watched us fitting new shelving and brackets and the painting the equipment lockers. The following day we were visited by the Maintenance Dept shop steward who pointed out in strong terms that they had carpenters and painters on their staff! It seems that following his visit George had been yacking and he was told in no uncertain terms by our boss what trouble he had caused.

In the future it would have to be a case of ‘what the eye doesn’t see’ and keeping the doors closed when doing this work. We tried and managed in most cases to be at least 75% self sufficient. However, any mechanical problems with the vehicle engines resulted in a visit to the Transport Section; electrical problems also required specialist advice.  (to be continued)