 No-one can say that the life of a charity working, superstar bear is boring but this latest mission almost wobbled even my famously stiff upper lip. The RAF called me up, some of their Fast Air boys wanted to see me up at RAF Lossiemouth, so I decided to get Bryn and Emma out of the comfort of their offices and onto the front line for a change. |
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| Our host was Squadron Leader ‘Lugs’ Davis of the elite 14 Squadron, The Crusaders... Just think Tom Cruise with slightly bigger ears... Much like me in fact. He and his team have raised a fortune for H4H so I was up there for a bit of back slapping to thank my favourite Air Station for doing their bit. |
 I thought I would wander around,  do a bit of posing in front of a plane and then end up in the bar for a few songs round the mess piano. Whacko! Just shows how wrong a bear can be! No sooner had we arrived than we were whistled off to 212 SAR Sqn (that’s Search and Rescue to you civvies out there) to get kitted out.I had a right old giggle at the old folk trying to get into their long johns, wooly bear suits and then finally, dry suits and helmets. Bryn looked such a prat and Emma was worried that her bottom might look big in it... and it did!  After a brief to tell us what to do if we crashed in the oggin... hold your breath... we were off along the coast at 100 knots to do some training. I have to admit that even a hard nosed old bear like me was moderately impressed by what these blokes do for a living. We did a couple of Sits (that's situations to you) which involved rescuing Duncan - was it Dunking - from the cliff face before flying out over the sea to practice rescuing a sort of buoy... and boy is that hard.They got Bryn to have a go as winch man while Emma and I stayed well strapped in. We wondered how long it would be before the old boy fell out the door into the drink but, rather disappointingly, he managed to cling on even if he was useless at hooking the buoy. Still, when you get to his age, the reflexes are all over the place, poor old thing. |
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| Next we flew out over a ship and winched one of our crew down and then rescued him again. Now that really was rather clever! Then we finally returned to base. We were all winched down from the Sea King and all felt rather pleased with ourselves. Mind you, I wouldn’t want to try to do that for real: wind, rain, high seas... hmmm, makes you think. Pretty heroic really, even by my standards. Well done chaps, time for a well earned pint or two. |
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