Briefing, and no, that's nothing to do with underwear

My job is to forecast the weather for a specific set of customers. My forecasts must be as accurate as I can get them, they must be delivered on time, and when I deliver them in person, they must be given in a manner that results in the customer believing me. If I put it like that it's quite scary sounding. Possibly more so when you consider that the customer is the RAF. If I get parts of the forecast wrong people could die. That might sound a bit melodramatic but in this case it's true. I won't go into the details of that right now as there's time later to expand.
For the last three months I've been observing the weather (this does not mean watching the weather, but recording changes in cloud height, visibility and other things) and practicing producing forecasts but not actually delivering them. Yesterday that changed. I had my first brief!
Okay, there were only three pilots in the room and they'd been asked to be nice, but damn it that doesn't matter. It was a real brief, I delivered it and I didn't look like a complete tit!
At the end of a brief, the last powerpoint slide is always "any questions?" One of the squadrons we brief is renowned for not responding to the slide, or indeed most of the presentation. This time they asked a couple of questions, one was really nice and one was something that wasn't too bad.
At today's brief, a different forecaster was keeping an eye on me. This time there were 6 of them (ohh). The brief went better and at the end the "any questions" slide came up to be greeted with marked indifference by the squadron and a cheerful "what's the wind going to be over the channel at 10000ft three days from now?" from the other forecaster.
Cue "rabbit in headlamps" look from muggins here, and no reaction at all from the pilots. We left with me muttering "excuse us, I need to kill this forecaster."
Later this week I should be briefing the other squadron on the station. There will probably be ten times as many of them there and they are a much more sarcastic bunch. Should be interesting.
BTW the station in Yorkshire that I'm serving at has two squadrons, as previously mentioned. (This will probably give you enough intel to figure it out). B, as I'll call them, are a training squadron. These are the less formal ones that I'll be briefing later. The other squadron, T, are a fighter squadron and much more serious. It seems to be the way that fighter squadrons take everything more seriously, which, all things considered, is probably a good thing, but it requires a different manner when dealing with them. With B you can relax and have "banter" with them (an essential skill, as I'm finding out), whereas T expect professionalism and an air of "this is serious, we may be about to go to war", which I can't even type without my eyebrow raising and an expression of "Biggles gets the runs". It's an RAF thing.

Almost a pointless day

Went down to the Castleford Xscape and snowdome thingy earlier. Was offered the chance to do three hours of boarding but at £70 it was a bit much, mainly because the lesson wouldn't have been what I needed. To be honest, if the lesson had started a couple of hours earlier, instead of the three hours wait that was required, I probably would have said "sod it" and gone ahead with the whole thing. As it was I managed to have a good mooch around and got a few things sorted for future visits.
On the way back to the digs, I decided to try and find somewhere to fly my kite for a while, but when I found an area that wasn't full of kids or cows, I couldn't get the bloody kite in the air!!! Ten minutes of trying to solo launch a Stacker 6 in foot high bloody grass! Flying was an hell of a lot easier on the beach at St Andrews! So I decided to bin the day and try again tomorrow.
At Xscape slope time includes kit hire but I'm wondering if it'll be worth getting some decent boots and a board bag and bringing my board and bindings up from the south. Think the best way to find out will be to get some slope time, either at the weekend or, more likely, on one of my night shift days. Book a few days in advance and as long as I'm back for about 1600L, all should be well.
When it comes down to it, it's all a laugh, and as my mate Jai used to say, "every day's a good day."

Bit of background

Figured that if anyone was reading this it might be useful to give a bit more information on who I am.
Born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire in 1980, parents in the forces so moved around a bit, enough that I don't really have any regional accent. I'm what's known as a "patch-brat" - forces kid. Parents moved to Gloucestershire in 92, about the same time that I started senior school.
I was in the school orchestra (wasn't very good at the clarinet, should have practiced more), the Boys' Brigade and took the Duke of Edinburgh's Award at bronze, silver and gold levels. Later helped in the running of the Award unit. Met some really good friends at school, Ferret, Tash and Kev mainly but there were others. Did fairly well in my exams and came out with a number of GCSEs and five A-levels, four if you don't count General Studies - which is basically a pub quiz. Those were maths, physics, biology, and chemistry, grades B or C, which I think is rather good.
Went to uni at the University of Wales, Swansea studying physics, which was definately the right choice for me. Unfortunately I didn't study as hard as I should have and had to resit the third year, dropping from the four year masters course to a three year batchelors, which is one of the things I regret. While at uni I carried on kayaking (badly), climbing (also badly), took up archery (not too bad, but now I shoot longbow so accuracy is less important), diving (never managed to get my qualifications signed up although I passed all of them so I'm not qualified) and a few silly things with friends. I was involved with the DofE society for a while, the Physics soc (president and then year rep) which included our road trip to CERN, more on that later, Cult TV (not as bad as it sounds...okay it was) and sometimes RAG.
Mainly I had fun with friends. In the final year ('02) our house fell out a bit, partly due to miscommunication, which is another thing I regret. I'll add more on uni later.
After uni I couldn't get the research position I wanted, something to do with getting a low honours, so I returned home and became a bin man for a while. Then I got a job with Millets and was offered the assistant manager's job on my third day. Worked for them for a while and then moved to Blacks which was a much better shop. Same chain but I've been walking for a long time and I'm the sort of person that finds out things about his kit out of interest so the more technical shop was definately better. Made some good friends there as well and then in 2005 my mate Tanner told me of a job going at the research place he was working at so I sent in my CV and got an interview. At the same time, I'd replied to an advert in New Scientist for a job with the Met Office and I got an interview for that as well. A few weeks passed then, in the course of 24 hours, I was offered both jobs.
This was a problem, I wanted both of the jobs, working with Tanner would be ace and would get me back into research, while the Met job would get me traveling and had a few elements that the research job didn't have. It wasn't an easy choice but I went for the Met Office, duty and service and all that playing a not insignificant part in the choice. As a result, in the last 10 months I've worked in Exeter, Oxford, Scotland and now Yorkshire, I've been to Lincoln a couple of times and I've done the Royal Marines Commando challenge, a basic powerboat handling course and skid pan training. If I can pass my physical this time, in six months I'll be a Reserve officer in the RAF. If I can't pass the fitness test, I'll be out of a job so I've been training better this time.
And that brings you up to date, except for the massive amounts I've glossed over, such as serving for a year on the Tewkesbury Abbey PCC, and alot about the friends I've made on the way. But there's always time...

nostalgia revisited

So, to expand on the post from before Doctor Who (good programme), back at uni we'd head out and find something to do on a day. We might go body boarding or snorkeling, we might go luging on street luges, well one luge and take turns. We might go climbing or just chill on the beach or in the park. Sometimes we went wind surfing or just wandered with friends around town, laughing at all the scallies and townies.
These days, mainly due to the fact that my nearest friend, not counting the guys from the IFC (Initial Forecasting Course, the six months in Exeter where we learnt to forecast the weather), is in south Scotland. For anyone reading this (?) that's about 210 miles from here and that's just a bit too far. Oddly enough, I'm almost 210 miles from all my friends. So, I can either find things to do on my own or make new friends/do things with newer friends.
Don't get me wrong on this, the guys from the MOC are great but for me a friend is something specific. I've got mates, people I enjoy being with and that includes the IFC lot and most of the guys from work, but I haven't really spent any time with them outside of work; but a friend, with an emphasis that I can't put into text, for me is something greater.
A friend is a mate that I could sit for hours with, without speaking and neither of us feeling that this would be wrong, a friend is someone that I'd climb with by choice, not necessity (if this doesn't give an idea of the level of trust, you've never gone climbing), someone that I would travel halfway round the world to help, and is someone for whom I'd die for, and probably kill to protect. Given that I'm in a job where I might have to do that for the government (VERY unlikely but a possibility) that last should be taken with an understanding that for the Ferret, Tash, Tanner, Andi, D'Abs, Sara Jules, Ria and the rest of the guys there'd be no thought involved, I have love for them and place their lives above mine.
That little list isn't conclusive, but has made me realise that I've got more friends than I thought, which is always a nice feeling.

When I think of what we USED to do on a weekend......

So, it's a bank holiday weekend, three days off.
I could be heading to Scotland, Wales, the Lakes, anywhere. What am I doing? Went to the flicks earlier (X-Men 3, not bad, 3 and a half stars, better than the Da Vinci Code) and then went shopping. And, excitement of excitement, I bought some underwear! Okay, it was CK, but even so.
In the back of my car I've got climbing kit, snorkeling kit and a power kite. Why the hell didn't I use some of it? Ahh, well there's always tomorrow. Actually, I think I'll try the indoors snow slope tomorrow and fly a kite later, but it's Dr Who now so will send again later.
Jim, or maybe Jimbo, not sure about that.....

Been quite a week

So, last week we were in the South of France with work. Such a hard life....
Basically we went to Toulouse to visit Meteo France, the French Met service (that's meteorology, not Metropolitan), as part of an exchange system of students. We had seen the French students at Exeter, but they didn't really seem to have much laid on for them as we had in France.
This is another one of those occasions where I wish I knew more of a foreign language, I have a small amount of French, just enough not to starve and be able to navigate a bus route, that sort of thing, but one of our group, E, is fluent. She was a god send in this case. Having said that the French all spoke English that was damn near perfect anyway. Really put us to shame.
Main points that came across to me were that the French generally put much more value on scientists and engineers, whereas in this country (UK) we seem to be embarrassed by anyone that is good at something mentally challenging. Footballers and the like are loved but engineers and scientists are seen as that most terrible of things, "too clever by half." The other thing, and more important really, was that the French train to be able to fit in anywhere in their establishment, be it research, forecasting, IT or HR, and the choice of the job they get is dependent on their grades in the academic work they produce while training. If there are 15 in the class, the are rated on results and a list of 15 positions is prepared. The best student gets to choose their preference, then the next down and so on. If you didn't do very well, you get what is left. As a result the students all seemed VERY focused on their work.
Now I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, indeed it's good for the grades, but we have a belief in the values of "work hard, play hard". In this way the work MUST be done to an acceptable standard, but once that is done it's time to relax and have fun. One of the nights coincided with the Arsenal game so some of the guys watched the game with some of the French while the rest of us had a really good meal (and bloody expensive) in Toulouse. They mentioned to us afterwards that the locals were quite quiet and restrained. The next day was the soiree held for us, which as might be imagined, turned into a fairly drunken affair. Nothing TOO embarrassing (except my dancing) but hey, play hard is important.

Did feel like a youth club in places though. Darts, table football, spontaneous line dancing (I'm not kidding here) and later more of a dancy feel. Loved it! Except the line dancing, but they enjoyed it and the number of students there was so small that I guess they know what they like and can enjoy it, so good for them.
Still think they focus too much on broadscale and vorticity though, but that's just my personal view.
Jim

A beginning...

So, aside from the information in the brief profile, there isn't much to say at the moment. I'm new to blogging, as you can tell by the fact this is the first post. Some of my friends have blogs, to a large extent I've been put off them as I have to make sure that nothing that I write is not allowed due to work. This will make more sense soon, I promise.
As it is, in 7 hours the boss and myself are heading to Bristol, picking up two collegues on the way, to head with the rest of my forecasting course and some of their bosses to the south of France for a week of experiencing the French way of forecasting.
Bon.