Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Helicopters (and royals) rule! OK!

I haven't mentioned the royals for a while because I was waiting for an invitation to the palace. However not being a rock star, I now realise this is never going to happen.

There are two stories about the royals which caught my eye when I had a quick look at the online news this morning, just after I'd stepped in a small puddle of puppy wee.

Prince Charles has thrown his effort into the plastic bag issue. Now when he goes to his local supermarket he's going to refuse accepting his weekly chunk of Argentinean roasting beef unless it's wrapped in newspaper.

The other item was about Prince William who recently learned to fly RAF helicopters. His father Prince Charles presented him with his wings last Friday and proclaimed, 'Gad! Well done old bean! Chocks away!"

In the interest of acquiring a few knighthoods, the bigwigs in the air force apparently said he can use any of the spare choppers during his weekends off, just so long as he pretends he's doing an exercise, parks them properly when he returns to base, and hangs the keys back on the hook. It's good to be king. (Or something like it.)

So not being backward in coming forward, Will promptly borrowed a twin rotor Chinook and whizzed off to pick up his sibling Harry from a London boozer before heading for a cousin's stag party on the Isle of Wight. He had done a week's familiarisation with Chinooks, which is all a member of the royal family needs. What I'd like to know is did Harry shoot the stag from the helicopter, and did they use any plastic bags after they landed to butcher it?

Harry is of course fresh out of Afghanistan where he'd been chasing the Taliban insurgency. He was sent back to England when the bigwigs feared that the Taliban were chasing him. An astonishing helicopter story has just emerged from that unlucky country. (Afghanistan). It landed at the wrong position and unloaded a whole pile of useful stuff like rocket propelled grenades, rifle ammo, water and food. Trouble was that the recipients were a Taliban unit. It's jolly lucky that Prince William wasn't flying the helicopter. A NATO spokesman described the incident as a "cock-up" so it must have been a British helicopter.

Curiously enough our eldest daughter has some done air time in two types of British military helicopters. Here's a blurry pic of her boarding a Chinook when she went to England on an exchange visit with the Australian Army Cadets two years ago. She's the short one on the right. She was only 17.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!