Nathan

Nathan is a builder, he works alongside his bezzy mate Jacob. This morning they allowed me to disturb their tea break. It’s just my luck but last week Nathan cut back his ZZ Top beard, which, as you can see, would have been flaming red. Celtic roots. 

Making friends, real friends…..
My work levels at Aberdeen were such that each day I would fly between 3 - 7 hours. That’s quite a lot in helicopters, mentally and physically tiring. During 1986 I spent six months in the NW of Australia at Karratha. As a British pilot arriving from Aberdeen there was an expectation that a stiff necked individual with attitude would turn up and be a rectal pain. 
In order to put my stamp on how I felt about the situation I turned up at the hotel bar on my first evening wearing a T shirt I had ordered in Perth the day before. On the chest, “Grow your own dope, plant a Pom.” (For our American listeners a Pom is an abbreviation of POHM - Prisoner of Her Majesty, the original convict appellation from centuries past) The T shirt and ale went down well. Some of my engineer friends from China were there and life seemed good. 
Imagine my horror when a few nights later I wandered to the bar and heard, “Here’s Seagull.” :-(( Aussies are fond of nicknames, I realised they had decided to call me Seagull, but what had I done to deserve this ‘awkward’ name? Taking my bessie mate JC aside I asked, Who have I upset?” He roared laughing and told me they thought they had to throw rocks at me to make me fly! 
The workload at Karratha was light, about 4 flights per week. There were 8 - 12 pilots who all needed to remain qualified and current. Each morning that week I had gone into work at at 0600 and been asked by the Managing Pilot to stand down and let one of the others fly instead. Zoooooom - swimmers, coffee, pool. Consequently ‘Seagull.’ I had so many hours it was felt I could tread water for a while. 
The very next morning I had crawled around, under and inside a Puma, was just about to ignite the first engine, my head was inside the cockpit watching dials, when the co-pilot started laughing. I looked outside. The engineer crew were standing by the nose, a new zinc bucket in hand with “Rocks” painted on it. They then proceeded to throw stones at the weather radar dome. 
Real friends, good friends, they took care of me in Perth, we went drinking, water skiing, drinking and even did a wine tour. Years later our daughter did a year in Oz, she stayed with the Chief Engineer and his wife. I knew she was safe. This was proved incorrect when she sent us photos of her dancing on the bar tables. My baby!!!!!!!