Christmas Retard
Sometime in November we would be asked for volunteers to work over the Christmas leave period - known as Christmas Retard. Obviously being a Royal Naval establishment they couldn't just shut it down and send everyone home so someone had to stay behind. Draw the short straw maybe? I always volunteered for retard duty because as I saw it, you got two holidays. While everyone else was at home enjoying themselves (and it was almost everyone) those of us left behind would be doing rounds and odd jobs, but basically having an easy time compared to normal duty. There were two watches, port and starboard one was on while the other was off. So if you worked it out well with a few mates you could have a pretty good time over Christmas, spending a lot of it in a local pub or camp bar. Once the rest of the camp came back, we would be allowed to go off on our holiday - so a win win situation really. One year in particular while at HMS Daedalus, I remember walking around the training blocks...