Grapple lives on!

1  It does, it does.  Indeed, the signs were positive from the time of my arrival - almost the first.  Immediate recognitions, immediate conversations.  As others arrived there were further, easy conversations.  When lunch was signalled, we moved to the President's room, the room next to the bar at the top of the stairs, where four tables had been set out.  We sat to lunch, which was served.  Steak pudding.  The conversations continued.


2  After lunch, the room was re-arranged for the showing of films.  One of our number, a quiet, lovely man who worked at the AWE, has access to old films.  So we watched the preparations for one of the tests at Maralinga.  As an encore, as it were, we watched for a further fifteen minutes a film about a (small) ship-based test off the Monte Bello Islands.  


2.1  Both films were black and white, both were old.  Yet we watched. It was interesting to see the preparations for the test at Maralinga.  The film was about longago (nearly 60 years) events, yet it was an expression of what we had in common.  We had all been occupied with the nuclear and thermo-nuclear tests.  We had all been some 50 or more years younger.  We had just had lunch.  We were in good shape.  


2.2  The reunion is one of elderly men, and some guests, who assemble in a familiar place for what I sense is an entirely familiar event.  I sat next to a chum who travels from Newport.  Others travel from further away.  The dominant dress is blazer and Grapple tie.  There is talk, of course, about the Island.  Yet the conversation embraces the topics which might feature at other lunch tables.  I have an idea that there is a sense of commonality, a sense that one is in the company of someone else who served on the Island (or elsewhere in the Grapple programme).  Accordingly, the conversation just flows.


3  Of course, there was a Vote of Thanks to the man who keeps it all together, (no longer) young David Brockett and his wife.  They live in the New Forest.  For years I have been saying that I will visit them on a bicycle.  I have promised that I will do so next month, 'in June'.  So we had better to put one or two possible dates in our diaries.  Bikes on train.  Bottoms on bikes.


4  Jim and Sheila have invited us to their fiftieth wedding anniversary lunch in the RAF Club on Sunday 17 June.  


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Stayathome