Hello Everyone!

I’m back on Beckett 3 Flight and it’s already been an adventure…we’ve been on the low ropes, played stuck in the mud, had injections, spent a day at the dentist, done lots of team building exercises – and that doesn’t even begin to include the classroom-based lessons.

Every day we do drill lessons and as I passed the drill test last time, my skills are still pretty current and I don’t struggle here. This just means that I’m able to help the others in my Flight who haven’t had 7 months of experience at RAF Halton. They’re getting there, but it’s still a little messy sometimes (as is expected).

We’re also going through the programme of General Service Knowledge (GSK) lessons. Again I passed the exam for this last time but it’s always good to go over things and I got 98% in the test this week. I’ve also been helping some of the guys on my Flight to remember the facts and information they need to learn by singing them in stupid voices – humour and learning together seems to work a treat!

We had our Day 10 inspection on Saturday morning, which didn’t go brilliantly, but those who passed were able to go to the Day 10 disco in the bar on base. We got our NAAFI passes, which allowed us a total of 3 drinks, but as we were working the next day that’s definitely a good limit.

The staff have changed a little since last time I was on Beckett – as the intake is so large we have been split in two (Flight 3 and Flight 4). There’s nothing really different (except of course 3 Flight is better!) but we just have lessons separately so we can fit into the classrooms. One of the girls I was quite close to on McTeague Flight is on 4 Flight, so it’ll be really great for us to graduate on the same day (hopefully on 20th March 2012).

I’m a lot more positive with the training this time around (although Physical Training is still a bit of a burden), and I still get very homesick and have wobbles every once in a while – especially when some of the guys don’t communicate properly and things don’t go as smoothly as they could – but hopefully they’ll get better at that pretty quickly!

Thanks everyone again for all the support, and I hope to keep you all interested for the next 7 weeks of basic training – and then University in Birmingham for the nursing degree programme.

AC Doyle