Being a Boy in JLRRA
STAND BY YOUR BEDS!
Let us now discuss the matter of Block-Inspections and ‘grease-outs’.
In the first week in Nigsville, we were inducted into block-cleaning. For us, there were going to be any amount of block inspections.
This meant, literally, everything. Our bed-blocks, locker-layouts, the floor, our uniforms, walls, windows, our personal cleanliness, the ironing room, the drying room, the bogs (*shudder*), the bathroom & showers, plus the corridor and stairs. Nothing would be missed.
When you think about it, the chances of getting everything spot-on were practically ‘zero’. It was a case of, “Set yourself a low standard and then fail to achieve it.” (As was included in one of my Annual Reports.) They were bound to pick us up on any amount of things.
In those early days, it was a joint-effort (I won’t say ‘team-effort’). Collectively, we shifted all the beds and furniture around to clean the floor.
First, we had to scrub all the peculiar stains off. Then, using rags, put the polish down. The polish, itself, was a glutinous orange substance. Next come the bumpers. Just in case you can’t remember, these were heavily weighted chunks of cast iron, suitably padded, on the end of a long, hinged handle. A boy would have to swing the bumper to bring the polish to a good shine. It was exhausting and often used as a form of punishment.
There was a thing about whether you were then allowed to walk on the polished floor in your boots or you had to be in stockinged feet. I have mixed feelings about this. Boots DMS would leave marks on the newly polished surface, whereas boys’ sweaty socks would strip the polish. Who knows?
Someone would have to take all the rugs out and sweep them with a bass-broom, to get all the dust and gravel off. I have no idea where it all came from. The dust-and-gravel pixies I suppose.
Next, we would move all the lockers and furniture back into position. It was during one of these manouevres that I got my hand mashed against the wall and had to go down to the MRS. When I arrived there I threw-up on the medic and fainted.
This block-cleaning business was dangerous.

Come the inspection, everything was fair-game. Despite it being a joint-effort, we would be picked-up individually. If your patch of floor wasn’t up to scratch, you would be the one to get a savage bollocking, not the kid who had polished it.
That was just unfair.
Due to being obssessively pernickety, I always made sure my bed-block and locker-layout were perfect. But that didn’t stop the inspecting officer finding fault. Someone, using permanent marker, had written a stores’ number on my locker mirror. I couldn’t get it off but still got bollocked for it. Then, the officer took exception to my books and hair-gel. He made some sneering remark about my choice of authors.
That was also unfair.
In any event, come the Recruits’ Battery block competition, my obssessive attention to detail came to the fore and Wardrop section won. I was nominated to select which boy would go up to receive the prize.
That was also unfair.
When I got to 40 Battery it was a whole other story. We didn’t do grease-outs as a collective. It was every boy for himself.
The rooms were not arranged in the same way as Recruits’ Battery. Some of the kids managed to grab the corner spaces and arranged their lockers to form little cordons. In effect, they had created miniature bunks for themselves, while the rest of us were left completely exposed.
Being inventive and naturally lazy, we were always on the lookout for easier ways of doing things. We were so averse to using the bumpers that we found other means of polishing the floor. One favourite was to get a boy in a blanket and two or three other boys would swing him around. I suppose it worked, after a fashion. I can’t say it was any better or worse than using a bumper. In any event, it usually ended with the blanket-boy crashing into a wall or getting the bumps.
In addition to maintaining your own personal space, there were dozens of block-jobs to be done. I was almost always nominated to clean the toilets. I don’t fully understand why this was. Just lucky, I guess. It became my own personal stuggle.
I don’t mind telling you, it was pretty horrible. We didn’t have any ‘Toilet-Duck’ or even any bog-brushes for that matter. Instead, I got some toxic detergent and a threadbare cloth. And it wasn’t just the toilets themselves. I also had to clean the cubicles. There are some stains that are too stubborn to be removed by toxic detergent. If you get my drift.
It wasn’t just at Bramcote where I had this privileged role. When I was on the Training-Ship “Captain Scott” I was appointed “Captain-of-the-Heads”.
Even though I tried my hardest I was always being picked-up. What I didn’t realise at the time, was that the staff were deliberately sabotaging my efforts. They would plant a wodge of mop-fibre behind the heads and then I would be bollocked for not cleaning it properly.
I later heard the following story. I wish I had known it then. I might have done something similar:
A TERRIBLE STORY
Corporal McCarthy liked to tell the story of when he was serving in Northern Ireland, how he was being harassed by Captain Taylor, the Ops Officer, who was in the habit of inspecting the billet. By all accounts, he would come in each morning, go straight to the toilets and point accusingly at an imaginary speck of dirt.
“What is this? Corporal McCarthy?” he would demand, rhetorically, in his fussy little voice, bristling his fussy little moustache. “It’s shit, Corporal McCarthy. It’s shit. Get it sorted out.”
He would repeat the same formula, day after day, until Corporal McCarthy had had enough. One morning he ordered the fatigue crew to go out and pick up litter while he, McCarthy, would clean the toilets.
He flushed them and scrubbed them and flushed them and scrubbed them so that they were spotless inside and out. Then he produced a tub of peanut butter and smeared a blob inside one of the bowls.
When Captain Taylor arrived to inspect the toilets, he went absolutely incandescent with rage:
“What is this, Corporal McCarthy?”
“It looks like shit, Sir.” Taking a sniff, “It smells like shit.” Scooping it up and tasting it, “And it tastes like shit. I’d say it’s shit, Sir.”
A little later, the Troop Sergeant Major came to see McCarthy.
“I don’t suppose you have anything you want to tell me?” He enquired gently. “About what, Sir?”
“You seem to have broken Captain Taylor.”
