Part of the training was drill and you had to stamp your feet, which used to cause your socks to fall down about your ankles. In cadets, you had to wear garters. On this one occasion,I'd forgotten my garters, so I tied my socks up with a shoelace. I suddenly found myself lying on the Tarmac. I fainted because the blood couldn't circulate. Fifteen years later, I was in the regular army and sergeant major Griffiths came around and said your socks are falling down. You need to use string, not elastic. He put me on a charge for using elastic instead of string. I appealed to the company commander and got off.
Griffiths would walk around and if he saw your socks coming down a bit, he would push them down with his pace stick. If they went down, he would decide to charge you, as you had the wrong support. He wanted to be nasty so that people would respect him.
We also had a regimental sergeant major, RSM Erasmus. Erasmus's claim to fame was he had a very loud voice. Erasmus was quite capable of telling the sergeant major off on the parade ground. Erasmus was marching us around the parade ground and suddenly you heard a voice shouting, staff, staff, third man in the front row is wearing jewellery. That was me with a watch on.
The army training taught me that on occasions there are things you have to do. It did teach me to deal with obnoxious bastards. You just suck it up and keep going. All my life I've had these obnoxious people arrive from nowhere. One obnoxious person was a foreman here in Australia. He wasn't in charge of me, but I was supplying the stuff. He constantly out up blockages to make you have to crawl on your hands and knees to get anything done. I would walk in and he would say did you go though reception? He would always hound me like this.
He undid himself over a period of time, in that he got so many people to hate him that eventually all the workers got together and said we're not going to work for that guy anymore and he got the sack. This was back in the 80s and he used to go to army surplus and buy camouflage and drive a Hummer. One day, our product was defective and he said, "look at this, look at this." I said we're not going to pay damages, because the bloke I was working for would not pay damages on any occasion. I'd been saying "Yes, yes, yes," to him all these years, but it was time to say no. I had to try to increase sales, but I wasn't going to do it by going though him. The look he had when I said "No" was incredible.
There have been lots of people who have been like that. I think it makes them feel good to be able to put someone down. Every time I've taken revenge on someone, it's never worked out. You can't fly at someone. I have an instinct for some things. If I've put a product into a company if I felt it was doing okay, it was going okay, but if it wasn't, I also felt it. Then, I would rush around and try to fix things up.
I still dream of work. Sometimes I dream I'm back in Africa and sometimes I'm having to fight my way out of a situation. Fighting isn't always necessary, but when it comes around, you don't want to be unprepared. I find I'm out somewhere and there's a pool of water and I think, right, I'll have a swim in that. Then I look on the far side and there's a crocodile. This indicates danger in places where you wouldn't ordinarily expect it. Some of the meaning of dreams is to convince yourself you're not afraid of anything.
When I was in hospital after the stroke, I had dreams about being in a place you don't want to be and you just have to accept it because there's no way out.
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