A year ago today…how painful was it?

I stood on a parade once in our full #1 dress, it wasn't especially hot but the heavy wool tunic and cap etc were starchy and uncomfortable, let alone the never worn before parade boots.

Sod doing that for any longer than about an hour even with toe exercises and travel tissues. Not sure what regs the police/army have for parades but whipping out some sweets mid parade would have been a monumental bollocking for us..
 
Josh said:
I stood on a parade once in our full #1 dress, it wasn't especially hot but the heavy wool tunic and cap etc were starchy and uncomfortable, let alone the never worn before parade boots.

Sod doing that for any longer than about an hour even with toe exercises and travel tissues. Not sure what regs the police/army have for parades but whipping out some sweets mid parade would have been a monumental bollocking for us..
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I guess the sweets thing would have been more for police officers than the military lads. But your post emphasises the whole point entirely. The thought of having to stand like that for four or five hours, or even longer if the seven hour comment was correct, must be torture.
 
Rroff said:
The only thing about long duty hours which is a pain if not managed well is needing the toilet, especially if you have some type of condition in that respect. Pretty much everything else you can prepare for, as long as you able to - in some cases there might be some [silly] restrictions if in ceremonial dress, etc. I'm often surprised how many people do stuff like that and don't have simple things like a pack of travel tissues, a few sweets, etc. even if it isn't their first time. (Then there are things like toe exercises, etc. to help with circulation and so on).

As a minimum compact "kit" I have a Victorinox Classic SD, Olight i3E (i1R is a longer life alternative) and either some plasters or small roll of elastic medical tape, if possible wet wipes or sanitiser don't go amiss. Though less necessary with phones a pen and paper can also be handy to have.

If I can have my sling pack with me even better as I have a bottle of water, power banks, etc.

For the most part anything else quite frankly is a lack of fortitude, unless people genuinely do have things like a back condition, etc.
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I suppose you can’t prepare the human body for every single eventuality, but clearly decent forethought and precise planning are a necessary part of the role. The admirable thing is that so rarely do things go wrong … from the outside view anyway.
 
Although the OP is no doubt tongue in cheek, I find these threads interesting because if this was created when she croaked it then the mods would only be permitting "acceptable" comments and binning anyone that dares stray from the designated narrative. You'd also have the strange phenomenon of people subscribing to the thread hoping to see a comment they could get offended about, and then make a big show of calling it out.

And that's before I get started on the actual bona fide adults who were genuinely shocked and moved to tears at a 96 year old finally doing what people a lot less younger than 96 inevitably do.

What's the agreed time period when people finally come to some semblance of sanity? A week? A month?

I said it at the time, and I got thread banned for it, but I'll say it again: the English are ******* weird.
 
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My grandfather died on the same day as the Queen. He was a really top bloke. Can't believe it's been over a year already. It was his time though so I wasn't really sad in all honesty. He'd had three or four really bad strokes, had terrible parkinsons, and was wearing my poor grandmother out by looking after him.
 
Liz's funeral day was the last time I did a 50+ mile ride, got a few top 10 Strava segments up a 4 mile climb, on gloriously quiet roads. How things changed a week later, when I got covid and then had long covid since.
 
I don't believe the 7 hour without breaks thing: as any cinema operator will tell you the capacity of the human bladder is around 2-3 hours. Staying on duty for 7 hours with breaks is another matter - that's a normal working day.
 
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