A Fozard Howler
From Fowler


Dave Fowler recalls an unusual occurrence…

John Fozard was well known for doing quick calculations during meetings to prove the point he was making at the time. At one meeting, on the naval version of the P.1154, he ‘proved’ to the astonishment of everybody there that just two aircraft tethered to the deck of ‘Ark Royal’ with their engines running would be sufficient to keep the ship travelling at maximum speed!

When the meeting was over I recovered the said sheet of paper and checked John’s calculation only to find that the answer was not twenty divided by ten, as he had claimed, but was actually twenty multiplied by ten - just imagine the sight of two hundred aircraft powering the carrier along!

A Fowler Fable

Dave Fowler recalls a short moral tale from Kingston…

One Monday I was walking back to the Stress Office from the car park after lunch when I met a married colleague from the Project Office and I asked him if he’d enjoyed his holiday in Norway. He said they’d had a wonderful time and got back yesterday; and had I been there too? I said I had and got back a week ago. His face then turned the colour of a beetroot and he muttered something about the fact that he hadn’t told anybody where they were going, and anyway it was his girlfriend’s car, and how did I know where they’d been?

I said I didn’t know but just guessed from seeing the colour of the mud on his car as he drove in. The roads in the Western Fjords are not paved but are regularly graded in the summer because they’re frozen solid throughout the winter. The local filling stations typically have two water pumps and two brooms connected to hoses so that you can wash the dust off your car every time you fill it up with fuel.

He looked astonished that he’d been found out; so remember chaps, keep your car clean if you don’t want your wife to know where you’ve been taking the girlfriend!