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Old 07-19-2009, 03:33 AM
Littlearmies Littlearmies is offline
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In 1990/1991 I was working on a privatisation contract for the British Government in Hastings (a has been seaside resort on the South Coast - Americans think some of those New Jersey type places for atmosphere). Soon after the Wall came down I met a couple of hefty guys who had walked into my local with three good looking girls.

As they wanted to play pool and I had the table we had no option but to chat together. As I was quite keen on the girls and they wanted to practice their English this turned into a bit of a session. They were over for language lessons and one of the guys mentioned they had real difficulty getting visas to come to the UK.

I explained to them that I didn't live in Hastings per se but that I was staying there while I worked and that I actually lived near Stevenage (a town with about 100,000 people 30 miles North of London). When I mentioned this they gave each other big grins and said "We know Stevenage - British Aerospace Guided Weapons, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics Satelite Division, Martin Baker Ejection Seats..."

While they were buying the next round I asked the best looking of the three girls how they knew so much about Stevenage - were they spies? And the answer was that they had been a Major and a Captain in the Soviet strategic rocket forces based near Moscow before being riffed a few months earlier - Stevenage was obviously on a tartget list. They were now in business building dachas.

At the time it slightly took me aback to meet two guys who had their finger on the button to vapourise me a year or so before - but they were nice blokes...
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