Paul Chiddle
A Retired Naval Gentleman
And so it came to pass that on Thursday 31st Jul 2014 CPO(CIS) Chiddle, D210326S became MR Chiddle.
The journey to get to this point had started some 2 years prior and even as long as 6 years before driving out Trafalgar Gate at Pompey dockyard for what I thought was the last time…..more on that later!
So, in 2008 as a Chief of the communicators I had a bit of an epiphany as to the fact that working in ‘IT’ was the equivalent of stabbing pens in my eyes! Literally would rather have shat into the palms of my own hands and clapped! “So Chiddle, what do you want to do when you grow up” was the question! Only problem was I didn’t have a clue as to what the bloody answer was, 22 years in having joined as a spotty 17 year old I’d only known being an RO, now knocking on 40 with four kids and into volume 2 on the wife front what did I want to do when I grew up?
So, the journey of Chiddz’ transition to civvy began. As a Chief in the ole ‘Chips & Gravy’ the best part of the job wasn’t actually tuning HF radios and running inter-ship RATT although that was a close second but, top of the list was managing Sailors. As arseholes they are, the satisfaction in training kids to be the next Jack or Jenny or building a team in the MCO at OST (Operational Sea Training), deploying on 4-month deployment only to come back to the UK 11 months later, nothing beat that! So being the naive lifer I was I thought a career in HR was the answer……..what a knob!!
Thanks to ELC’s I completed my Level 7 postgraduate diploma in HR Management and felt I was easily the best HR Director on the planet after all what do fuckin’ Civvies know about managing people? As it turns it quite a bit but that’s in the next ‘Note for Daily Orders’! 2 years of part-time learning, whilst working full-time as the Chief of the T23 Porflot Pool, an innovative trial to use Squad Pooling as a way to maintain frontline crew numbers, of course you needed to have real sailors to make it work but it was my first introduction into Workforce Planning!
On to HMS Ocean which unbeknown to me was to be my last sleek grey messenger of death, although if you know Ocean she was more of a well-worn steaming bat with the sole coming loose than a ‘proper warship’! Two years as Warfare Depco and deployments to the Mediterranean, Operations in Libya, and a jaunt out to the middle east plus the 2012 London Olympic as security overwatch guardship it was time to come ashore. This is where leaving the RN became reality.
Having been in ‘ready in all respects’ for promotion to WO1, they decided they didn’t need to promote anyone for a couple of years and so 7 clicks to freedom came into force!
Part 2 to follow...