Listen to Company of Makers’ latest podcast featuring…
Alistair Halliday, CEO RFEA – The Forces Employment Charity
“HMS Manchester… I was playing on the bridge wing once and… the Club Swinger… came out and started doing The Sailor’s Hornpipe… and so I was… on my accordion and she was dancing it superbly… and then… we had an idea, ‘Let’s get a team together’. So, we put a thing on daily orders for… 9, a mixture, male and female from the ship’s company, and then… she drilled them and trained them and that was our party piece… So for these big receptions, I remember doing one in Quebec and one in Montreal… we’d finish it off with this display of The Sailor’s Hornpipe. It was fantastic… a really good way to end at a cocktail party.”
33 years of Service in the Royal Navy, 20 years at sea, 15 or so ships and several frontline deployments have produced many a dit and a Veteran who has, not only made a successful transition into the civilian world, but is now Chief Executive of RFEA – The Forces Employment Charity, helping around 20,000 Service leavers a year into the world of commercial employment.
We talk about the impact of the ending of the furlough scheme and the perhaps surprising upshot of the pandemic, “Now employers are crying out for labour, so it’s a job seeker’s market…” with opportunities in the green energy sector, cyber, tech, distribution, construction and the defence industry.
…And of course, many of those dits we mentioned, thrown in for good measure *practices The Hornpipe*
To play podcast click here: playpodca.st/lockdown
