I don’t drink anymore, but I would have loved a party like that as a kid lol
And as staff 
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Not all that would go down well now. We regularly used to meet up with the younger officers in the nightclub and all sorts of fraternisation would take place. Sometimes they even continued to host the house parties after moving from cadet to staff.
Oops, anyone seen the topic?
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Yea just the kids will be doing that…
Speaking as someone who’s uses the law of averages when taking pictures; yes.
I’ll take a few hundred in the hope that there’ll be a handful that are actually decent, all the cadets in step, all looking the same way, no egregious uniform errors, etc etc.
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oh i get that for a parade.
but at an award ceremony, be that a sports event or a more formal event each class winner gets a photo, the grip and grin, but we only see 3 of those photos and two actions shots from the day…???
at WAD someone is going around all day taking photos of the various activities, yet evidence of only four rather than 24 Squadrons in attendance!
At the risk of deviating from topic, that depends on the context. For photos released to the public on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram we normally go with “less is more”. We pick the best ones, normally 4-8, and post those. Private facebook groups get all the half-decent ones uploaded.
To keep things on topic, I always instructed my cadets to highly polish the entire shoe/boot and bull the toecap. Nothing annoys me more than seeing a mirror like toecap and no effort being put into the rest of the shoe. Id rather they just polish the entire thing well and forgo the bulling.
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As far as I’m concerned “bulled” and “highly polished” are synonymous.
“Bulling” is simply a name which the military gave to the technique used to achieve a highly polished shoe and it should be applied to the whole shoe.
Exactly just how highly polished the shoe becomes is merely dependant on the technique and the time invested.
One can “bull” a shoe until it’s just shiny, or one can keep going until the whole thing is mirror-like. If one uses fewer layers a high gloss can be achieved even though the surface may still be mottled, or with more layers the same high gloss can be glassy smooth.
Personally I go for smooth and mirror-like, but I accept a good effort and a nice high shine from cadets.
my bold is what annoys me. for reasons i don’t understand, shoes are seen as the be all and end of scoring a 10/10. with the rest of the uniform seen as only needing to be “ok” to do well…
Too be honest I don’t hold with bulling anymore. Clean and polished is fine with me. Bulled combat boots just look stupid.
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Yeah, I certainly wouldn’t bull combat boots.
given this is what the book requires, this is what I mark on.
is it possible for someone with highly “bulled shoes” to score lower than someone with clean shoes? absolutely!
Tsk, tsk - you forgot the “underneath” - the instep between sole & heel. Only works on leather though - black leather dye if needed, then it polishes up quite nicely.
At room / uniform inspections (DIOT) at Cranwell, we used to swap over to another flight sometimes, to avoid any possible issues of favouritism (or sheer hate! 
) - it was very clear that one student was “cruising” - merely doing the minimum possible to get on through.
“Right then Bloggs - you’re cruising!”
Student officer looked a little hurt. I explain why, he still looked hurt. I peered down at the shoes that he was wearing - polished but not as highly as the rest of the flight.
“Bloggs, I bet that the insteps of my shoes are better polished than your toe-caps…”
Student officer had the glimmering of a smirk on his face… Wallop, any smirk was wiped off his face - he lost - big time!
Yep, works for me if we have to buy a pair of spare shoes for anyone.
You can certainly polish the sole between the heel and the tread but unlike the old pattern DMS which was smooth rubber and could be bulled as easily as the sides of the sole the modern pattern DMS are textured underneath and it’s much harder to bull.
About the same value as ironing sharp creases in your shreddies!
Ah, you mean I could save on the spray starch there too?
If you pack them out and burn beeswax into them, you can get a shine like that, but only on leather oxfords
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You can get a shine there without beeswax; you just have to accept the natural creases in the leather.
You could do beeswax with DMS too but you’d have same problem - the sole is too thin. With a thin rubber or leather sole the shoe will flex behind the toecap.
Beeswaxing works on ammo boots or Oxfords which have been given additional layers of leather sole because the extra sole rigidity prevents the boot/shoe from flexing.
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