Brittany Peers

I have never been very good at foreign languages.

I did take French and German to 'O' level although that was way back in 1979 and with the natural evolution of language that would probably mean that any attempted conversation with Nationals now from those two countries would sound positively Medieval.

Even at the supposed peak of my linguistic capabilities having laboured over them as a student I did make some huge and, in retrospect, humorous mistakes although at the time nothing could have been more excruciatingly embarrassing. 

In a packed school playground in a Parisian suburb, whilst on an exchange trip aged 16, I meant to say to a group of female french students that I liked music but it came out, unfortunately as "I love you" in a collective sense. 

In the second week of the same trip I was whisked away by my host family to the Brittany Coast. 

I still contend today that I was kidnapped and that behind the scenes some diplomatic mission secured my release and repatriation with fellow students and teachers. 

Whilst there all of the host household were either struck down with Mumps or had to dedicate their time to looking after the swollen and irritable invalids leaving me to make my own entertainment. 

I found an old rusty bike in the shed behind the cottage retreat and took to riding around the beautiful countryside perfecting my french pronunciation of "Une biere blonde s'il vous plait"at various roadside and beach-side cafes, bars and tabacs. 

As long as I turned up for the roll-call at the evening meal no-one seemed at all bothered about "l'Anglais'. 

I did cycle many miles along the narrow, high hedged lanes between the small rural village where I was staying to the quaint harbour side towns and through the dunes of broad white sandy beaches but did not seem to improve in terms of fitness at all. 

That very hands on experience, albeit a bit blurry and sweaty in a Breton Spring, gave me the motivation to knuckle down for the final few weeks on return to England and I got through my 'o' level oral examination with a credit using my rather crude, colloquial and somewhat boozy description of what I did on my French holiday.

Time of a Whale

The first whaling ships sailed from the Port of Hull on the East Yorkshire Coast in 1598 during the reign of Elizabeth the First. 

By the late 1700's Hull was a major whaling port and by the 1800's the city on the Humber Estuary accounted for nearly half of the British whaling fleet bringing much prosperity. The primary product was of course whale oil used in soap and margarine for example and involving the boiling down of the blubber to extract it. The best oil was to be found in the head of a whale, spermaceti, of which up to 500 gallons could be held in a natural reservoir.

This dominance of Hull is acknowledged with more than one reference in Herman Melville's great novel of Moby Dick. The following is an extract from the novel illustrating what a Sperm Whale carcass could produce but at a high price in terms of fatalities and life changing injuries amongst the brave souls in the inhospitable hunting grounds where whales were once plentiful. 

"First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It is tough with congealed tendons—a wad of muscle—but still contains some oil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like blocks of Berkshire marble.

Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the whale's flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is a most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name imports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.

There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in the course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance. It is an ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting. I hold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case, coalescing.

Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the dark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of those inferior souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.

Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's vocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman's nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan's tail: it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities.

Ambergris is found deep in the bowels of older, mature whales.On first impression it is a waxy, limpish and to all accounts useless waste product but yet its yellowy-ash substance has a spicy smell and aphrodisiac quality so sought after by the perfumiers of Paris.
Whale teeth and bones were harvested for carving into scrimshander and in some Pacific cultures items held an almost sacred place in ceremonies.
Baleen, or the fine mesh of feeding filters was also used in various products. Not much was wasted in the relentless bid to extract as much of value out of the carcass of a whale.

Melville describes graphically the scene on a whaling ship as the hunting crews, having successfully harpooned one of the giants of the oceans, turn to butchers. The decks become awash with blood and fluids all in a choking black smoke from fierce fires underneath cauldrons and vats to boil down the blubber. This carries on day and night regardless of the pitch and violent movement of the ship and at yet more risk to those on board. The sea around the vessel would often be infested with sharks scavenging on anything falling overboard-be it beast or man.

But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at once to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its inmates. This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for the blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. When the proper time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen. They generally go in pairs,—a pike-and-gaffman and a spade-man. The whaling-pike is similar to a frigate's boarding-weapon of the same name. The gaff is something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistants', would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.

Raleigh Chopper

Those of a certain age, likely to be in their 50's, will certainly remember the revolutionary two wheeled bicycle that was The Raleigh Chopper.

It was a stylistic representation of an easy rider motorbike with just enough street credibility to get by even if it required frantic pedalling to travel any distance.

There was nothing better for an early years teenager to pose on down the recreational ground, those new fangled shopping precincts or outside the gates of the Girl's High School. Raleigh Choppers, I recall, came in a Tango Orange or bright red paint job with oversized decals. I did not have one myself and felt pretty jealous of my contemporaries who had put fashion before function in possessing oner of the dream machines.

It was just about practical in the flat topography of an urban setting but you would certainly hesitate on venturing out to the countryside or where there were, heaven forbid, anything that resembled an upward slope.

It amazed me therefore to see an interview in Cycling Weekly magazine about a brave soul who took on the route of the 2015 Tour de France on his bright red Raleigh Chopper.

Here is an extract from the interview.

"When Dave Sims rode the 2015 Tour de France route on a Raleigh Chopper, it didn't please everyone to be passed by a bloke on a vintage kid's bike.

“Yeah, people weren’t always happy. They’d shake their head and mutter a few swear words.”

Dave Sims is the protagonist for the verbal outbursts that littered the switchbacks on the Alpine road when he rode up the Alpe two days ahead of the Tour de France’s arrival on July 23.

The 36-year-old, from Southport, rode 18 stages of the Tour on a modified-but-still-predominantly-original Raleigh Chopper raising money for Help for Heroes.

Assumptions that he would struggle in the high mountain passes were quickly dispelled, however, when he began breezing past riders on road bikes – including his friends who had especially flew out to France to assist him.

“My favourite was a bewildered Londoner with a strong cockney accent shouting, ‘f***ing hell, there’s some guy on a Chopper’. That made me laugh and cheered me up,” he chuckled to Cycling Weekly.

“Three of my mates came out to help on Huez but on the first hairpin bend I dropped them. I went up that climb in gear two like a man possessed.

“Huez was superb as it was the last mountain and my body had adapted to the demands I was placing on it. I reached a level of fitness that I’ve never had before and might possibly never have again.”

Sims has raised almost £8,500, almost double his target, after having his profile raised following physio treatment from Team Sky on an injured Achilles tendon that led to a meeting with Dave Brailsford and receiving a good luck voicemail off Tour champion Chris Froome.

“I was four miles into stage 14 and Jonathan, my driver in the motorhome that week, said ‘you’re riding 10 mph on a flat road. You can’t use your right leg. Just stop.’ Being told to stop was awful, I never wanted to hear that,” he recounted.

“I’d been speaking to Fran Millar who said to get in touch if we wanted anything so ringing Sky was my only option otherwise we would have had to go home.

“I rang her up and she said the physio had a slot at 7.30am so we drove 200km to meet them and they sorted me out with taping. It was brilliant.”The qualified nutritionist says he is leaner than ever before and has no plans to hang the Chopper’s wheels up, rather he is fine-tuning plans for his ‘Everest’ attempt up Alpe d’Huez on September 27.

Achilles injury-permitting, he is to ride up the hairpin bends nine times, the vertical ascent equivalent of summiting the world’s highest mountain. “It’s going to be pretty cool to do it on the Alpe,” he added.

“Nine times is psychologically easier to deal with than 165 times up a local hill.

“If my injury is still not fully recovered then I’ll get two lads from the army cycling team to ride it and I’ll be the co-ordinator. This is just the start of the Chopper project.”

Whatever next....., around the world on a shopper bike?

(Source. Cycling Weekly. Photo Dave Sims)

Moonage Daydream

Once in a while there is something that catches the attention.

I grew up in the hazy, fuzzy black and white televison broadcast days of the 1960's. It was pretty unfulfilling trying to watch a footie game on Match of the Day. It was pure guesswork as to what was going on in late night snooker (Our maternal Grandfather let us stay up and watch Pot Black). Ironically and entirely politically incorrect now was the entertainment value of the musical cabaret with half of the performers having their faces dubbed up but ready made nevertheless for monochrome.

For a young, active and imaginative kid even the limitations of a two-tone TV picture on the small screen could sometimes be quite a challenge.

That was until the grainy images of the July 20th 1969 landing on the moon that I watched, pyjama clad at the age of 6.

I was from that date hooked on all things space, science and science fiction.

So the recent call for public contributions towards restoration work on the suit worn by Neil Armstrong when he walked on the surface of Earth's near neighbour caught my imagination and my small donation has been wired across the Atlantic to the Smithsonian Institute.

It represents a chance for citizens of Earth to conserve, digitise, and display Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit for explorers everywhere.

July 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, a feat so breathtaking in its scope and ambition that it captured the collective imaginations of audiences around the world. At the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, the power of real objects is used to tell stories like this milestone event – stories of the vision, intellect, and courage of men and women who have overcome challenges and pushed boundaries to take the next giant leap for humankind.

The Appeal to #rebootthesuit is the first crowd funding or kickstarter campaign in the history of the Smithsonian.

The idea is to preserve Armstrong’s spacesuit – and the story it tells of its incredible journey – down to the particles of lunar dust that cling to its surface. Just like the Apollo programme itself , this will be accomplished  in collaboration with thousands of people around the world.

We seem to have been desensitised by the rapid technological changes in our own lifetimes but yet the Apollo 11 Moon landing represents one of the single greatest achievements in the history of humankind.

Bringing Armstrong's spacesuit back not only helps honour the accomplishments of a generation who brought us from Earth to the Moon in less than nine years, it also inspires the next generation of bold space explorers.

This is on the eve of a new vision in deep space exploration with recent unprecedented Probe flights as far out as Pluto in our solar system and talk of the practicalities of a manned expedition to Mars.

The suit is a part of world cultural heritage, and safeguarding it recognises its importance in telling the story of a remarkable accomplishment. And because it is the real thing, seeing the suit provides a tangible way of touching history.

Neil Armstrong's spacesuit – like most of the spacesuits in the Museum’s collection – is currently being stored in a climate-controlled collections storage area that is not accessible to the public.
In spite of the image of durability and an ability to withstand extremes in temperature and environments spacesuits are in fact  among the most fragile artifacts in the Museum’s collection. The Apollo suits were made to take astronauts to the Moon and back safely -- not to last hundreds of years in a museum.

To provide public display and access, Armstrong’s spacesuit requires conservation to stop current deterioration and a state-of-the-art display case that will mimic the climate-controlled environment where it is currently being safeguarded.

Will the suit look dramatically different when the project is complete? Not to the naked eye. Conservation is the process of documenting, stabilising and protecting an artifact, not modifying it to make it “like new.”

So why does it take so long?

Plenty of time is being dedicated to get this right.The research and documentation will be pioneering and will write the book on the proper techniques for spacesuit conservation for every suit in the Smithsonian collection.

The process will involve consulting with those who contributed to making the suit and its materials, those who cared for it during the Apollo programme, and materials experts throughout the world. Research, meetings, and mastering new techniques take time. The blueprints for the suit were often overridden for practical alterations in the pre-flight process and patched up when accidental damage occurred in training and handling.

State-of-the-art techniques in 3D scanning, photogrammetry, chemical analysis, CT scanning, and other means are now available to create a detailed map of the suit that will document its condition in the most complete way possible. This work will inform a condition assessment that will help technicians  create the appropriate environment for public display while preserving the suit in its current condition.

The crowd funding target was set at a $500,000 goal but donations have rapidly exceeded this and are heading towards three quarters of a million dollars with 10 days to go.

Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit will be temporarily displayed in time for the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing in 2019, but in the long-term, it will be a centerpiece of a brand new exhibition, Destination Moon, at the Museum in Washington, DC. Planned to open in 2020,

Destination Moon will show those who remember the 1960s, as well as generations born afterwards, how an extraordinary combination of motivations, resources, and technologies made it possible for people to walk on the Moon.

The new gallery will explore how Armstrong’s “one small step…” in July 1969, in the context of the bitter, global Cold War taking place at the time, became not only a triumph for the United States, but an accomplishment that resonated around the world.

3D scanning the Armstrong spacesuit gives a chance to put the suit directly into your hands. With a 3D scan of the suit, you can take a self-guided tour and explore the functions of each of the suit’s 21 layers (check out 3D models of other iconic Smithsonian collection objects). You can make a 3D print of Armstrong’s glove and slip it over your hand. Teachers will have a dynamic new tool for talking about the technology required for living and working in space. 3D scanning also ensures that the conservators and curators have an accurate picture of the suit in its current condition, helping to monitor and preserve the suit and protect it from further deterioration.

The Smithsonian’s Digitization team is doing work that will revolutionise the way we interact with and learn from the artifacts in its collection. The team has already scanned a number of the Smithsonian’s iconic artifacts, from the Wright Flyer to the Bell X-1, and is currently in the planning stages to scan the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia.

In addition to the Armstrong spacesuit, Destination Moon will feature several other significant artifacts, including a huge Moon mural painted by the famous space artist Chesley Bonestell in 1957, the Freedom 7 Mercury capsule in which Alan Shepard became the first American in space, the Gemini 7 spacecraft, the giant F-1 rocket engine, the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, parts of the Apollo Mission Simulator, and many small artifacts. The exhibition will also display the Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter spacecraft currently hanging elsewhere in the Museum, and at least one other robotic spacecraft from a more recent mission.

I have been pleased to contribute a few quid. I should be getting a T-shirt of #rebootthesuit to acknowledge my involvement, a sachet of freeze-dried space flight ice cream and a 3D scan of one of Neil Armstrong's suit gloves.

Those bits of merchandise are insignificant, just gratuities, compared to actually being involved in saving a piece of modern history.

Olympic Recollections 3 years on

(first compiled upon return from a visit to the London Olympics in 2012)

It is surely true that as you get older you also get more emotional and over the smallest, most insignificant things.

I am not ashamed to say that I have welled up a few times in the last few days. This has largely been prompted by pride and patriotism over the Olympic Games with Great Britain (and not just London) as hosts.

It started on the drive down to the first weekend of events whilst listening to the opening ceremony on the car radio . Audio only and a voice over attempt at explaining what was actually being acted out probably brought to life only thirty percent of the impact of the extravaganza. Having seen the highlights some days later I appreciate that it required a full on, three dimensional and multi-sensory concentration to be fully appreciative of the attention to detail and mesmerising technicality. All I could manage was a half cocked ear whilst negotiating the M25 in an anti clockwise rotation near Heathrow Airport.

The whole atmosphere around the Games has also been a catalyst to induce a swelling of the tear ducts. Even on a quiet Surrey Hills verge, awaiting the briefest of glimpses of the Mens Olympic Road Race, there was conversation with passing strangers whereas on a normal weekday any opening of intercourse may have been met with a stony silence or a fine aerosol mist of pepper spray. This may have been due to an influx of northerners like ourselves who always take an opportunity to strike up a dialogue with a native population in other parts of the UK.

In a torrential downpour which heralded the arrival of the Womens Race on the sunday we conversed with those who shared our section of the banked verge as though we had grown up together and were inseparable. There was of course a common interest in cycling but more than that we were celebrating the best of British. In me this engendered a lovely warm feeling, a togetherness and bond and I was genuinely sad to leave to the prospect of a return to work the next day.

The hangover of Olympicism (new word- dibs) has persisted and I have avidly listened to and watched the event coverage over the last few days. I have been emotional over the gymnastics, rowing and more cycling and have found myself getting bowled along with the preambles, live action, inevitable post mortems and the celebrations of medal success but also where British competitors have just had a good go against the best in the world.

The negativism ( new word ?) of the grumblers, sceptics and just plain miserable sods can, in this country,  be quite demoralising and was expected to take centre stage given the lead-up to the Games.

The whole spirit of the event has however been embraced by the nation in a big way and this has been more than illustrated by the roadside crowds, a buzz in public places and an acceptance by the media that Britain is at last good at something- putting on a show .

Picky Dish

The Picky Dish, or is it Pickie, perhaps in this internet era - Pick-'e'.

I am not really sure of its origin or derivation but it has been an integral and characteristic feature of lunchtime and tea time meals in our family for decades.

It seems to be a term just peculiar to the Thomson household, specifically the former Hessle, East Yorkshire branch now resident in the leafy shade of the huge horse chestnut trees of Pearson Park, Hull.

In my own childhood and formative years a Picky Dish would be frowned upon.

In those days you ate what you were given and if you didn't like what was served up then you went hungry. Many a time the refusal to eat would result in a reminder from an attendant grown-up that there were famine stricken children in the world who would welcome a filling meal. I used to imagine the Postal Services in many an African nation being swamped with gravy infused packages from Western children taking the suggestion from their seniors to the extreme.

This discipline of not squandering food came from previous generations where austerity and frugality were the key ingredients in any domestic budget allocation for food.

Of course, another influencing factor in the past was the limited actual choice for consumers. If it wasn't available in the shops then you would have to grow it yourself in a very functional back garden with fruit bushes and vegetable plot or down on a Municipal allotment. There was a well defined seasonality for produce especially where of British origin-winter root crops, spring lamb, summer salad and autumn fruits.

This is so much in contrast to the supermarket shelves today where imported and factory-scale operations ensure a continuous flow and on an all year round basis.

In such an economic paradise the picky dish is in its element.

So what is it?

Well, when our three children were little, although the picky dish ethos persists even now they are all over 20 years old, they all wanted something different at mealtimes. I know, I know we should, as parents have been stronger and more insistent on a standard fare. You would think that with only 5 years span from eldest to youngest there would be some common dietary likes and dislikes. You would think!

Under the pressures exerted on two working parents including a new business start up a bout of wrestling with infants over the lunch and tea table was best avoided.

The Picky Dish could be purchased in its individual constituents easily enough on the journey back from respective places of employment.

The shopping list would typically comprise, from the fresh produce aisles- carrots for grating, granny smith apples for cubing, seedless grapes to inadvertently roll under the kitchen units , celery for slicing, whole pickled beetroot to check that the children were regular (ahem), water cress if not growing out of cotton wool on a bedroom window cill, sweet potato and shredded lettuce.

In the meat and related goods section common acquisitions included mackerel fillets (with or without a dressing), fish sticks or whatever abomination they actually are, pork pies of size to be readily sub-divided, chicken pieces or roast portions, cold cuts of corned beef, wafer thin ham or haslet.

Baked items were next with sesame topped buns, breadcakes or exotic ciabatta and mediterranean pitta followed by cream crackers, bread sticks and mini-cheddars.

Crisps were a good filler with just about every flavour you could imagine but my ultimate favourite, Marmite Twiglets was a standing order on any shopping list.

If towards the end of a long month and still a few days to pay-day there tended to be a less flamboyant offering on the children's plates. Baked Spuds with a variety of fillings could be dressed so as to give the appearance of above average combined income for the household.

I did confess to our eldest daughter just today that if the bank balance was a bit stretched then a Picky Dish could be as easily provided by a creative clearance of the dodgy stuff at back of the fridge,  a measured guess about what was in a very old pantry shelf tin can lacking a label and an enforced defrost of those long forgotten, half opened sachets that had become firmly embedded in a glacial like conglomeration in the freezer compartment.

I think that I got away with that confession and that the fond recollections of the Picky Dish are still strong amongst the Thomson Offspring.

Interview with a Vampire

My back garden, at the old house, used to run for some 100 feet from the french doors of the sitting room up to the back fence boundary.

When we first moved in, now ubelievably, 20 years ago it was quite productive and ordered. The previous owner, an ex RAF man had it set out a bit like an airfield. From the house you stepped down onto a hardstanding apron, not unlike that found under the landing gear of a parked plane. The lawn was long, flat and nicely trimmed with a paver strip and, if squinted at, it did resemble a runway. Even the garage was a bit Ministry of Defence, particularly in its allegiance to that wonder material of asbestos cement sheeting which now instills alternate bouts of panic and indifference on the public at large. The summerhouse would easily double up as the control tower or operations centre and the greenhouse, well, it was just a greenhouse and the analogy stops at that.

I have, in the course of my work, made an informal study of what people have established or keep in their back gardens. If it is indeed true that an Englishmans' Home is his castle, then the front garden would be the moat and outer defences and the back garden would be an inner sanctum for peaceful contemplation and tranquility.

Continuing the RAF theme I was amazed to find, in a back garden in a nearby town, the fuselage of a De Haviland Vampire jet. The name may not be widely recognised but the design with its distinctive twin boom would be remembered from childhood trips to airshows, I Spy spotting books and grainy black and white celebratory TV programmes on British achievements with early forms of jet propulsion. T

The prototypes were actually commissioned in the early years of the second world war but were slow to progress because of other priority projects in conventional fighetr and bomber aircraft by De Haviland and the sister product of the Meteor jet. It was eventually brought into service in 1946 and over 3000 aircraft were built.

As with most national treasures and once great things the plane in question found its way onto E-Bay.

The houseowner with the aircraft in his garden was most proud of his acquisition, having been a plane spotter in his youth and on the basis of rarity and novelty value now. His excitement over knowing where, possibly,  to get hold of the twin fuselage and tail was unrestrained. What next ? The engine and armaments?

The fuselage was surprisingly intact  and quite well preserved indicating a cossetted indoor life and not one under a pile of scrap, out in a field or amongst farm animals. The distinctive roundel in red, white and blue was discernible along with the RAF practice of giving everything a label, carefully painted via a stencil as though an aide memoir to 'The idiots guide to on how to fly'.

Under the smoked glass bubble canopy of the cockpit was the ejector seat, hopefully disconnected from a propulsive charge to prevent nasty surprises, and the full array of instruments and controls.

I could imagine my host sneaking out under cover of darkness to assume the role of pilot with accompanying noises and a lot of saliva spray on the head-up display.

The logistics of delivering the partial plane to the back garden had involved a disproportionate cost to the actual E Bay bid price. The conditions of sale in stating - buyer to collect and transport- may have looked innocent enough and not unduly worrying as an add on cost but when researched to the extent of hiring a low loader with crane, building a crate around the remains of the crate and then creating a major traffic incident over a Bank Holiday weekend I am not surprised that every house in the UK does not have the same ornamental item.

The house, detached, on a normal residential street, had about a metre clearance each side. The fuselage required the services of another crane to lift it over the roof and lower it carefully into the back garden. In the absence of two thirds of the landing gear, only a tail mounted wheel existed in the absence of the otherwise wing mounted stabiliser wheels, a cradle had to be fashioned out of scaffolding trestles on a firm paver base to support the bulbous body. The resting place had to be as perfectly permanent as possible because of the prohibitive costs involved in any subsequent change of mind. I was not sure what the neighbours thought about it. The Council had not thought it necessary to take any enforcement action. Perhaps aircraft in back gardens were a grey area in Planning and Environmental Health.

I did stand and marvel at this wonderful Boys Toy. I doubted if I could persuade my wife to let me have one.

The owner did admit to me that his impulsive purchase had caused some friction in his relationship with his partner but this he had skillfully mitigated by allowing her to use the cockpit as an impromptu hot house in which she could cultivate her own collection of household herbs , exotic (for East Yorkshire) chilli peppers and courgettes for which she was well known in gardening circles.