Well, I can usually tell an aircraft by the sound of it’s engine, if it approaches low-level.
I’m not pro-war, (or pro-any politik) but I do love a good uniform. I have many memories of staying on operational R.A.F. Bases as a child in the Air Training Corps. Getting to fly gliders and planes was a bonus! What got me the most, was the architecture.
Expansion Period R.A.F. Station. Shropshire.
There’s just something about it, the idea of having to build hundreds of stations to effectively fend-off the German Air Assault, is remarkable. Scary, functional, and strangely beautiful. There are hundreds of these places all over the country, but not always in such good condition.
I grew up not far from a Cold War Government H.Q. called Drakelow, near Stourbridge. I remember being a “Cold War Child” and even hearing tests of Air Raid Sirens, and being shown the public service films on how to build a fall-out shelter in the living room, using mattresses and doors!
It’s quite a different society that we live in these days. We hear more about celebrity than anything, and less about Art. More about gun-crime and less about humility. -Either way, I like stuff which inspires and provokes.
And So to my favourite aircraft…
Hawker-Siddeley Buccaneer. Cold War low-level Bomber.
O.k. so, my first musical gift from my parents was a cassette of Glen Miller and his Orchestra, perhaps born in the wrong era, but picture the scene…
…12 year old boy, listening to Glenn Miller, and happily making an Airfix model of this aircraft…
So, Perhaps I’m at that time in my life where I’m reuniting with my childhood self, -actually, I realised that I was pretty cool at 12, or at least, I’d have liked the younger me. At any rate, I used to imagine myself in some far-off outpost, perhaps fighting the blue, but writing songs about being back home with my lovely lady.
I’m a hopeless romantic, a uniform respecting young boy, a man with a guitar, and a head full of dreams. I’m just working them out, one by one.
Fin.