complete with wings, lake and landscaped park—that was under threat of demolition. In a servantless post-war Britain of supertax, punishing death duties and agricultural prices which had fallen through the floor, there seemed no future for such white elephants, he explained; aristocratic families, in panic and desperation, were giving away their homes to anyone who would take them. Lester Watson flew up to look at it from the air, fell in love, and bought it for a song—then married Rhona and for their honeymoon took her on an air rally round Sicily.
‘Tell them about the Med, Dad,’ said Dan.
‘I was flying the Auster back to sell it,’ he said. ‘I’d paid £700 and I knew I could sell it here for more than £2,000. We set out from Marsa Matrûh in Egypt, heading for Crete. Well, we were given the wrong wind forecast. We were told it was ten knots from the west when in fact it was from the east. After two hours, there was no sign of land anywhere. Not surprising. We were sixty miles west of Crete—and we were running low on fuel. There were no direction finder beacons in those days. We had no radio. So we decided to fly on until we found a ship or a fishing vessel which could rescue us. Well, there wasn’t a ship anywhere. We had just minutes of fuel left when we saw a German tanker. I told Ron, who was with me, to write a note, telling them we were going to ditch and to rescue us. He put it in his shoe, then I flew low over the bridge and we dropped the shoe onto the deck. It was a German crew, but luckily one of them understood English. Then we ditched. Fortunately, just the week before, my brother-in-law, who’s in the Fleet Air Arm, had told me about ditching. He said the crucial thing is to land crosswind, so the waves don’t tip you up. Approach into wind’—he motioned with his hand, a chopping movement—‘then at the last minute’—he turned his hand through 90°—‘kick her round crosswind so you land with the swell. Stall her just above the water’s surface and drop her in. So that’s what I did. It was the most brilliant landing. Brilliant.’
We were agog.
He showed us his battered log book, dug out for the microlight instructor. The covers were frayed and sun-baked and the binding loose and worn. The pages recorded hundreds of journeys:‘V. Falls to Bulawayo’; ‘Mbeya to Kasama’; ‘Nairobi to Mombasa’; ‘Panshangar to Lympne (REMARKS: Honeymoon trip)’;‘Lympne to Nice (en route for Giro di Sicilia International Air Race)’; page after page, denoting thousands of hours of flying, with numerous names under AIRCRAFT TYPE: Tiger Moth, Auster, Tripacer, Gemini, Proctor, Rallye. The last entry was in 1964.
‘I haven’t flown for a bit, but, you know, it never leaves you once you’ve learnt. This Sean seems a good fellow. I hope he’ll let me update my licence without too much fuss.’
‘Did you have any other narrow escapes?’ I asked.
‘Well, once on the way from Jubâ to Malak—’
‘Where’s Jubâ?’
‘You don’t know where Jubâ is?’ He looked astonished. ‘Southern Sudan. We’d left Jubâ, headed for Khartoum, and the cloud got lower and lower. Eventually it was down to 200 feet above the ground. We were going at about 140 mph. Anyway, we eventually hit the Nile, so we knew then that if we followed it at least we’d eventually come to Malakal. We just had to hope the cloud didn’t get any lower. We did 180 miles at 150 feet. Don’t know what people on the ground thought.’ Mr Watson looked quite pleased to have such an enthusiastic audience. ‘Then there was the time we were flying down to Skojpe from St Etienne. Well, you know what Skojpe is like: we were surrounded by the military with guns…’
There seemed to be hardly a part of Africa, the Mediterranean or Northern Europe he had not visited. He told us about stalling an engine on landing at Croydon, a near-miss with a DC6 at Forneby in Oslo. ‘Coming out of Jakawalpa we got engine icing at 500 feet. Imagine that. We were literally off the end of the runway when the engine started spluttering.’
‘Did you ever make a safe flight?’ said Richard.
‘Dad, we should be going,’ said Dan, looking at his watch. He wore it with the face on the front of his wrist rather than the back.
Sean, the instructor, was based at RAF Barsham Green, ten miles away. The journey took longer than expected. The narrow, frequently fenceless lanes serpentined lazily through the Norfolk fields, and Mr Watson, who was driving, seemed in no hurry. He and Dan became progressively less certain about the way and, once again, locating the entrance of a rural airfield added considerably to the time we had allowed for the journey.
The approaches were misleadingly shipshape. At the main gate we were told to pull over, alongside the scale model Spitfire on its concrete pedestal by the entrance, while the car was searched. It was my first experience of a military airfield, and the guard house, security cameras, razor wire, safety barricades and mirrors on broom-handles for examining underneath the car all seemed very official and impressive until I later learned that, fifty yards up the road, the fence petered out into brambles and the place was open to ramblers. There was an elaborate signing-in procedure including lengthy questions from the duty officer before we were issued with a windscreen sticker and allowed to proceed.
The Norwich and East of England Aero Club, despite its grandiose name, seemed to have facilities remarkably similar to those at Popham: two Portakabins in a state of semi-collapse, propped on breeze blocks.1 Sean, the instructor we had come to see, was a year or two older than Richard and me. He had sandy hair, freckles and a bounce in his step. His room in the Portakabin complex was meticulously organised: papers neatly squared and piled in order of size, lined up in rows, pens laid across the top at right angles. ‘Yes, hello, yes, come in. I see, quite a few of you. Lester, Richard, Dan and Antony. And you’re interested in a Thrasher? No problem.’ (Sean, I would learn, always referred to a Thruster as a ‘Thrasher’.) ‘Yes, it’s a good little plane, the Thrasher. You’ll have some fun with that.’
There was a pause. Oddly, having got there, there didn’t seem to be much to say.
‘What’s the insurance position?’ said Richard.
‘How do you mean?’ said Sean.
‘Well, if something goes wrong, or there is an accident, are you properly insured? Or is the manufacturer of the machine liable?’
‘Are you sure you should be doing this?’ said Sean.
‘Is there any kind of brochure we can look at?’ I asked Sean.
‘No. No brochures. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you what you need.’
There was a pause. No one seemed to know what to say.
‘Right,’ said Richard, getting out his cheque book, and reaching for a biro. ‘Let’s get on then.’
Richard was like that. He just decided things. The Watsons seemed happy. Sean produced a photocopied order form and we each wrote out a cheque for £3,000. It was the largest cheque I had ever written.
I felt taken unaware. I had not bargained on any cheque-writing until much further down the line. I was used to a great deal more procrastination before committing myself to things. I felt I lacked the mental preparation—not to mention the funds—to be doing it so soon. Richard told me afterwards that people like me always lacked the mental preparation for doing anything.
No sooner had my cheque for £3,000 been filed away than Sean said
‘Right.
