Once he'd realised that I was using the attitude indicator to see if I was level (and various other little foibels!!) - Little circle discs of paper started being shoved on instuments
I'd like to know what exactly this stupid procedure achieves.
There is nothing wrong with keeping half an eye on the AI.
There are cases where you have to: flying towards a sloping horizon (e.g. a mountain/hill ridge) or flying between areas of high ground where there is either no natural horizon or the natural one is misleading. Not to mention the rather common poor vis/haze; today I flew 400nm in legal VFR conditions but there was no natural horizon up front. Only at FL070 could one see properly.
There is too much of this "sort the men from the sheep" mentality in this game. It's no wonder that the airfield scene is such a bunch of anoraks. Most normal intelligent people won't play ball with this WW2 "we beat the Germans this way, young man" attitude for much longer than the first lesson.