Well, my lessons are all booked for the summer, now. I'll be starting with 2-3 hrs. on July 30th. A few days ago, May 23rd, saw the 26th anniversary of my first flying lesson, the birth of the love of my life, in a Rheims Cessna 152 Aerobat at Sunderland. The lesson included a demo loop during which I used a 4-letter expletive with an instructor I'd just met for the first time!
All of which led me to think about the first airfield I knew. I suppose when something is gone for ever you miss it more than if you simply move away. I only knew Sunderland for a few months but it had more atmosphere for me than any of the other airfields I've spent time on: Perranporth, Manston or even lovely Headcorn. There was something about the hangar. To wander around such an interesting higgeldy-piggledy array of aircraft: some the mounts of millionaires, others more prosaic. A Kingair here, a Currie Wot there. Lots of Cessnas and Pipers. Is that a Taylor Monoplane? And at the back, dusty hangar queens whose days of cavorting in the sunlit clouds seemed long passed. It was always quiet in there. Nesting sparrows twittering, echoing in the roof, someone dropping a spanner somewhere; even the sound of an aircraft bursting into life on the apron hardly seemed to disturb the stillness. Is there something about one's first hangar that makes one go all misty-eyed?
I've just realised what a complete turnip I must now appear to anyone 'from the outside', for want of a better word!
