Chaps,
Thanks for the kind words. An explanation would probably help to understand the context in which this was produced.
I grew up as a young lad knowing there was something wrong with my father - he only looked out of one eye. The other one came out at night and was placed in a glass of water in the bathroom. In the shed next to our house there was a canvas parachute bag, with the initails "RJR" on it and inside was a leather flying helmet complete with oxygen mask and a mangled piece of metal where it clipped on the nose. I used to play with it, as all young kids of my age were want to do. In the hall was a solid wood carving of an RAF squadron crest and a framed picture of HRH King George VI shaking hands with my father (both of which now reside in my dining room).
In the house were many books about flying, which my elder brother and I devoured - "Reach for the Sky", "Fly for your Life", "Nine Lives", "King of Air Fighters", "Samurai", Official Histories, Log books, scrap books, medals etc.
It was no surprise then when my brother headed off for RAF Hornchurch to go through the Officer & Aircrew Selection Board. At 18 he left school, had a brief summer holiday, and in September 1963 started his flying career at RAF Cranwell. For obvious reasons my mother was not too excited about this turn of events but she bore it stoically. I was 6 years younger than my brother and green with jealousy. I knew every aircraft in the inventory, had built Airfix kits in record time, all hanging from my bedroon ceiling, and read any and every thing I could about the two world wars and the RAF.
In those days there was still a crash a week, aeroplanes were relatively cheap and there was no shortage of young men to fill the training slots. To say my mother was worried would be an understatement. When I left school I took the easy option and went into the City. By this time my brother had completed a first tour on Hunters in the Persian Gulf and was now on the first Phantom FGR2 Squadron (6) at Coningsby.
Eventually, I bit the bullet and walked into the RAF Recruiting Office in Kingsway and went off to Biggin Hill for the OASC. My mother, by this time, was a bag of nerves, having nearly lost a husband (her fiancee at the time) and seeing her two surviving boys (another brother between the two of us had died at 10 months after my mother caught polio during the pregnancy) go into exactly the same dangerous occupation.
So, that's how things started off and the rest of our stories diverge at this point. However, in about 1984, after our first son was born, I asked my old man if he wouldn't mind just putting something down for the benefit of his first grandson. A few months later he gave me four cassettes and told me to have a listen. I played the first one for about 10 minutes - something happened in the kitchen/garden, probably a nappy change, and I forgot all about the tapes.
A couple of years ago I came across them again, and, telling no one, started to transcribe them. Now my father had died in December 1999 and it was very strange to hear his voice again after all those years. I have to admit to the odd tear as I typed, but it was a very cathartic experience. I had just finished and told my mother, who corrected a few things (she had never heard them herself), when she died suddenly in July 2007.
I am now left with 70-odd pages of A4 which I am unsure what to do with. The Imperial War Museum would seem an obvious place, but here on PPRuNe there is a captive audience who would not normally seek out such things, but take great pleasure in accessing them through the web. So that's what I'm going to do.
Again, to put this in context, the old man (he was always that to us boys!) had sat in the lounge at his home in Frinton, loaded up his pipe, filled his tankard with an ale or two, and just talked into his microphone for hours on end - using his logbook and scrapbook for dates and places. It is spoken to me as if I was there, so it is essentially in the second person.
I'll post the first page or two later on if that is OK with you guys.