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Never had the urge to go to Yorkshire!
What a shame.
The land of All Creatures Great and Small, of Harry Ramsden's fish and chips, Harrogate toffee and Tetley's bitter!
My first ever encounter with the sensation of being inebriated occurred in Yorkshire. I was about twelve and my father had come over to the UK to check on one of his factories in Bradford. He arranged for me to leave school on a Friday morning in order to take the train to Leeds from where I was driven to Yeadon to await his arrival in order to spend the weekend together. Later that evening we returned to Yeadon, to the Leeds Aero Club where Dad met up with his longtime friend Brian Lecomber former RAT 4 in the Rothman's aerobatic team.
If memory serves (and this is now the late 70's) there was a lady by the name of Hilda who served the bar at the Aero Club. Dad had ordered the usual bitter shandy for me so that I could 'join in' with him and Brian. Unknown to me he had connived with Hilda to reduce the ratio of lemonade to bitter so that by the end of the second pint I was feeling quite happy. Several hours later I was intoxicated with Brian and my Dad in fits of laughter and me joining them - feeling merry but also slightly ill. Looking back on it now it was one of those truly memorable occasions with Dad.
Sometimes on those weekends in Yorkshire my father would take me for dinner at a delightful pub in Haworth (Emily Bronte's village) and I would relish the drive to and fro along the winding Yorkshire roads - albeit at night.
Although forced to board at school in the south I always preferred being in the north!
Some Gazelle trivia:
Some may know the actor Brian Cox (below):
But .. did you now he had a Yorkshire-accented brother, Joe, who flies Gazelles and is seen below firing one up!
S.
