I don't know where the desire to fly came from. Certainly nobody in my family ever had any connection with matters aeronautical. I can only surmise that it was a unique in-built desire from the start - nothing inherited or resulting from parental influence.
It began in my earliest years with the typical boy's fascination for model aircraft. I was an avid collector and builder - carefully hanging the masterpiece with fishing line from the ceiling of my bedroom. "Dust catchers" Mum used to call them. If that was not enough, I'd cut the pictures from the top of the box and paste those up on the wall too. A veritable shrine to aviation! And in Derby during the 50's and 60's the mecca for aero modellers was a shop called "Sharrocks" on Cockpit Hill in the town centre. It stocked every imaginable model - plastic, balsa - and glass cabinets filled with engines and accessories of every size. Many a Saturday would be spent browsing through that shop for hour after hour - just looking - just imagining - as young boys might do. Sadly, neither Sharrocks nor Cockpit Hill exist anymore, having long ago succumbed in the name of progress. The site now houses a new Westfield Shopping Mall which I visited last year. The dark, soot-stained buildings are no longer there but the ghosts of the customers and shop assistants from Sharrocks, who wondered who this young boy was who would stand for hours in their shop, are - I know they are there - they always will be.
My first actual flight was during one of those permanently sunny and endless summer holidays of distant youth. As was the norm every summer, our family (Mum, Dad, my sister Sue and I) would holiday with my grandparents who had moved from Wood Green in London to Eastwood in Essex - just outside Southend-on-Sea. My birthday being in August coincided with this annual pilgrimage to the coast and I recall badgering my parents for a "joyflight" from the local airport as my birthday present. It was quite a busy airport then - catering for much of the cross-channel traffic with Bristol Freighters - a twin engined tail dragger with massive opening doors in the nose into which the well-to-do could drive their cars for the short flight over to Bolougne or other romantic destinations de la belle France! The comings and goings at the airport provided endless interest and fascination for a young lad, (unaccountably) obsessed with anything with wings and many summer days were passed just gazing through the wire mesh fence at aeroplanes taking off and landing. Always picturing myself at the controls of course.
I recall the flight was in a four-seat Auster. I was in the rear, left-hand seat - the other seats being occupied by 2 other youngsters and the pilot. It was a grey and blustery day if I remember correctly and we bounced and wobbled our way over Southend and the surrounding suburbs. The noise was deafening, both from the engine and the wind through the struts and poorly sealed windows. But what care I? Here I was, suspended in the air, the earth laid out before me. The excitement and sheer overpowering feeling of flying was all consuming. Yes, this is where I should be.... When I got back on the ground I couldn't stop talking about the experience and each time an aeroplane flew overhead I now studied it with an expert eye - I had flown too - I knew what it was like to be up there...
Fast forward a few years and I found myself joining the Sea Cadets in Derby - just about as far away from the sea as you can get in the UK! It was one of those boy pursuits that we all seemingly engaged in during those days - Scouts, Sea Cadets, Air Cadets etc etc - not so popular these days it seems. One of the good things about the Sea Cadets was the trips away and the "Courses" you could do in pursuit of various qualifications and therefore more badges to sew onto your uniform sleeve! These courses were held at MoD facilities, many of which were active airfields. An annual weekend away to the Royal Naval Air Station at Linton-Upon-Ouse, near York, was always popular. At this time the Fleet Air Arm was still in its heyday and an attractive proposition for a budding aviator such as myself. Amongst all the activities we were involved in, we were also let loose in the hangars to scramble on and in the Jet Provosts to our heart's content - a little different to today I think! And it was there that I was inculcated with the unique smells associated with military aircraft. I don't know what it is or where it comes from but I found it so evocative, it produced a physical reaction in me every time I experienced that smell, something that continues even to this day, almost half a century later.
