VT Coughtrey - Rollason Condor

NOTES	It was unthinkable that I should go back to my old ways of pretending to have a job while roaming the streets, parks and Hampstead Heath, riding the Tube and other railways and the buses, or haunting libraries and cinemas. After all, I was now 24 and surely mature enough to have at last discarded my old faith in a chance meeting with the Great Introducer to high society and a workless path to wealth. (See Chapter 17 for a fuller decription of this elusive character}.
	Well, unthinkable or not, that's exactly the situation I yet again lapsed into, after just a couple of weeks back in Barnet. The path to this was clear enough. For one thing, American methods of hiring and firing were at last beginning to establish themselves - in London, at least. Although the absurdity of CVs and references for blue-collar jobs had not yet arrived, there were by now interviews with personnel officers and form-filling, instead of a quick word with the foreman. Now, if there's something I've never been able to do, it is to turn into a totally different animal, with a shiny new appearance, an eager personality and a fictional history at the mention of the phrase 'job interview'. Sod the lot of you forever, crass interviewers!
	An obvious result of this attitude was that job applications to the larger employers were doomed to failure from the first minute of the interview or the first glance at my forms (or just at me). The only job I was offered was as an assistant in a family-owned ironmonger's in Whetstone. Although I took the job, I couldn't force myself to turn up, because it really would have been like going back to square one. (You may remember that my very first job was in an ironmonger's, and that it ended disastrously). I knew, however, that my mother would soon get into the usual state if I didn't live up to my promise to get a good job and move out but into a nearby flat very soon. I was thus driven back into the old deception and in that desperate situation, the Introducer actually became plausible again.
	My grandmother was now 93 and although she was still quite energetic, her sight and hearing were beginning to go, which meant she could no longer do any shopping and, indeed, needed a certain amount of looking after. As a result, my mother was these days working only part-time, still for the Co‑op, but moving round from branch to branch within north London, substituting for assistants who were off sick. Therefore she now had the time to check up on whatever stories I told her. She quickly found out that I wasn't working in the ironmonger's and this led to a terrible scene. I was careful to make the next employer, not just the employment, entirely fictitious, but made the mistake of using a real street name. She soon determined that no such employer existed in that street, so there was a second, even worse scene. She took to addressing me as 'Liar'. For example, she would say "Come on Liar, your dinner what you ain't worked for is on the table". So, for the third tale, I made sure that as many details as possible were made up and that the supposed area was too far away for her to go investigating. The problem then, of course, became the so-familiar one of how to bring back money for her on Friday nights.
	In the previous episodes of this nature (as detailed in earlier chapters) I had prolonged the whole agony by 'borrowing' money or selling my records, banjos, guitars and tape recorders. By now, though, I had lost touch with Nigel who, after graduating, had got a job and moved away, and I had nothing left to sell. Walter was working, but I would have found it far too embarrassing to ask him for money. The inevitable Friday on which I didn't dare to go home therefore arrived rather more quickly this time round. In fact it was only a few weeks after I had arrived back in Barnet.
See photo of a Rollason Condor.	One curiosity of this short period that stands out is that, having read about free introductory flying lessons at Biggin Hill in the Evening Standard I went to see Walter and suggested we should give it a try. We went to Biggin Hill, on the other side of London, and claimed our free lessons. These turned out to be in a Rollason Condor, a delightful little aeroplane. Walter went first and then it was my turn. The aircraft had no radio, so the instructor was not allowed to use the runway. We were obliged to take off from infrequently mown grass where the occasional piece of rubble from wartime bombing still lurked, and my instructor delighted in pointing them out and letting me know that you couldn't always spot them in time. There was apparently no airspeed indicator, so the only way to know for sure when take-off speed had been reached was from the engine rev counter. This, however, was broken. My instructor assured me that one simply got a feel for these things and didn't really need instruments at all. It was a beautiful day, with no turbulence and the views of South London and Kent from three or four thousand feet were magnificent. The instructor, who offered little actual instruction during the flight, simply encouraged me to "have a go! He kept control of the rudder bar, but allowed me to play around with the stick. I was far too cautious for his liking. Taking the stick, he suddenly announced "this is what happens if you go too slowly". He stalled the aircraft and let it start a spin before recovering. He also performed a couple of stall turns. I was later told by a former member of the Red Arrows that all this was totally unacceptable behaviour on the part of an instructor during a first lesson, but I very much enjoyed the flight. The strange thing is that I have always suffered very badly from vertigo. I'm terrified of going a few steps up a ladder, but have no trace of such feelings in aircraft great or small.
	Back in the office, Walter was told that he was a "natural" and should seriously consider a Private Pilot's Licence course. Nothing of the sort was said to me. This was almost certainly because Walter had been a lot more adventurous with the stick when told to have a go. Alas, I have never had another flying lesson to this day. Walter went on to do a fair amount of gliding.
	Well, it was down to earth with a bump a couple of weeks later, when I yet again disappeared from 4 Connaught Road, penniless of course, and hitched into the unknown. This time it would be five years before I saw my mother and grandmother again.