| NOTES |
In September 1966 I made what was probably my last trip south of that year, with somewhat dramatic consequences. I decided to visit the great Farnborough air show for the first time since childhood. I set out late on Friday night by the overnight parcel train. (These trains had only one passenger carriage, sometimes with no lighting or heating. They took all night to go a couple of hundred miles, because they went by very circuitous routes and stopped at many places to unload parcels. There were usually very few other passengers and, unlike me, they invariably slept. I found all this fascinating and despite the discomfort, the all-night parcel trains became my favourite form of travel). |
| It was £41 per day in 2012, and the show is very much shorter than it used to be. | My plan was to attend both the Saturday and the Sunday air shows, despite the 10 shillings (50p) per day admission charge, which seemed (and indeed was) truly exorbitant at that time. When I arrived in London I must have gone without delay to Victoria to get another train to Farnborough, because I arrived just as the gates of the airfield were being opened to the public. Unfortunately, I remember nothing of the show itself, but I certainly remember something that happened during the course of the day. As I stood among the dense crowd of tens of thousands, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Walter ! |
| Of course, I had not seen Walter for a couple of years (which seems a long time when you are young). It was a bit of a shock and somewhat embarrassing, as he must have been told all about my disgraceful disappearance. As he still had the intense interest in aviation that I had imparted to him as a child, I was spared having to talk about what I had been up to and why, until after the show, when we went to a little café in the village for a meal. Battling against They're Coming to Take me Away, which was blasting from the jukebox over and over again, we eventually got round to the subject of my mother and grandmother and of my disappearance. True to form, Walter offered no judgment on my behaviour, but I agreed to his telling my mother that he had met me and that I was well, living in Leeds and in a steady job. |
| Walter had come with the same idea as mine, of going to the show on Sunday as well as Saturday. But whereas I had made no preparations whatsoever for staying overnight, simply assuming that it would be possible to doss somewhere, Walter had almost a house on his back. Again, this was true to form. We walked for quite a way until it was dark, then wandered deep into a wood, where we pitched Walter's spacious tent. He had with him enough covering for two. Although it soon started to rain quite heavily, we remained warm and dry and I eventually fell asleep. |
|
Flash, bang! We awoke with a start. It happened again - and again, getting brighter and louder as it apparently drew nearer. At first we assumed a terrible storm was under way and we became quite alarmed. We became a lot more alarmed when the truth suddenly hit us - we had camped on the edge of an army firing range ! Evidently, we had been walking towards Aldershot before pitching our tent. We decamped and scarpered from there on the double, finding the road again by the light of the flashes. At least it had stopped raining, so this attempt at camping wasn't quite so disastrous as that of the previous chapter. Also, my companion on this occasion had a good sense of humour. |
| We made our way back to the café of the night before and hung around until it opened at some fortunately very early hour, for the benefit of air show workers. We had breakfast there before joining the crowds queuing to get onto the airfield. I remember nothing more at all of that day - not the show, nor the parting from Walter, nor the return journey to Leeds. Shortly afterwards, by which time Walter would have given my mother the news, I decided to write to her, with a brief and highly sanitized account of my adventures and a description of my job that improved it somewhat beyond the truth. |
| It was not long before I received a reply. I felt very nervous as I opened the letter, but it turned out to be curiously matter-of-fact. My mother simply reported that my grandmother was as well as could be expected, that she herself was still working part-time at the Co-op, etc. No desire was expressed to see me again. As I had expected something rather more in the way of hysterics or treacly sentimentality, I was rather relieved by the general tone, and the uncomfortable feelings of guilt I had experienced since my café chat with Walter no longer seemed necessary. |