Months ago I asked whether boy-babies responded more enthusiastically to toys rich in technical detail compared with those carved out of wood and sold for mega-pounds at Early Learning Centre. The post went to hell in a hack when Lucy and other former girl-babies revealed they’d preferred six-shooters and fire engines to dolls anyway. But atavism is never far away at Works Well.Similarly I wondered why those fascinated with WW2 planes lost interest in the civil aircraft that succeeded them. I daydreamed whether boy-babies, now man-babies, felt more romantic about the utilitarian interiors of warplanes as cavities designed for one purpose alone. Having once sat in the cockpit of a Lancaster bomber during my RAF service I Googled the image (see above).
But forget all that. Almost adjacent on Google was this picture – the T (for transmitter) 1154 and R (for receiver) 1155 whereby the Lancaster kept in touch with other planes and the land it had left behind. Oh gentle but tolerant reader, believing old BB to have devoted his life solely to indulgent wordsmithing, I HAVE REPAIRED THAT KIT, blue/red/yellow knobs and all.
UGHHH Mrs BB, still a little fragile, made her first trip out today on snowy Hereford streets. We walked arm in arm encouraging a neighbour to comment on our decreptitude and triggering these alien Cockney words:
We've bin togevver nah for forty year,
And it don't seem a day too much,
There's not a lidy livin’ in vuh land
As I'd swap for mi dear Old Dutch.
(Altogevver, nah...)
Sometimes the cold dash of West Yorkshire tradition has its place.
Novel progress 12/1/10. Ch. 11: 3110 words. Chs. 1 - 10: 44,765 words. Comments: Hatch needs a woman, for various reasons.
8 comments:
I have seen The Dam Busters film many times over the years. The story goes that the pilots were allowed to take the Merlin engines beyond their designed rev limits when they had to pull up very steeply after bombing the dams. The soundtrack on the film was realistic I believe – but regretably not based on personal knowledge. The agonised, but superbly emotional roar of those engines makes me cry even when I only think about it.
Where do these memory files reside in the brain? There are times I respond with the heaviest Frankfurterisch dialect to situations here and receive jaw-droppings and squinty looks. I suppose it comes from having known my Great-Grandmama Anna.
When doinng my national service in the RAF I was allowed to be taken up in a Metior, one if not the first jet propelled fighter planes in the British air force. The flight did't last very long, and I didn't see very much because it went so fast. I wasn't scared though I should have been because they were known locally as flying meatboxes because of the high incidence of crashes. Looking back on the experience and the aircraft, there is not a hint of sentimentality that I can summon. Now if that had been Lancaster ...
Sorry, Meteor!
Sir Hugh: The ad hoc rules of warfare include the option for breaking those rules when the need arises. Over-revving an engine means it could quite possibly fail thereafter. Just one of those rule breakages.
RW (sZ): I think this comment was written before your fridge was replenished and you were into blood sugar deficiency. For the record, on the rare occasions I go north I find myself slipping back into the accent, but not very well. I am therefore thought to be a southern spy.
Plutarch: Lancasters were still in use at my last RAF posting (Lindholme near Doncaster) where navigators were trained. I am sure a Lancaster take-off would have been far more memorable than that of a Meteor. As I watched I was assailed by the same reaction supposedly experienced by the person who saw a bumble bee for the first time: it isn't going to do it.
The visceral sound of a Rolls Royce Merlin engine on full boost..........! I can understand completely Sir Hugh's reaction.
But could you still repairuncles that radio, BB?
PS "uncles" was the word verification - how I managed to include it above beats me!
Avus: The answer is "no" though as a junior technician air wireless fitter I should be able to. Instead I would demote myself to an SAC air wireless mechanic (three-bladed propellor instead of inverted single stripe) and do what "mechs" did: disconnect the cables and replace it with one that worked.
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