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The MM Links Game - May Week 5
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Welcome to the fifth and final week in the reign of “Sir Robin of Linksley” (aka Aquagility). Hopefully, the points will be flying off the shelf over the next couple of days.
We hear a lot on AB about ‘the good old days’ and how different things are today, and our universities seem to exemplify this. For a start, back in the 40s and 50s we had five lectures each day! Now, my grandchildren complain if they have five a week!
I was 23 and five years out of school when a grateful government got round to offering me a grant for helping to win the war. So off I went, but what little I had learned at school seemed to have gone overboard, so it was tough. And finding that I had no chance of keeping pace with my baby classmates, I tended to concentrate on those activities for which age was no disadvantage. Like rowing, and flirting. And learning to fly an aeroplane!
The University Air Squadron, part of the RAFVR, offered free flying lessons, too good an offer to refuse, so I signed up. And on 13 January, 1950, I had my first lesson in a Tiger Moth, my first ever flight. What impressed me most was just how cold it was, sitting there in an open cockpit longing for a drag, with my instructor blowing cigarette smoke down the voice-tube at me from his seat in front.
We hear a lot on AB about ‘the good old days’ and how different things are today, and our universities seem to exemplify this. For a start, back in the 40s and 50s we had five lectures each day! Now, my grandchildren complain if they have five a week!
I was 23 and five years out of school when a grateful government got round to offering me a grant for helping to win the war. So off I went, but what little I had learned at school seemed to have gone overboard, so it was tough. And finding that I had no chance of keeping pace with my baby classmates, I tended to concentrate on those activities for which age was no disadvantage. Like rowing, and flirting. And learning to fly an aeroplane!
The University Air Squadron, part of the RAFVR, offered free flying lessons, too good an offer to refuse, so I signed up. And on 13 January, 1950, I had my first lesson in a Tiger Moth, my first ever flight. What impressed me most was just how cold it was, sitting there in an open cockpit longing for a drag, with my instructor blowing cigarette smoke down the voice-tube at me from his seat in front.
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One of the more frightening exercises was called ‘restarting in flight’. It involved switching off the engine at 2000 feet, usually over the sea, and putting the plane into a dive so that the speed of the air would turn the prop and so start the engine. The first time we had to do this I was assured that it usually worked!
But more terrifying by far was my first solo flight. Taking off into the wind was a doddle, but landing was hell! Of course in a plane as light as a Tiger Moth it is essential to land into the wind, and inevitably, one gusty day, I got it wrong, touched down cross wind and dug one wing-tip into the ground. It’s called ‘doing a ground loop’, and one feels as a fly must feel lying on its back in its death throes.
They patched the plane up, of course, and had it flying again next day. But it was politely explained to me that while they had unlimited would-be pilots, they had very few aircraft.
Now, sixty years later, my worst nightmare has me sitting comfortably in a crowded 747 when suddenly a voice over the intercom says “Help! Can anyone here fly an aeroplane?”
But more terrifying by far was my first solo flight. Taking off into the wind was a doddle, but landing was hell! Of course in a plane as light as a Tiger Moth it is essential to land into the wind, and inevitably, one gusty day, I got it wrong, touched down cross wind and dug one wing-tip into the ground. It’s called ‘doing a ground loop’, and one feels as a fly must feel lying on its back in its death throes.
They patched the plane up, of course, and had it flying again next day. But it was politely explained to me that while they had unlimited would-be pilots, they had very few aircraft.
Now, sixty years later, my worst nightmare has me sitting comfortably in a crowded 747 when suddenly a voice over the intercom says “Help! Can anyone here fly an aeroplane?”
As always, for the every-day running of MM, I will follow the same rule as introduced by crofter on word length. Each of my chosen link words contains at least four letters and at most eight. Stray outside this range and you will be wasting one of your attempts! Each of my selected words may go in front of or after my challenge word. The competition will officially close at 7.00pm on Sunday evening when crofter will declare my selected words, and then apply the same rules for awarding points as have been applied during all MM Link Games in the past. My fifth set of four words to have their links predicted will appear below at 9.00am.
