In the Good Lord’s Book The Man injuncts via Matthew : “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in..”

And so I traveled as a pilgrim from the antipodes to the green fields of Shuttleworth during it’s last flying day and I was both fed and invited in – I want to thank the incredible community of volunteers and Trust staff who keep this phenomenon going.

Some impressions :

I expected roped off enclosures, irritated instructions to ‘keep away from the aircraft’ and pressing my nose against glass to try and glimpse some fusty jewel. I came too early, thinking that after an hour or so I would be impatiently through exhibits and then waiting for the flying display. Instead I found the SVAS offering a flightline inspection for the price of a gourmet hotdog, like an indulgent Caliph offering the keys to his harem. I couldn’t believe this. This was not possible. It was anti my unconciously burnished image of the joy killing, finger wagging museum prison warder that seems to grow like mould in some places, suffocating them. I couldn’t put my money into the hands of SVAS fast enough – worried that it was all a dream and at any moment someone would arrive to announce the idea was over. The sun was out. That’s it ! Sunstroke ! The English had gone mad ! I stumbled dumbstruck into the flight line. A convivial SVAS volunteer accompanied a motley group of us into a Bristol M1, Hawker Hind, Mew Gull dreamscape. I have been conditioned, now that I reflect upon it, by some paranoid antipodean custodians of our universal heritage : I take it for granted that people like me, who adore historical aviation, must be carrying screw drivers to rip into the wings of priceless artifacts. Surely the SVAS man must be carrying a taser in case I started to rip the control column out of something ! I need to alert him to the odious danger posed by members of the public. I asked him if, in the history of this folly of letting folk amongst aircraft there had been any damage. ‘No, we try to encourage people to get close.” I looked carefully at him for some sign of Gestapo cruelty, some game meant for me to relax my guard, become actually happy next to a rare, priceless aircraft, before a sparking cattle prod was rammed into my spine. But only beads of perspiration formed upon his brow, surely the sign of sun induced pychosis. So I pushed it. “Is it OK for me to place my nostrils here?” indicating a proximity to an aircraft that in other places would land me a decade in Gitmo. “Go for it”. I was into those aeroplanes like a dog that meets another dog on the pavement! It was the most extraordinary introduction to the Collection that I now understand is driven by an extraordinary culture of access. I resolved two things : (a) I filled a bottle with water from the place, that as I go around the world I will quietly add to the water supply of any place that thinks a museum is a prison. (b) faced with a choice of leaving my money, if any, to grasping relations or a poodle called Mitzy, I now have a third option, which is a bit for the Shuttleworth Trust, and if they’ll take Mitzy, the whole bloody lot!

One of the reasons I came to Shuttleworth was to see the 1934 Comet Racer, in the air. I have stood many a time on the finishing line at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, and it was the closing of the circle to see Grosvenor House, an extraordinary survivor, not a stuffed animal in a case, but a still snarling tree cat. It was a half day before the flying display was to begin, and I was not ready for this tree cat to pounce on my shoulders and sink its spine chilling fangs into my neck. First came the sound. What was a Mosquito doing flying here? was the first dumb linking of neurons in my skull. I looked up. There it was. Red. It sounded like a Mosquito. Not like KA114 in New Zealand that caused the springs and wax to spurt out from the ears, but it sounded like a Mosquito! And there it was practicing, all for me, in an empty carpark. It was a sublime moment, the best closing of the circle I could have wished for. Thank you. Again the confused thought : surely this was against the law, this thing flying. But now I figure this is the act of maturity, a people in a comfortable relationship with their history, something that stretched back and recognised that loss is regrettable, but normal. In fact the whole Trust had its genesis in the loss of a beautiful son and the celebration of what gave him joy. So fly on Grosvenor House, and thank you.

I really loved my day at Shuttleworth and ran out of time to see it all. I came in at 9am and left at 9pm, and left like a kid let loose on a strawberry farm, stuffed with berries and covered in juice, looking regretfully back to rows of uneaten fruit as the gate was shut on me.

Veni, vidi. Vici, by you, Shuttleworth, old girl.