In my mail today

Subject: Gloom

Hi Doug

Just a quick note. I’ve been out of circulation for just under 4 weeks wandering around Canada and New England. Anyway I thought that you’d appreciate this. Grace and I were wandering around one of the open spaces in Toronto when and interesting noise caused me to look up. There wandering across the sky at less than a 1000 feet was a Lancaster. Have you ever had one of those incongruous moments when your eyes are seeing something but you brain isn’t registering, like seeing someone you know in an unlikely situation………then, “Bloody ‘ell it’s a Lanc”. There followed a mad dash into the rucksack for my camera but by the time I had it out the Lancaster had disappeared behind one of the buildings leaving a healthy roar of four Merlin’s in it’s wake.

I was devastated. There are only two air worthy Lancaster’s in the world and I knew one was in Canada and I missed it. I’ll never get that chance again, not in this lifetime anyway. Total Gloom.

You know the other thing that surprised me………. I was the only one to look up!

All the Best

Taff

Taff and I were in the RAF together back in the 60’s and our first introduction to the Lanc was in the aircraft hanger at RAF Yatesbury. I well remember bashing my shin on the main-spar that had to be crossed on the climb up to the cockpit. Wonder what happened to that one.