I’d be overcome at the prospect of having such beautiful creatures living so close. Foxes are much maligned animals promoted as pests by the ‘hunting, shooting, killing’ fraternity. Yes, they rampage and kill, mainly peoples unprotected chickens, but mainly the pheasants that the rich tossers breed to blast out of the sky for a bit of fun, and of course vast profits to themselves.
They are Britains truly only natural large land based predators. Leave them be, buy a decent camera and take pictures to keep of a lucky incident.
As far as cats are concerned, they should be cute enough to keep out of the way and avoid conflict, otherwise, it’s down to their own arrogance.

I watched the Sir Bobby Robson Trophy match at Newcastle on TV the other day, Old England V Old Germany and the glimpses of poor old Robson during the match made me worried for his future, he really did look a poor old boy, almost unrecognisable in fact.
A lovely bloke, possibly too nice a chap to really deal with the nastiness of top level football and treated badly by the system.
You were a good old, sincere bloke Bobby, have fun upstairs with Stan Matthews and the other immortals.

What made me smile about this programme, was that the so called great icon of TV, Michael Parkinson, despite protestations, was rejected because his family origins were considered too boring to contemplate involving him in this programme.
I think that Kate has been able to get into TV because of her obvious connections, her involvement with the Spring Watch programmes has been embarresing to watch sometimes because of her nervousness, probably caused by Bill Oddies self opinionation and subsequently of having mental problems, who knows.
I don’t know about you lot, but I pretty much know the history of my family within the last few years, cetainly over the last century. I was surprised that such a media person seemed to not have a clue about her immediate forefathers, especially them having such an illustrious past in aviation and coal mining. I don’t know, was it put on for the camera, could she not of known that her grandfather was Bill Humble, I found it hard to believe that she hadn’t got a clue about her family history, she is 40 years old after all, a long time to go without questioning things within the family, I don’t like to think that we were being conned, but I wonder, it makes good TV after all.
And, as my missus pointed out, was the Tempest the greatest fighter ever then, or was it just convenient to be told that because of the subject of the programme.
I did think that Winkle Brown was the business, he’s 90 isn’t he, fantastic bloke.

Nearly 30 years ago we were doing some survey work on the now defunct Isle of Grain oil refinery. We went off to a pub with some of the management at lunchtime and I pointed out the Montgomery to them through the pub window and told them the story. They thought it was a wind up, there were no warnings made to the refinery about the existance of this ship and the possible dangers of it’s cargo, I bet that the directors of BP, safely ensconced in their London headquarters knew all about it.

I recall when I was very young, on my first visit to France in the 50’s walking along the beach and finding this handle thingy sticking out of the sand. I picked it up and showed my old man, whose wartime experience in battles across Europe caused him to recognise it as a German stick grenade. Fortunately, a corner of the head had corroded and the explosives had leached out, or so he reckoned, I wanted to bring it home but I recall him chucking it out to sea as far as he could.

Much closer to home, I recall taking my son and his mates to Legends at DX one year and while examining the Gibraltar Gun Turret, they dissapeared into the sandy shooting butt and came up with all sorts of remnants of bullets and shells, I was astonished that such stuff was still to be found in there, has it ever been cleaned up properly.

Mildenhall only about 10 years ago, a pity that the US military don’t respect the esteem and sacrifices that our country do for them, go to Mildenhall or Lakenheath on any day and you can be guarunteed to see some interesting stuff, it’s normal, would it be that hard to just simply fly a few things to a UK airshow to show their appreciation of our help and support, probably more so than any other country in the world:

Thats just the tip of the iceburg, the military commitment to justify their overseas spending should be publicised, their lack of appearances to home airshows when us aviation enthusiasts know they are flying about on a day to day basis doesn’t inspire me. We pay for you to be based here, let see you deliver the goods to show the public what it’s all about so we can continue to support your efforts, rather than treating us as a Third World Country, show your main supporters some respect USA. Lets have a UK/USAF base open day, we aren’t all Friday bum lifters you know, though it’s getting close.

Really? I was at Fairford on Saturday and I saw 2 F-16s, 2 F-15s and a pair of A-10s in the static. Along with a B-1 and a B-52. Pretty good turn out I thought.

Maybe you didn’t walk that far up.

US flying displays have generally been pretty rare events anyway. Even in the “good old days”.

Really, sounds like a less than average view of the general days flying at the Lakenheath enclosure or wandering around the perimeter at Mildenhall.
My last visit:-

Or one of the ‘rare’ flying displays in the ‘Good Old Days’.

Or a few boring old statics from the ‘Good old Days’

Sorry, but most of my really good stuff is on slides going back to 1963 or video. I’ve never had any problem with USAF participation being lacking in the ‘Good old Days’, whatever that means, or at RIAT before. The problem is, operational requirements seems to be an excuse levelled at all military airshows these days. Isn’t Fairford a dedicated B2 base, so where were they then.
Why don’t they admit it and say that they can’t afford to display aircraft because of the economic climate. Operational requirements, the sky over here is full of Apaches, Chinooks, et al all day long, but then according to that ‘nice’ Mr Cameron, we only have 30 helicopters in theatre, the other 300 are swanning about taking members of the Royal Family to see their girlfriends, well it’s more important isn’t it.