I bought it from Sainsbury’s yesterday for £4:99, as my fathers day present, ( my missus bought me Johnny Kingdoms bio, brilliant ), so I have a lot of reading to catch up on.
Hows this for a saturday night, we ignored the telly and read our own books on our individual settees and both fell asleep, how sad.
It’s a really great read, I managed 150 pages last night and am indulging myself in the garden with it and a glass of red wine at the moment while she insists on doing dinner before the inlaws arrive.
My only comment so far is that on the day of Thatchers war speech in the House, which I think was on a saturday morning, we were on our way up to a wedding on the Notts Lincs border, on the way we deliberately drove through Waddo to see what was happening and it was a hive of activity, erks, troops, Vulcans being towed around, it was obvious that things were happening which wasn’t suggested in the book, but I have the slides to prove it, they must have wondered why these well dressed Herberts were snapping away from a car, wonder we were’nt shot as the troops were tooled up and looked alert, at that point we knew it was serious, it took the fun out of the wedding as we wondered whether some of these servicemen we had seen would not survive whatever was in store for them.

If any of you get to see the whole film, look out at the end for the Hurricane, painted black and pretending to be a 109, it must have had a good fuel capacity to find those bombers.

Bradford.
Thinking about it, some areas are’nt all that bad, it’s just the number of dustbin sacks about that gets me.
Shipley is cool, particularly that bit where the funny little railway is, lovely spot.
We once went round Saltaire Mill, we were having some lunch in the cafe and realised that the bloke sitting on the table next to us was David Hockney, well he sponsors it doesn’t he.
After daring each other to ask him to autograph a poster, he dissapeared.
When we left, we held the door open for a bloke coming the other way and , yes, it was DH, my mate was struck dumb, we never dared to ask for that signing, could have boosted my pension big time.

Stockport may not be the greatest place on Earth, but it’s nowhere near as crap as Bradford!

Paul

It’s got a lovely viaduct for a start, Bradford is just the pits, on the other hand, their Seabrooks crisps are the best, absolutely blow those Leicester creations away, move to Bradford Mr Lineker and learn what a real crisp is all about.

Try Stockport, nice place and not far out of Manchester.
We used to go to Manchester regularly in the early 70’s, I had a lot of mates at Uni.
Great place, good clubs, very friendly, Liverpool however was a dump then, you could get guaranteed bricks being dropped off bridges on the East Lancs Road.
Last time I went and stayed a few years ago, we went to Liverpool and found it a great place, totally transformed.
On the other hand, attempting to take a narrow boat through Manchester was tricky, the boat hirer only let us do it because of the number of hard looking males on board. We were actually met by the police at one point and told to watch our backs and that most of the fishermen on the banks were actually undercover cops.
It wasn’t pleasant, we nearly had a stone parapet pushed off a bridge, and we only ever saw one other boat, manned by a terrified couple.
Still, we survived, but I’ve not been back since.

As an alternative suggestion, the garden of the Harbour Inn at Southwold not only sees them do several circuits overhead as the formation builds, but serves a stonking pint of Broadside and some excellent fish and chips to boot.

Moggy

I hope you wear your full dress uniform for the occasion Cattermole.

Excuse my ignorance, but is that the place near the ferry, reached by the road past the water tower with 2 rather nice seafood huts nearby, opposite Walberswick.
Hmmm, I wonder if my missus fancies a day out tomorrow, probably not if the weather is bad, and the forecast isn’t too bright.

I once went to the Navestock area to watch the first Gulf War flypast in 82 and the weather was so bad that everything flew up the Thames and I didn’t see a thing.

How many of these ceremonial flypasts have you lot seen and which rated the best.

I used to live in Witham and just had to stand in the garden to watch things come over, the best had to be for the Queens Jubilee in 77, lots of Vulcans and Lightnings in that one.
The 50th anniversary of the BoB was amazing, I was fortunate enough to be standing in front of Buck Palace at the time, the BBMF seemed to fly so low down the Mall, it was fantastic, then there were wave after wave of Buccs, Jags, Harriers, Tornadoes, etc etc.
Poignantly, the first wave was led by a pink Jag, getting all prepared for the first Gulf War, it being only a few weeks after the invasion of Kuwait.
A 9 ship formation of Typhoons will obviously be a first, I remember being at Conningsby and watching the first ever formation of Tornado F-2’s take off for the flypast, each pilot having an idiosyncratic take off, however one had a problem and had to do an emergency landing, he put it down like a Feisler Storch.
I must find my slides of these events!!!!

If anyone in this area wants a good view of the flypast, I reccomend the railway bridge at Feering near Kelvedon, I go every year.
It’s quite an elevated position in otherwise flat countryside, and you can watch the trains while you’re waiting, tee hee.
The a/c normally come right overhead at a reasonable altitude and you get some good photo opportunities, except that last year my vid went awol, and that was the flypast with the Reds and the Canberra, all formed up too.
What amuses me is that the locals seem to shuffle about in their gardens wondering what planet you are on till the planes come over, it’s quite funny to see cars screech to a halt and people jump out in awe.
The formations are normally led by a black Hawk sniffing about, I think this has something to do with checking out local weather conditions, when it was the Queens Jubilee, we had cloud overhead and the formation pulled over to the north, thanks to the Hawk.
My missus tells me that the weather prospects for the weekend are not good, if it’s anything like the thunderstorms we had last night, then the flypast could be cancelled.
I gather that the BBMF come in from a closer position and don’t do the normal track from Southwold, which way do they go?