Features

THERE USED TO BE LAUGHTER

There has recently been correspondence in S & G about the quality of instructors, incompetent and sexist according to one female complainant, and whether club members should be exposed to "rollockings" (sic) at their hands. These last are deeply humiliating, or so writes a gentleman from Dorset, and have no place in a gliding club. Not much in S & G attracts my interest these days because I am not one of the competition pilots by and for whom it seems largely to be written, but these two items set me thinking. Particularly after the hill soaring antics of a recent visitor to Sutton Bank which merited not so much rollocking as being frog-marched off the site in my opinion.

I learned to fly long before the age of political correctness, and so qualify as a Boring Old Fart. It was not always so. I came to gliding as a fresh faced, give or take the odd outbreak of acne, fifteen year old schoolboy at the old Southdown club at Friston. My first instructor was a small, bespectacled bird-like man who was invariably neatly attired in sports coat and flannels with collar and tie, surmounted, as a concession to the open air activity in which he was engaged, by a black beret basque. In muddy conditions he encased his tiny feet in galoshes. In very muddy conditions he did not come to the club at all.

I never knew his first name, for he was known to us all as Squeege. I see that I respectfully referred to him in my logbook as Mr Ashton. I probably called him Sir. Squeege had been an observer in Bristol Fighters towards the end of the First World War. He was reputed to have been one of the many British airmen shot down by Baron von Richthofen, though to be fair I never heard this from Squeege himself. I was always inclined to doubt it as it was my understanding that that Teutonic nobleman, the Schumacher of his day, rarely took prisoners.

Friston was a splendid site for soaring the Seven Sisters cliffs in south westerly winds but, given its proximity to the sea, rarely produced thermals. Came the day when Squeege, flying the T21b in distinctly non cliff soaring conditions, found himself kept aloft by an inexplicable current of rising air. After blundering about in it for several minutes his usual circuit planning was thrown into confusion. He landed in a gully invisible from those at the launchpoint and into which he disappeared at what seemed a high rate of descent. Club members arriving breathless at its lip, fully expecting to find the T21b sitting with both wingtips on the ground, were surprised to find a chirpy Squeege hopping round the undamaged glider like a sparrow. His explanation for the duration of his flight, twelve minutes instead of the usual four, was "Couldn't get her down, old boy". A gentle enquiry as to the nature of his landing produced the immortal reply "Light as a feather, old boy", which promptly went into club folklore.

Squeege had been an instructor for years, but this had merely involved briefing pupils for groundslides and hops in primaries. The concept of instructing whilst actually in the aircraft with the pupil was one for which he was ill prepared, and for that matter ill suited. Alas for Squeege, and for me, when I began my training the SG38s had been disposed of (ceremonially burned I'm sorry to say) and the factory fresh T21b had taken over. Squeege's patter consisted of just five words. "I've got her, old boy". The only variable was the point in the flight at which these words were delivered. Sometimes they came before take off, always before the landing. When Squeege took over during the flight there followed a series of small jerky movements of the control column seemingly unrelated to the attitude of the aircraft, accompanied only by little grunts of concentration. Unsurprisingly I made little progress.

It was decided to transfer me to the CFI, Ray Brigden, who ran a garage in Brighton. A large man in every sense, ruddy of countenance and unruly of moustache, Ray proceeded everywhere at a sort of shambling lope. He had been a Corporal in the RAF during the war, the second that is, and had acquired a mastery of Anglo Saxon phrases which he used liberally. Where Ray really scored was in the use of expletives in juxtaposition one with the other. As he was short of fuse, opportunities for this form of creativity came frequently. C--t--g b-ll--ks was a favourite. I admired him very much.

There was, amongst the members, an elegant youth who was a cub reporter on the local newspaper. Already much given to hyperbole, he was clearly destined for greater things. In due course he became a Fleet Street journalist. I forget for which paper but, as his name changed from the John we had known to Jasper, it was probably the Daily Mail. One day, when John was on the winch, he was visited by a group of Girl Guides from their campsite in the Cuckmere Valley. Not one to miss such an opportunity John launched into an explanation of gliding, stressing the importance of an expertise in winch driving which he as it happened possessed in abundance, that left these virginal creatures breathless with admiration. An opportunity to demonstrate all he had described soon presented itself when the launchpoint began signalling. Much noise and smoke followed, after which John switched off with a flourish and pointed out to the girls that the T21b, previously earthbound, was now overhead due solely to his uncanny skill. As John described it later, at this point, when all were looking upwards, a florid face with moustache akimbo appeared over the side of the cockpit and down floated the words "Too f-----g fast!".

After seventeen flights in the two seater, 22 days before my sixteenth birthday (things were less regulated in those days) I was sent solo. The fact that this feat was to be performed in a Kirby Cadet of totally different performance and feel from the T21b was remarked upon by no-one. Such was the residual allegiance to the old solo training methods that my first flights were one low and two medium hops straight ahead. Thereafter I was permitted to fly four circuits for my A and B certificates, launched with the cable attached to the nose, not the belly, hook. "So that you don't go too high at first". Since the greatest height one could hope to reach in this fashion was about 350 feet, the resultant "circuits" really consisted of continuous descending 360° turns back onto the field. I was too green to know that this was supposed to be difficult.

The Southdown club in the early fifties was typical of many. Small, enthusiastic with everything done by the members. I have never met a nicer bunch of people. There was a great deal of laughter. Selfishness was simply not tolerated. There were no private owners. Possibly these last two facts were in some way related.

Our two retrieve vehicles, one of which was usually unserviceable, were cut-down Bullnose Morrises of indeterminate age, relics from Brigden's garage probably. They were for retrieving the cable, not the gliders. They were always brought back from wherever they had landed by hand. Everybody at the launchpoint was expected to do this, preferably at the double! "C--t--g b-ll--ks! The Tutor's been down for ten minutes. Don't you lot want to fly today?" This when it had in fact just landed and we were already on our way out to it! A healthier, in all the senses, atmosphere for a young man to grow up in could hardly be imagined. The only person exempted from these strictures was Squeege, in deference to his extremely advanced years. He was, I think, about 52.

One of our members, an Eastbourne solicitor, had a very superior motor car, an apparently devoted girl friend, and the club's only Silver C. This last, which I envied more than the other two, he had acquired with the Surrey club at Redhill. The Surrey club visited us occasionally, for the cliff soaring. Their members seemed entirely to consist of leggy blondes, wealthy wine merchants, and chaps who had won DFCs in the war. They flew Olympias as ordinary club aircraft. We Sussex yokels thought them very sophisticated. I expect they, or their descendants, are now at Booker.

One of the disadvantages of taking up gliding in adolescence is that it is a period when the hormones are at their most obstreperous. The arrival of young women on the field, especially in summer when they wore shorts, had two results. The first was that Brigger moderated his language. The second was that I was rapidly reduced to that state in which signalling take up slack with our large, sharp edged tin bat became a hazardous undertaking, particularly in a gusty wind.

The daughter of the farm of which the airfield formed part was exactly my own age. I met her one day when I was sent to help with the haymaking. Whether this was a genuine exercise in landlord relations, or whether those in charge had finally run out of patience with my ineptitude on the field I never knew. At any rate there she was, decoratively if somewhat ineffectually, raking up hay. I had never seen so beautiful a human being. For the next few week-ends, greatly to the amusement of the middle aged members (most of them in their thirties or even older), I spent much more time helping with the haymaking than gliding.

In her turn this lovely person took to visiting the airfield "to watch the gliders", by which she charmingly meant those who did it rather than the things they did it in. One day her arrival on the field coincided with mine at the top of the flying list. Though lacking a pipe and tin legs I did my best to climb into the Tutor in the style of Douglas Bader in the film "Reach for the Sky" which I had recently seen. Carefully adjusting my goggles to hide the worst of the spots on my forehead, and assuming an expression which I hoped was one of steely determination, I gave the take off commands (which the pilot did in those days) in as manly a voice as I could manage. Imagining her eyes upon me throughout I flew a careful circuit though, impatient as I was to be on the ground again to receive the admiration that was my due, I took care not to make it a long one. A graceful final turn was followed by a daisycutter of a landing.. Even Brigger grunted approval.. Returning with the glider, at a steady trot as usual, I looked round anxiously for she who I had hoped to impress. She had retired to the farmhouse! Overcome, I imagined, by her concern for my safely. Not so. I learned later that she was furious, having expected me to forgo my flight in order to go for a walk with her on the cliffs instead. Our relationship, chaste and tentative as it had been, ended soon afterwards, but I had learned one of Life's Great Lessons. Sex and gliding rarely mix.

At just turned 17 I flew for five hours on the cliffs. Nothing remarkable about trundling up and down in steady lift, but I had a sense of achievement. I was pleased to have done it in a Tutor and pleased, Sussex born as I am, to have done it over Beachy Head. At ten shillings an hour, I faced a bill of £2.10s.0d. plus 2s.6d. for the launch, way beyond my means. I was allowed to pay it in instalments.

Alas, I was approaching the age at which all British males had to serve their country. An unimaginable concept in 1998 but accepted as part of the natural order of things at the time. During my brief and undistinguished military career I became accustomed to rollockings. We all did. It was part of the culture. Most consisted of the apoplectic rantings of NCOs with large voices and small brains beside themselves with fury at some such transgression as an unfastened button or an inadequately polished cap badge. One, memorably, took the form of a witheringly patronising comment on some aspect of my arms drill delivered by a mounted Major in the Grenadier Guards before an audience of 300 of my fellow officer cadets. None had anything like the same effect on me as had being told off by Ray Brigden. From which I drew the second Great Lesson. Neither criticism, nor praise for that matter, means very much unless it comes from someone you respect, and whose good opinion you seek. I offer that to the unknown gentleman in Dorset as some consolation for the indignities he has suffered.

One Saturday in the late autumn of 1953, girt about with martial impedimenta and wearing shoulder flashes proclaiming me a member of the county regiment, I crossed Sussex by train. My route, from the regimental depot at Chichester to that of the Brigade at Canterbury, took me for part of the way along the South Downs. After the steam train left Lewes I watched out for activity at Firle, the site on the Downs to which the Southdown club had moved from Friston. And there they were, as I had hoped or was it feared? What my new masters would have described, had they been on inventory, as Tutors. Slingsby. Pairs. One.

Two of my erstwhile chums were hill soaring, whilst I was pretending to be a soldier and fooling no-one. It was a low moment, but not so low as it would have been had I known then how long it would be before I sat in a glider again. I found that, by rubbing the condensation from the carriage window with my sleeve and craning my head, I was able to keep the two little Tutors in sight for quite a long time. And then they were lost to view.