Tomato Plants & Guided Missiles!

The weather boffs have promised us rising temperatures and blue skies for today so it’s a-gardening-I-will-go; lawnmower locked on auto-pilot, cold beer within easy reach on garden steps and what little mind I have left, floating off with the fairies.

I’m a shed ‘n greenhouse guy – shed in the winter with my potbelly stove chuffing out wood smoke – greenhouse in summer, especially when the tomato plants are waist high and their fruit is well set. Not quite there yet, but the flowers are on and visiting bees are doing their thing so fingers crossed for a bumper crop. First place my wife looks for me when dinner’s ready; sat on a grow bag between my plants – keeping my head down. Never know how many Matabele raiding parties are out with their spears, can never be too careful – the blighters are everywhere...

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A Religious Experience!

School holidays, for the better part, were endless hours of sun, fishing rods and freedom. For four teenage boys a six week Christmas break from boarding school was idyllic; no teachers, no Latin homework and no getting up early unless pre-planned the night before to facilitate a fishing trip. However, Tuesdays were different; pulled from the brink of enjoyment we were corralled at Bob’s house for our weekly talk with God. There was no escape and under threat of lost pocket money we, as founder members of Granny Fleming’s Sunshine Club, reluctantly assembled in her living room – in front of the piano – within range of her scariest, most demanding Victorian glare should we dare to step out of line.

The first song was always ‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam’, but turning into sunbeams didn’t really suit our persona. Nevertheless, Granny Fleming would pound away at her piano and with closed eyes led us, as her dedicated army of sunbeams as close as she dared for a glimpse of the Promised Land. Next would be the ‘My Cup is Full and Running Over’ song, complete with roly-poly hand effects, sniggers and worried glances through the window in case our mates were watching. But the rewards were great; jugs of homemade lemonade and Granny Fleming’s mountainous rock buns, shot through with a thousand glistening currants and big enough to last the most ardent of sunbeams all the way through to supper time...

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Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Rex took his men into deep cover just minutes before the Rhodesian Fireforce gunship howled overhead. Within that brief moment he recognised the soldier standing in the hatch-way and his breathing checked; from behind the twin barrels of a .303 Browning machine gun the soldier’s doleful stare swept the forest for sign. The pilot altered course; a low, sweeping arc to starboard. Less than a mile out from Rex’s position the helicopter turned on its axis and hovered there, like a dragonfly about to touch its tail to the surface of a lake. From both sides, soldiers dropped to the ground – light as sprinters straight from their starting-blocks they disappeared inside the forest.

‘Ready the launcher!’ Rex ordered, and threw off the encumbrance of his own backpack. The soldiers had leapfrogged ahead, gambling on him not having reached the border. His ploy, if it worked, would give him back the advantage; shake the hounds from his scent.

 One man stripped away the launcher’s protective casing whilst another drew out the first of two projectiles. Rex opened his pack and reached inside for the A63 military radio. He turned the channel selector to 4 and switched on the power. The battery indicator swung to full. For a moment, only a low sibilance from the handset’s earpiece, then the carrier band hummed to life and a familiar voice confirmed Rex’s recognition of the soldier’s face. He let the incoming transmission end before pressing the transmit key.

‘You are a competent adversary, Captain.’

The carrier band froze; still active, but silent. Rex sensed the confusion.

‘Who is this? What is your call sign?’

‘No call sign, Captain.’ He transferred the handset to his left hand then shouldered the launcher. He switched on the power supply and looked to the men behind him.

‘Load!’

For a moment the Alouette hung motionless above the drop zone and then, like an eagle leaving its young, swung towards the northwest.

‘I say again. Who are you? Give me your call sign.’

Rex stepped away from the tree line. The nine kilogram Strela 2 missile clunked against the ignition terminals in the launcher’s tail section.

‘You know me well, Captain, yet in so many ways we are strangers.’ The Alouette was closing – a half mile out. This time it flew in a high, climbing arc above the skyline. Rex widened his stance. The launcher sat comfortably across his right shoulder, exactly to the weapon’s point of balance.

‘This is a restricted frequency – identify yourself.’

‘Time is running out. For the sake of your comrades, give me your word that you will open the way for us and I will let them live.’ Rex gauged the time he had left, paused for a few more seconds and again pressed the transmit button. ‘Your indecision has let you down, Captain. The choice has been made for you.’

Rex dropped the handset; both hands were needed to steady and fire the missile. At three hundred metres above the forest the target was perfectly suited to the SAM’s capabilities. Through the iron eyepiece, Rex tracked the target and applied half trigger; uncaging the weapon’s seeker electronics. A green target acquisition light came on and the audio warning buzzed as a swarm of angry bees. He fully depressed the trigger. A red ‘locked-on’ visual indicator glowed like a raptor’s eye, urging him to use the launch window before the aircraft dropped out of range. Instinctively, like a hunter preparing himself for the recoil he leaned into the shot.

Lee saw the missile rise from the forest canopy – a thread of silver vapour linked it to the earth. Compared to the speeding missile, the Alouette was a slow and cumbersome thing – floundering and awkward. In excess of four hundred metres a second, the Strela missile appeared intuitive, an electronic predator with the committed mindset of a stooping falcon. Rex had to wait for the Alouette to pass; a frontal attack would have stood little chance of success. The Strela 2 was a chaser, a revenge missile – needing powerful, infrared emissions from the hot throat of an aircraft’s exhaust nozzle to excite its seeker. A storm sky formed a macabre backdrop, a wall of black rain. A feather of white light flicked from the Alouette’s engine and like a wildfowl struck by the hunter’s shot the aircraft shuddered...

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