Beetles, Bananas and Up, Up and Away!

Early morning; grabbed my dish and with Holly, Jones and Star in hot pursuit, headed for the garden. Purely by luck and by jumping over the lead dog did I make it to the fruit before our three, self-confessed strawberry addicts plunged their snouts inside the foliage. Managed to scrabble up half a dozen berries, but Holly got the biggest and reddest, Jones the most because he’s little and quick and then came Star – good at lifting and chasing off robbers, but somewhat lacking in the brains department, he got none. So I gave him one of mine and now contented, the four of us went back inside for a hearty breakfast.

Filled their bowls with biscuits and other bits and my own with nuts, raisins, Weetbix, bran flakes, muesli, natural yogurt, teaspoonful of honey, chopped banana and, last but never least, my impoverished pile of little strawberries. The dogs gave me their best ‘no fair’ stare and held back on the biscuits, begrudging me my berries.

Anyway, I ignored their slavering, flooded my dish with cold milk and hefted my spoon, ready for breaking through the half-inch thick, yogurt permafrost, but all was not as it seemed.

Where the yogurt ended and the bananas, like calving icebergs stuck up through the slurry, something lived and waved its arms in earnest. Got my glasses and peered into my dish. Clinging desperately to a strawberry, a single, tiny beetle prayed for a fair wind to carry him shoreward. Adrift in that arctic sea of iced milk he stood little chance of survival; with every tremor from my tabletop, waves proportionally the size of two-storey houses lashed his makeshift lifeboat and, had I not seen them, both lifeboat and beetle would have gone the way of the underlying bran flakes, straight to my stomach.

Plastered to my fingertip he went back out to the garden and on the highest sunflower seed head he stood, stretched and began the process of washing down. For that next half hour I watched him preen, clean and brush away his yogurt suit. Soon, he composed himself and then, without so much as a nod or a wave for saving his life, flipped open his cleansed wing casings and blasted off – up into the sky.

He managed twenty feet before a swallow took him. Could have saved myself the bother and eaten the ungrateful bastard myself.

 

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 Another excerpt... ‘Up, Up and Almost Away!’

... For half a crown, Gilbert would, without so much as a second thought captain a papier-mâché submarine to hell and back, so test flying Spitfire One was looked upon as little more than a flap and grunt down the hill outside Bob’s house, but first the money – or no deal. Reluctantly, Bob dug around inside his pocket and pulled out a bright, shining, almost new half crown piece, thrust it into Gilbert’s outstretched palm and threatened death as a minimum punishment should he fail to get our plane airborne. Gilbert promised his best effort and pocketed the coin. He donned his borrowed mining helmet and lowered himself inside Spitfire One’s flimsy fuselage.

‘I am ready,’ he rasped and took a firm hold on his bamboo crash bar.

It was early morning, the sun was big and yellow and a slight east wind was blowing head-on to runway two-niner. Other than the sound of straining little legs on old pedals and the rumble of overloaded roller skates, there was nothing. I pulled, Junior pushed and Gilbert’s eyes flew wider as the wind speed under his eyelids climbed to maximum velocity...

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Flight of Fancy?

I keep looking for the summer; a long, hot day or two, some reassurance, maybe sunburn even, but nothing yet. The rain just keeps on raining, the ground, where I can find a piece that isn’t flooded feels as though it’s floating on marmalade. Everything is sodden; swallows huddle as soggy twos and threes along the telephone wires and stare listlessly back along the route they have just travelled. Five thousand miles from sun to no sun; doesn’t make sense, why not stay where you are and save yourself the bother?

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From a little boy’s life, an excerpt...

... Bob’s house trebled as command headquarters, watering hole and storage centre for egg collections, fishing rods and air rifles, but this particular day we needed none of those. This day would be dedicated to the building of our first and only piloted aeroplane; Spitfire One.

Took us three days, from the original schematics done in the sand, to the final painting-on of her Air Force roundels. We built the frame from bamboo canes hacked from Bob’s garden; the wings and fuselage were covered in greaseproof paper and suitably ‘doped’.
‘We must be crazy,’ I told them, but my pointing this out fell on deaf ears. Come hell or high water, Spitfire One would bear its fearless pilot aloft, or at least glide him sedately across the lawn to the far side of the garden.
‘We need an undercarriage.’
‘What’s an undercarriage?’
‘Wheels to go underneath or it won’t move.’
We all agreed; wheels were a good idea, so back inside the house we galloped and ten minutes later emerged with two sets of roller skates, old Beano books, loads of Sellotape and balls of thick string. Another hour and Spitfire One had her undercarriage.
‘What next?’
‘Who’s going first?’
No one spoke. Squirming and headshaking we all declined the offer of test pilot. The fun had been in the building, the terror we knew, was in the flying.
‘We’ll draw straws,’ Junior piped, ‘those with long straws will be the ground crew – the one with the shortest straw will fly.’
Four straws were brought from the pantry; scissors were found, used, and the modified straws held out at arm’s length.
‘Take one.’ Junior looked at the rest of us and the rest of us recoiled in horror.
‘It won’t fly,’ I warned them. ‘We’re all too heavy.’
Everyone nodded, apart from Willie.
‘It might if it goes downhill.’
We all looked outside; Spitfire One, like a one-winged, no-engine Spirit of St Louis stood waiting in the sunlight, her Beano book double undercarriage with silver-coloured skates now ready for the runway. Midway between her front and rear bogies, a hole had been left where the pilot could sit.
‘Forget it. I’m not doing this.’ I folded my arms and glowered at Willie. ‘You think it will fly so you do it.’
Willie dropped his eyes to the floor.
‘It’s late. My food will be ready.’ He stood up. ‘If I’m not there on time the dog gets it.’ He disappeared through the front door. For the next three days no one saw him.
‘Gilbert.’ Bob suggested. ‘He’s thin and little enough to get in.’
‘What if he won’t?’
‘Then I’ll rat on him and my mother will sack him.’
Bob’s eyes glowed; Gilbert was the cook’s son, in the holidays he worked in the garden. At four feet nothing and weighing half of one of us he was the ideal trainee pilot. We could see him; almost insect-like, whippet-slim and unsuspecting, outside in the garden, watering flowers and whistling. A good puff of wind and he would disappear over the fence. We all stood up and went outside to convince Gilbert that his imminent promotion to test pilot would be his first, tentative step on the corporate ladder...

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