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?

*

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...

*