Tag Archives: history

The Monday Book

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Jack has the honor of the Monday book post (and just scraped through in time).

Portrait of a Legend – Spitfire, Leo McKinstry, 2007

I am a complete nut for airplanes (or aeroplanes as we Scots would say), so stumbling across this book in a thrift store in Oban in Scotland a couple of weeks ago was like discovering the holy grail (we also visited Roslyn Chapel on our trip).

I should say that as a Quaker I have very mixed feelings about warplanes, but the Spitfire seems to transcend that and can stand in its own right as a thing of beauty. Many of the pilot testimonies in the book talk of that beauty of the plane as distinct from the job it was designed to do.

Most books about the Spitfire paint a romantic picture of a machine that appeared just in time to ward off the Nazi menace and the winning of the ‘Battle of Britain’ in 1940. What I hadn’t realized until reading this one was what a struggle there had been from its maiden flight in 1936 to getting it into production. The company that designed it was a very small business specializing in seaplanes and had won a series of high speed races in the early 1930s with planes designed by R. J. Mitchell who went on to design the Spitfire. But the business was far too small to undertake the contract to build the numbers that were needed in the approach to WW2. Attempts to outsource production went disastrously wrong and the construction of a massive new factory went equally badly. Even after its acceptance by the public as the ‘icon’ of fighter command it continued to be mired in high level debate surrounding its suitability for a whole range of different and essential tasks.

spitfire

Despite all that it remained in service around the world from 1939 through the late 1950s in a wide variety of roles and still thrills crowds at air displays to this day.

I well remember seeing a Lancaster, a Hurricane and  Spitfire flying over our house near Leuchars RAF base in Scotland about 15 years ago at low altitude – six Rolls Royce Merlin engines making a wonderful sound!

I can thoroughly recommend this book to anyone with a passing interest in the story of this gorgeous flying machine – a big thumbs up!

 

A Tale of Three Kitties

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It’s Thursday, so it must be time for Jack’s Wednesday guest blog –

This is the story of three cats – Fang, Hillary and Delight.

Fang came to us by mistake, because we don’t take in ferals (it’s a long story), and she immediately disappeared into the bowels of the bookstore. We eventually discovered her hiding under the sink unit in our bathroom, only coming out at night to eat and drink – and the other thing, which she did fastidiously in the correct place, for all her feralness.

Hillary was another mistake and even more of a hermit – we hardly ever saw her.

Delight was not a feral, but she hated people from the minute she laid eyes on one, so after adopting out her adorable brothers and sisters, we gave up.

So they all got sent out to the garage where they immediately became their own gang: The Feral Sorority.

I went out every morning with their breakfast treats of individual little bowls of wet cat food and for the longest time only ever saw Delight. After some weeks of this, to my amazement, Fang appeared looking very suspicious and hanging way back. Over the next few weeks she began to approach close enough for me to give her a head scratch. After that she would wait behind the door with Delight each morning for me to deliver breakfast.

Soon both Delight and Fang were waiting for me each morning and getting pretty enthusiastic for head scratches and back rubs. Fang was also loudly calling if I were later than she expected. But Hillary was still nowhere to be seen – – –

Until –

The morning that she appeared after many weeks of nothing, and hung back watching the usual stuff with Fang and Delight. Hhmm she thought – that looks a bit interesting.

And that was pretty much that. Now they all welcome me (or maybe just the wet cat food) and shout loudly at me each morning. They all come for head and back scratches and Fang asks, even insists, to be lifted up onto my knee.

I suppose they might stay – – – after all, they’re not doing any harm out there in the garage….