Tag Archives: humor

Christmas Cheer – –

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Jack’s Wednesday guest post finally makes it – –

Wendy and I spent Christmas with her parents in Knoxville as we usually try to do. They have always been gracious and welcoming to me and for that I am always thankful.

When they came over to Scotland almost twenty years ago for our wedding (the first time they had ever been out of the US), they were enchanted by my country and still keep up with folks over there through the internet.

One thing that Wendy’s mom sampled there was ‘chicken tikka masala’ and she always hankered to have that bright red delicacy again. So this Christmas I decided to make her some and prepared by purchasing the necessary sauce from Trader Joe’s and then googled to find out how to get the red color into the chicken. To my horror it turned out to be red food dye!

She was disappointed but agreed to try my pale orange chicken concoction instead. Despite me being the only person in the company who actually likes curry, she gamely tucked into the non-red delicacy. There was quite a lot left, which I look forward to finishing in due time! Pat reminds me very much of her own Mom, Wendy’s Nanny, who once prepared for me three different kinds of porridge for breakfast to show me I was accepted into the family.

Wendy’s dad, however has much more conservative tastes in food (and other things) and has, I think, always used me as a kind of barometer for measuring how ‘the rest of the world’ thinks. I actually don’t mind that too much as we are in many ways mirror images of each other in our political and societal views. Our sources of news are diametrically opposed and we usually see current events in very different ways. I’m often surprised by how much we agree on, however, and I’m grateful to him for being much more open with his views than I’ve been prepared to be with mine (although I’m sure he has me pegged).

They must both have had severe misgivings when Wendy announced our engagement – to marry a foreigner and one so many years older than her!

The last time we were all together was to observe the total eclipse of the sun – but yet, here we are all still – – – and the sun has not fallen from the sky!

 

 

Up, Up, and Away – – –

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Jack scrapes in once again – –

Regular readers will know of my fascination with all things aeronautical, so, when Wendy posted a message a couple days ago on FaceBook asking (on behalf of a friend!), about insurance for a 75 year old man bent on going up in a glider – – –

While I’ve made many, many trips all over the world in airliners, there really just two flight experiences that really stick in my mind.

glider

When I was about 19 years old I went on a week long gliding vacation in Yorkshire. It was held at Sutton Bank which is a very high straight cliff near Thirsk and a beautiful area. We were a small group and all stayed in a lovely old pub/inn at the foot of the cliff. Every morning an ancient ex-army land-rover would ferry us up to the airfield up on top of the cliff. Then the excitement started!

Our instructor was a Polish ex fighter pilot who’d flown Spitfires in the Battle of Britain and he was a real character. Each morning he would address us in the clubhouse where he told us nothing about gliders and everything about flying Spitfires during WW2! Then we’d go out with him in turns, get hooked up to the winch and rocket up to five hundred feet or so. That put us over the edge of the cliff where our height suddenly became over a thousand feet and with an up-draft that pushed us up even further.

But my strongest memory is the complete tranquility of sitting silently in the sky with no sense of motion and no engine – like being in an armchair!

The second experience was much more recently –

low wing

During the 1990s I organized a student exchange between my college in Scotland and one in Herning, Denmark. My opposite number there was the head of the engineering dept. and he owned a light plane (and a half share in another one). I went over for a week to set things up and he took me up in his plane (a low wing monoplane with a side by side open cockpit). We visited some of his flying buddies who lived out in the country with their own grass landing strips.

morgan

At that time I was the owner of a Morgan sports car and I remember thinking as we took off for the first time that this felt like my Morgan had just sprouted wings! We had a number of magical flights and never more than a few hundred feet up, navigating around pylons and factory chimneys and with no maps.

Coincidentally both our colleges had a link to one in Wilhelmshaven in Germany and he wanted to fly us down there. The ‘high-ups’ didn’t approve as it would involve traversing part of the north sea, so we ended up driving. When we crossed into Germany the autobahn had no speed limit so we drove at over 100 MPH!

I’m sure it was much safer – – –