RAF Museum Hendon with Cubs and Scouts...PHOTOS TO ADD

Today we were supposed to be going on a visit to the RAF museum in Hendon, which is part of Greater London, with the Cubs and Scouts but it seemed as if our plans would be scuppered before we even left the house when the car failed to start, but made up for this by making a most peculiar noise when it tried. Once more, it seemed, the unreliable electrical system had chosen to mess with us at the most inconvenient of times!


As luck would have it, good for a change,

1. Deb had her phone with her (Unflipping Believable)

2. It was charged (will miracles never cease) and, finally, what is more

3. She had, an up to date, contact number for one of the trip organizers.

Well, by the time I’d regained consciousness, she’d called said contact, explained our situation and arranged for the coach to stop nearby and pick us up as it headed for the motorway.

So, after a brief wait, we were on our way to “The Smoke” or at least to its outskirts. Nat sat with me and Han sat with Deb. Determined to ensure that conversation continued to be a dying art Nat immediately plugged his head phones in to my old Nokia N95 and started listening to episode two of Hardcore History’s Punic Nightmare. Following suit, I too, plugged in my phones and settled back to enjoy a little podcast pleasure.

We had, it seemed, a rather talkative driver on this trip who regaled us with snippets of information about the various places we were passing on our journey; for some reason Deb found this quite odd and remarked the next day that she imagined he would be an extremely boring person to talk to. I, on the other hand, thought he was quite interesting and kept removing my headphones to hear what he had to say. This was why I eventually stopped listening to podcasts and switched to music instead. Oh the joy of rediscovering just how good 10CC were (a 1970’s band I loved as a teenager and who, having reformed, are performing in Birmingham next week). Eventually reaching our destination (http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/) we disembarked and were briefed on what we would be doing that day. Each Cub and each Scout was given a questionnaire that they were required complete in order to win their (RAF Museum Visit!!!???) badge. They would only be able to do so if they toured the whole museum and searched carefully for the answers that were hidden there.

It most certainly was an impressive place, I’ve no idea exactly how many planes were on display (I didn’t have to earn a RAFMV badge did I but here’s a link to the list the museum website gives http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/collections/aircraft/london-aircraft-collection.cfm) but I can certainly confirm there were a bloody great lot of them. You can’t really appreciate the size of these old flyers when you see them on film, it’s only when you’re standing next to a, for example, WW2 USAF Mustang, that you grasp just how big the dang thing is! The visible part of the engine is bigger than our whole car and it’s easy to see why inadvertently walking into a spinning turboprop would totally ruin your day! Even the old biplanes, which for some reason I’d always imagined as being tiny, were much, much larger than expected. I think it may be because we equate fragility with daintiness and we’ve all grown up with an image in our minds of these early fighters as fragile creations of wood paper and wire that fell apart under the slightest stress. Believe me, there’s nothing dainty about these mothers! Below are is a large selection of photos which I think prove my point. (INSERT PHOTOS).



After we’d toured the first hall and Han and Nat had ridden in one of the simulators we crossed over to another building which was dedicated to the history of British Aviation during WW2 and particularly to the story of The Battle of Britain.

One of the most impressive exhibits was a full size flying boat that one could actually enter and walk through from front to back. We’d thought that now we’d seen everything but subsequently looking at the museum website I think we may have missed a few exhibits although I’m not quite sure how we managed to do that.

We returned via the shop where we bought a few souvenirs including two of the legendry Biggles books which are once more back in print. The collected boxed set was priced, outrageously, at £39.99 and that was with £10 off!

We decided to take another look at the battle of Britain exhibition but in the end we ended up in the restaurant where we paid £13 for a few drinks and a couple of cakes! Appropriately, I had a bottle of Shepherd Neame brewery Spitfire Ale and very nice it was. Finally it was 4 O’clock and we headed back to the coach for the return journey.

The kind driver once more dropped as near home and our day out was over.

Deb contacted the RAC Re: the car but after they advised that they were exceptionally busy agreed that there was no urgent need for the car that night and we’d be able to wait until the following morning. Because Nat had to play in a rugby match the next morning Deb phoned Jacob’s Dad Bruce who agreed that he would pick Nat up and also take him, along with Jacob and Zak and Zak’s Dad Chris, to the match.

There’s nothing more really to say about the day but as I’ve not yet reached a thousand words I’m going to have to procrastinate a little here just to reach that magical but also, paradoxically, totally arbitrary, figure. Now, normally, at this point I’d just make up some total bull to fill up the space but I’m beginning to feel that this is something of a cheat so instead I’ll use the time to instead tell you this. What a literary device that proved to be, taking up space by writing about why I didn’t just want to just take up space with pointless waffle. Same end achieved but I come out looking (seemingly) noble instead of venal.

Sunday 30 May – Picked Up Nat, Anorexic Me, The Twickenham Report, Han’s Gone Shopping

Nat’s coach, scheduled to arrive back at 11:00PM, eventually arrived shortly before Midnight. It seemed to take forever for everyone to get off as Neil, who was at the front, appeared to have, at the very least, 500 exceptionally large and bulky items with him which took him an age to pick up. As Neil is quite a big chap (lets not beat about the bush he’s fricking huge) so no body could get passed him-he became “The Human Bottleneck”! 

Eventually Nat disembarked and we jumped into the car and came home. A match report (Tigers Won by the way) and any photos/videos he took will appear later in this post because as of the time of writing I’ve yet to speak to him about it. This may be because I didn’t go to bed until 6.00 and (after my first good sleep this week) have only just got up (14:15). There’s one good thing about this confused sleeping pattern, I haven’t eaten a full meal since Thursday (I’ve had just a plate of cheese and biscuits and two ham cobs if I recall correctly) so I seem to be losing a little weight… Hooray, it’s about time you gross fat wobble tummy barstool!
Han’s gone shopping at Fosse Park with Sian; is this the start her her independence, I wonder? After all she’s nine years old now and, in her mind at least, a young woman. She’s just called and asked Deb to pick them up, Sian has a very bad knee and would find it difficult to walk all the way home from there. I wonder what she’s bought. Chewing gum, Pepsi, a necklace and that’s about it….not because of her self restraint, oh no no no, the reason she didn't buy anything else was because of the £5 she'd taken with her she only had10 pence left!

Saturday 29 May – Nat Goes to Twickenham, German (1992) Bobsleigh, Oh Let Joy Be Unconfined - Hanged Man (The) - Complete Series available on DVD after 35 Years!!!

We dropped Nat off at The Vipers Rugby Club this morning to join his team mates on a trip to Twickenham to watch the Guinness Premiership Final between Leicester Tigers and Saracens. I would have loved to have gone but at the time of booking it wasn’t clear whether or not I would be physically up to it. Even now I’m not sure I’d be able to sit on a coach seat / stadium seat for a whole day without cocking up my new hip. I’m not supposed to sit on low chairs for at least six weeks after the operation and to date it’s only been three and a bit! I’ve nagged Nat to take some photos and videos whilst he’s there but I’m willing to bet buttons to dollars that he doesn’t take any or if he does only a very few and certainly no videos. I’m hoping to be disappointed but very much doubt that I will be! Anyway, by the time he gets home he’s going to be shattered because their ETA back to the Vipers Club House is 11 PM!!! Called Nat about 2:15, they are still on the coach, although they have stopped at some services for a break, and are now on, he thinks, the M25 which sounds about right because Twickenham Stadium is about six miles away for London Heathrow Airport. We were cut off when my phone’s low battery warning started sounding; either I’ve got a duff battery, hopefully, cos it was fully charged this morning or I’ve got a duff phone which is a far more serious problem. Mind you when the N95 started draining batteries like there was no tomorrow I just left it somewhere warn and dry for a few months and the problem appeared to solve itself. Whatever the reason it’s now working fine and holding it’s battery charge for days.

Germany 1992; I’ve told the kids a number of times that when Deb and I visited Germany in 1992 we discovered a kind of bobsleigh run on the side of a mountain during our travels across the Rhineland. I’ve never tried to locate this site on the internet but that changed this morning. I’ve been watching that odd little daytime series Coach Trip Series Three (I’d never heard of it, let alone seen it, before); on yesterdays episode they visited the Innsbruck Winter Olympic Bobsleigh Run where, in the non-winter months, you can ride the run on a wheeled bobsleigh, known as “Summer Bobsleighing” reasonably enough. I showed this clip to Han this morning after we returned from dropping off Nat and it inspired me to see if i could find the site we visited in 1992. God Bless the Internet; it must have taken me all of five minutes to find the location followed by their website followed by YouTube footage of people riding the run. I’ve linked to a couple of  these videos below:

I’d really really like to have another go on this and so would Nat and Han; for some reason Deb isn’t so enthusiastic!

Well talk about Serendipity, as Victor Meldrew might say “I Cannot Believe It”, quite by chance, I can’t even recall how now, I came across a site called  TV Heaven that basically lists virtually every TV show/series that has ever been on TV. Now whenever I encounter such a site there is ALWAYS one search that I ALWAYS (are you getting the picture) ALWAYS make; so too the H’s and look for “The Hanged Man”. Well would you believe it, there it was The Hanged Man. Why do I always make this search? Because in 1975 (when I was 18) I stayed in every Saturday night for eight weeks (Note to Young People:- there were no videos recorders in those days) to watch this drama thriller. As far as I was concerned it was, at this point, the best thriller I’d ever seen on TV and if I’[m honest I’d say that few dramas since have bested it. I managed to pick up a copy of the book of the TV series in Cardiff shortly after the series concluded and this book must rank amongst my most reread books of all time. My original copy is now held together with sellotape and prayers (luckily I managed to acquired a new copy on Amazon a few years ago that retains it’s unread virgin status to this day). Now one other thing I ALWAYS do when I do this search is look to see if there are any episodes available anywhere to watch (For Example the first 10 minutes of the comedy spin-off “Turtles Progress” is on YouTube and can be seen here…

). Until now I’ve had no luck and all leads followed have ended the same way saying that the original tapes were either wiped or lost. Imagine my surprise and DELIGHT when I discovered this has changed and it changed THIS MONTH. The Complete series became available on DVD on 3 May 2010…YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

I will be sending for it forthwith…well actually it’s £18.00 and Deb has just told me I can have it for Father’s Day. Now I know it’s available I’ve searched to see if I could find it cheaper elsewhere but, alas, to no avail. But “Sod It”, I’ve wanted to re-see this programme for 35(!!!!!) years so what’s £20 (inc postage). I know the production valves of programmes for this era were so low that, sometimes, reviewing a fondly remembered series can be a great disappointment ( BBC’s Gangsters one off and 2 spin-off series in 1976 and 1977 being cases in point) but as I recall much of this series was shot on location rather than in the studio so hopefully this will play in it’s favour. Either way I’ll be seeing it… shit I’m so happy I can’t explain it!!!It would appear that I’m desperately in need of a further thirty words if I am to reach the thousand word mark on this particular blog post, can anyone suggest anything that I might do to achieve this target, What’s that, waffle on endlessly you say, surely that would be cheating and something that a gentleman would not countenance. No I understand fully the point you make and if, like you, I too were totally lacking in honour then perhaps I too might pursue it also; but alas I cannot! Oh looks “cannot” somehow mysteriously became the 1059th word so the problem appears to be moot! (1075) Of course this now means that I’ve got to find something to fill the remaining 25 words and this will, no doubt, be it! (1100)