This could be interesting

I'm going to make a sweeping generalisation here... I'm going to go ahead and assume that everyone who's reading this, can read.

I mean it's not much of a stretch, this blog is about 98% text, with only the odd gratuitous picture of a discouraged rat or a glowing bottle of cannabis imbued vodka.  Word-heavy pages on the Internet tend to attract people who can actually read.

Here's sweeping generalisation number 2 - Hold on to your hats - The chances are, if you're actually reading this on purpose and you've not just found your way here via Google, (because I cleverly added the words 'Naked', 'Virgin' & 'Schoolgirl' to the Page-tags to trap fans of seedy porography) - You're happily residing towards the top of the 'Pretty bright' scale.

What, traditionally, do pretty bright people enjoy?

Ok, smarty-pants, apart from feeling superior...

That's right, they like to read books.

Books are flipping great, aren't they?

As Groucho Marx once said: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

Wait... No... I was trying to be serious there wasn't I?  Let's try that again...

Prolific Writer, "Cleaner', Newsreader, Pizza Delivery Guy, Cemetery Caretaker, Truck Driver and serial ATM User, Stephen King announced, "Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life."

(LOL, Stephen King said 'Dead Spots')

And I agree with Mr Bachman, I always carry a book with me... Admittedly, it's 'usually' in my head, and I'm 'usually' just about halfway through writing it, but it still counts.

Can you remember the last book you bought?  More importantly, can you remember where you bought it from?  I'll wager that the vast proportion of you just answered Amazon, or something similar.  Now, I'm not going to berate you about how buying books from the online sheds is terrible and how it's slowly strangling the life out of real, bricks and mortar bookshops (Even though it is) because... Well... To be frank, it's CURRENTLY the only place you can buy any of my books.  And I'll bite a lot of things, but not the hand that feeds me, because that would be silly.

Why don't we all shop in real bookshops?  Well, there just aren't that many of them around any more, in fact, there are now less than 1,000 independent book shops left in the UK - That's about one bookshop for every 64,062 people. When you think about it, that's pretty sad - There's a whole generation of kids who, if we don't do anything about it, will never know the joy of wandering around a maze-like bookshop, feverishly clutching their birthday money in their jammy little fists, finding a book they like, figuring out whether they can afford it and finally plucking up the courage to approach the friendly, but still obscenely scary person behind the counter to complete their purchase.

But I suppose Amazon have a huge selection, and they deliver don't they, usually when you're out, so you get one of those notes from the postman that says "We tried to deliver this parcel that you've been waiting for, but you were, like, out, or having a poop or something, so we've taken it back to the depot, and / or thrown it over your fence and into your pond.

We're all getting lazy, and fat, and relying too much on technology to make our lives easier.  Reading a book is a fairly sedentary thing to do in the first place, the least you can do is actually get off your well-read butt and go out hunting for a book 'in the wild' as it were.

And here's the perfect opportunity:

Next week is Independent Booksellers Week, why don't you take the time to go out, find your nearest purveyor of fine reading matter and spaff your spare cash uncontrollably all over their shelves.

You might even actually want to get involved yourselves, that's what I'm doing (But as you all know, I am a HUGE show-off so it was a bit of a no-brainer really)

On the afternoon of Saturday 5th of July, I'll be at the wonderfully independent Southcart Books on Lower Hall Lane, in sunny Walsall, jewel of the West Midlands.

Scott and Amy - Give them ALL of your money - They deserve it.

Why will I be there? Well, ostensibly to eat all of the cake and drink all of the tea and coffee*  But I will also, hopefully, find time to read a couple of stories from both volumes of 'The Collected Chimping Dandy'.

Ah, here's an idea... Should you be in the area, by which I mean 'able to get there if you set out now, with a loyal team of Sherpas and a dozen barrels of Navy Rum', you should totally come and see me look embarrased, go red and mumble, and say "ummmm.." and "errrr.." a lot whilst one chap and his dog claps nervously as I tell the story about the exploding pigeon.  Other authors should also be there, it's not just me, that would be weird.

It might be fun... No, it will be fun - I'm just not sure yet at whose expense...







*Please note: I've got no idea whether there will be refreshments... But there's a bucketload of shops in the general area - You can sort yourselves out.

'Indian Curry' does not exist.

Now, I don't want to worry anyone, but the above statement is completely and totally true.

There is no such thing as an Indian curry.  Surprised?  That's a reasonable response for someone who has had the very foundations of their takeaway food experience rocked to its very... erm... foundations.

But I hear you shout "No!, I went for a curry last Saturday! It was great! There were free popadums and a pickle tray! And we drank Cobra! I spent the whole of Sunday pooping rusty dishwater!"

And I reply, "No, you didn't, you might have gone for Indian food (Although I doubt it) but you didn't go for an Indian curry."

THIS is a curry

The curry tree (Murraya koenigii)

I bet that wasn't what you had was it? Unless you're an elephant, and I'm sure that you would have let me know by now if you were.

OK, of course I'm being fatuous, it's what I do.  Although you should all know by now that I'm a great fan of people using the right words to describe things (queue thousands of readers pointing out where I've used 'Affected' instead of 'Effected' or 'Breath' where I meant 'Breathe')

Let me take you on a little jaunt through time, all the way back to 1764.  The Honourable East India Company (Whom you may have heard of as the posh, British villains from 'Pirates of the Caribbean') had opened up trading routes with India and were making insanely huge profits by exporting spices and anything that was of any actual value back to the Motherland.  In turn, they used the profits from this to expand further into the country, and by expand I obviously mean wage war with the locals until they were sufficiently decimated that agents of the company could just wander in and claim their land out from under them as I've described before. Then they'd employ local labour to grow pepper and nutmeg and things, which they'd trade for cotton and swordblades and suchlike (One of these turned out to be a huge mistake... a huge, huge mistake... See if you can guess which one it was).

Oddly enough, after almost 100 years of this kind of behaviour, there was a 'mutiny' or 'rebellion' depending whose side you were on, followed by a couple of massacres (Because we Brits do enjoy a good old massacre don't we?) and then Queen Victoria stepped in, dissolved the E.I. Company and kindly made India part of the Empire, with all the wonderful things that that entailed, like the wholesale introduction of HP Sauce, Camp Coffee and syphilis.

What this meant, for our purposes, is that for the entire hundred year period there was a fairly regular rotation of Public-school educated men called "Bunty" and similar, with double-barreled surnames, demure wives, and unfeasibly splendid moustaches going out to the Subcontinent, almost getting used to the food, and then going home after a year of so retire to a mansion in Sussex with a selection of 'unpaid house servants', because slavery was a terrible thing and had been abolished many years earlier... *cough*

Actually, here's a fact for you... For all intents and purposes, slavery of 'Foreigners' had been abolished in England by about 1780 - But, you could quite legally buy and sell people from Scotland right up until 1799.

So, where were we? - Oh yes, Bunty Tavistock-Heckmondswycke had retired to 'DunColonising' near Tunbridge Wells and realised that the food he was eating tasted a bit bland.  He rings for his faithful manservant, who informs 'Cook' who starts putting rice and something new called 'curry powder' into his smoked haddock in the morning... And thus Kedgeree was born!

Curry powder was a ground approximation of the spices that they got used to eating whilst they were out doing their bit for Queen and country in the mid-day sun.  They didn't get it completely right of course, another popular English tradition, but it was close enough for them.  They shared this new flavour with their chums via the medium of the dinner party and the rest is history.  Coffee Houses started adding 'Curry' to their menus so that the hoi palloy could give them a go.  In fact, in 1810, the 'Hindoostanee Coffee House' opened in London serving all kinds of different spicy meals.  Unfortunately it only lasted a year... Maybe people weren't ready for being so different.  Although to put that in context, England's first Fish & Chip shop didn't open 'til about 50 years later.

The Curry, as we know it is a purely English invention, it has very little to do with anything Indian apart from using some of the same spices and occasionally being served to you by Bengali people in white shirts and bow ties - If you were to wander down Chittagong high street looking for a curry house, you'd be unsuccessful.  It's much easier to get hold of something like a nice a bowl of Shukto, or some saag and kashundi.

A word of warning, the food that Indian people eat themselves is so far removed from what you buy from the takeaway that it's virtually unrecognisable.  Usually it's significantly spicier, I mean, proper 'Let's teach the loud-mouthed football hooligan who asked for a super-hot curry a lesson' hot, and that's just the stuff they give teething babies.

Our next door neighbour brought a pot around last night, she often does if she makes too much, or one of her sons goes out unexpectedly.  She was wearing welding goggles and carried it using those tongs that people who smelt steel use... We had to put it on two baking trays in case it melted through the first one.

I made the mistake of sniffing it this morning, my nostrils sealed themselves up and my eyebrows fell out.

That reminds me, I must go to Tescos and buy all of their yoghurt.

Ding!-Ding! Round Two!

No, this isn't about that Mr Groves being taken down in the eighth by a 'Georgia Peach' delivered by Carl Froch.

It's about me... Because: My Blog.

Some of you will know that in early November of 2013, I published a book called 'Mumblings of an Irate Pangolin' Volume 1 of the Collected Chimping Dandy- The link will take you to Amazon UK, where, if you have no financial or literary sense whatsoever, you can buy a copy.  It looks a bit like this:

Yes, I know it looks a bit amateurish, it was my first go.

But, I hear you say, "I've already got a copy!"  Well, you both have and haven't. You see, this is the second edition, it has a picture of a penguin in a bowler hat on the frontespiece and some spelling mistakes and grammatical errors have been removed.

(Not all of them though, as the nine year old MicroDandy informed me last night... Technically it's considered 'Bad Grammatical Form' to end a sentence with both an exclamation mark and an ellipsis, as you're finishing what you're saying with a *bang* but implying that there's more to come.  My considered reply was "Just go to bed." which may sound a bit draconian, but in fairness it had been a long day.)

Anywho, back to me.  On Friday, I released Volume 2, 'The Pangolin Yodels' (Again, the link points to Amazon UK, go now, buy many copies.) Which looks considerably more professional, which is odd, because it was thrown together by the same person, i.e. me.

Can't you almost smell the professionality?

It's pretty much more of the same really, lots of idiot things my younger self has done, some rants about idiot things other people have done and continue to do, a couple of serious essays that I wasn't actually going to include (But I had to really, because they were so popular.) and even some fiction.  If you enjoyed the last volume, you'll probably not completely hate this one... Well, not completely.

This one also has a picture of a penguin in a bowler hat in it, and this is important.

You see, this book wasn't as much of a one-man-band affair as the first edition of 'Mumbles' was.  It was produced with the assistance of 'The Penguin's Head' <-- This link takes you to their Facebook page, you should go there and like it immediately, you'll be glad you did, in the long run. 

Who are The Penguin's Head?  Well, they're a group of friends for whom writing is a real passion, I mean, you might think that bacon's important, and it is, but for them, writing is like having a bacon sandwich, but replacing all the bread with bacon, and the brown sauce, and probably the bacon itself too - It's like bacon cubed (Which is different from cubed bacon - which I call lardons, because I'm posh)... They're sort of a 'Writers Collective', if you like, but without all the post-gulag socialist ideals and scruffiness that that usually entails.  Currently, there are three of them:

James Josiah - Founder of the tremendously popular The James Josiah Flash Project, which launched the careers of many popular young authors. And has, spookily, also spawned a couple of (Kindle only) books Which you can download Here, that despite what it says, wasn't written by me & Here, which wasn't written by me either, but I did illustrate the cover 

Neil Sehmbhy - Who gets all of his writing published in massive anthologies written on real paper and keeps winning writing competitions and making me feel inadequate.  He is hugely prolific and was one of the main contributors to TJJFP - A couple of my favourite pieces of his flash were 'Derailed' & 'Finding Danielle' If you like your writing dark, you'll like his stuff.

And... Erm... Well... Me really.  I won't bore you with any more links to my stuff, but if you troll through the pages of TJJFP you'll find plenty of my flash fiction there. Plus, you know who I am already, right?

Here is a picture of a penguin in a bowler hat (Yes, it took ages to get the suit on it, and it panicked as we tightened the tie, and none of us are allowed to go to the Antarctic anymore, but it was definitely worth it):

The excellent logo of The Penguin's Head

This is the sort of thing that you can have displayed in your book if you decide to let us help you with it.  Did I mention that we help people write books?  Well, we do.  If you have an idea for a book then we can probably help you get it in print - Whether you just need someone to talk to about the process involved, or if you need a proofreader, or an editor, or you'de just like to hand a full, but scabby, notepad to us and eventually get a stack of stylish 6x9 paperbacks shoved roughly through your mail-slot then we're your men.

We're reasonably cheap and reasonably good at it.  Well, pretty cheap, considering...

Anywho, get in touch with us, it costs nothing.  You never know, you might be the next E.L. James. (Please note: Proofreading erotic fiction can take slightly longer than the more vanilla subjects, you know, when you take into account cramp and having to stop for a bit of a lie down and stuff)

OK, that's it for today... Hopefully, I'll have more news for you all tomorrow.

A particularly long distance.

I posted the guts of this on my Facebook feed a couple of weeks ago, then remembered that I did, in fact, have a Blog that was a better place for such shenanigens.

-oOo-

In the mid-1950's a bunch of specky-boffin type scientists who were probably still bored after all the excitement of World War 2, got together in Switzerland and had a bit of a chat, about stuff. They discussed all the normal science type things like, how there wasn't much for them to do nowadays, what the current fashion was for pocket protectors etc. Until someone happened to mention that all the science-fiction films that were popular at the time involved atomic nuclear things and radiation and giant ants and so forth. 

They decided that what the world needed was a bit of factual evidence about how wonderful nuclear power was and how we should all embrace it and buy a pair of nuclear-powered pants or an atomic toaster or something and smile more. A few more months of researching how to make things 'cuddly' so that normal people like you and me... Well... You at least... can relate to them, showed that they really needed to understand how they work, so they could sound all authoraritive about them when they got invited onto popular chat shows. They called themselves 'CERN' (think 'The Avengers', but with lab coats)

So, to this end they built massive underground guns that they used to fire tiny bits of stuff at other bits of stuff to see if they could create miniscule nuclear explosions.

"Seems perfectly reasonable to me!" I hear you all shout. And you'd be right, and so would they if they'd stopped there. But they didn't... Like every frizzy haired mad scientist in every black & white monster movie that they were trying to disprove. They found themselves drunk with power and wanted to smash smaller things together, faster and faster.

So they built a circular gun (But, as they were trying not to scare people, they called it a 'Proton Synchrotron') that they used to accelerate the tiny specks of stuff to velocities approaching the speed of light before crashing them into each other (But after they'd closed their eyes, put their fingers in their ears and held their breath)

They had a huge amount of fun with this and it led to the creation of many, many things that you probably won't have heard of and one quite big thing that you will have - The World-Wide Web came directly out of research done by CERN. Well, actually it came out of laziness, all these hotshot scientists really couldn't be bothered walking from one lab to another, so they invented a way of sending each other pictures of cats without leaving the comfort of their own computers.

Over time, these round guns got bigger, from the 25 meter diameter of the original Proton Synchrotron, they expanded to 2,000 meters and called that one the 'Super' Proton Synchrotron, hoping that no-one would notice. Then, in 1998, some thirty years or so after a chap in a bar in Geneva had said 'Wouldn't it be cool if...' The guys at CERN jumped the shark completely and made a circular gun that was 8,000 meters in diameter. And because the general public knew about what they were doing they didn't bother calling it anything 'user-friendly' like The Magic Bunny-hole or Santa's Secret Toy Chute.

They just went ahead and had signs made up that said: 'LARGE HADRON COLLIDER' Which was what George Lucas wanted to call the Death-Star superlaser, but he thought it might be too scarey for the general public. Here's a map, courtesy of Wikipedia, that shows where CERN is, and where the SPS and LHC are.

The smaller ring is the SPS, the scarily huge one is the LHC

So, what's inside one of these guns? - We'll use the LHC as an example.  Effectively it's two 27Km long by 6cm diameter pipes, surrounded by immensely strong magnets.  that accelerate a beam of teeny-tiny particles to frankly unthinkable speeds before smashing them into another teeny-tiny particle that hasn't done anything wrong and has no idea about what's about to happen to it.

OK, I might be simplifying it just a little bit.  Maybe we need to do a little bit of experimenting for ourselves so that we can appreciate the scale.  Obviously, we can't use real particles for our version of the experiment, you'll never find a pair of tweezers small enough to handle them in your first-aid kit. So, let's scale things up a bit... Let's swap our particle for something about the size of a teaspoon.  

Let's say... Erm... An actual teaspoon?

-oOo-

For this experiment you will need:

Two teaspons
A fairly long piece of string
Glue
A Lockheed SR-71 spyplane or similar, modified to fly somewhat faster than usual
A blindfold

1. Take one of your teaspoons and tie it to the middle of the piece of string.
2. Tie one end of the string to something fairly solid.
3. Tie the other end of the string to something else, that is both fairly solid and 1,000 parsecs (or 17,000 TRILLION miles) away.
4. Using the glue, affix the other spoon to the nose of the SR-71.
5. Fly far enough away from the string so that you can't see the spoon.
6. Turn around to face the string and put on your blindfold.
7. Accelerate to 185,999.9999999 Miles Per Second.
8. Try to bang the two spoons together.

If you hear a very quiet *ting* noise and then experience a catastrophic explosion, then well done, you have just achieved 'Particle Physics'

If however, you do not hear a quiet *ting*, keep trying until you do - You are allowed 600 million tries every second (That's how many goes the boys & girls at CERN give themselves... Can't see what all the fuss is about myself, seems like you couldn't miss with that many chances)

It's been argued that to completely re-create the experiment, the teaspoons should be rotating pretty rapidly, but I'm not so sure... Perhaps I should ask the guys at CERN?

I was a teenage Rockstar!

Thinking about it - That title might be a smidge misleading. The story actually takes place in, I think, 1991 - So I was about 23.

But I was (and still am, to a greater or lesser extent) tremendously immature.

Long-time readers will have no problem picturing the scene:  Myself and the illustrious Scots Mick were sat in the garden at my house, drinking beer, watching the grass move around as the dog tried, unsuccessfully, to find her way back to the house and sniggering at the next door neigbour as she mowed her lawn.  Why were we sniggering? That's a good question, which could be answered by any of the young ladies who had the pleasure of becoming intimately aquainted with me during the nineties, up to and including the current Mrs Dandy.

You see, I enjoyed the party lifestyle that came with having more money than I had responsibility.  Occasionally, due to my hedonistic, playboy lifestyle. Minor things often fell by the wayside, things like general house and garden maintenance, removal of non-working/incomplete vehicles from the driveway and hoovering.

Long-Story-Short, I happily lived like a pig.  In fact, Mrs Dandy still tells the story of her first trip to Dandy Towers, where you couldn't see my dining table, because it was, and I quote, "covered in a mountain of random crap, with a crash-helmet balanced on the top."

Here's a picture of me, at about that time, that goes some way to explain why I was still beating Mimsy off with a stick, despite living in my own filth... I was just so gorram pretty!

That's me in the leather jeans - The slightly furrier one is 'Veggie Saff''

Anywho, back to the sniggering... We'd had an 'altercation' with the next door neighbours some days previously.  The 'Husband' had asked us if there was any way we could just tidy up a bit as weeds from my garden we taking root in his, and the front looked a bit untidy, what with all the rust and oil and spray-paint overspray and everything... Which I thought was perfectly reasonable.  I'd just engaged the neck muscles that you normally use for nodding when his wife came out, barged past him, all hairnets and raised rolling pin and added, "It's like living next door to bloody Gypsies!"

"Well," I thought to myself, "That's a bit racist!"

So, after assuring him that I'd do my best, and smiling sweetly at her, I retired to the house, got a large sheet of cardboard and my best finger paints and made a sign that I then stuck in the front window which read:

LUCKY WHITE HEATHER

AND PEGS FOR SALE!

PLEASE APPLY WITHIN

I found it significantly funnier than she did (And her husband thought it was fairly funny too... I think.)

So, back to the story, garden, sun, beer, giggling like idiots.  SMick turns to me and says, "You know what we need?"

Now, I panicked, because I thought he was going to say we were out of beer.  A quick check revealed a still half full crate, so I replied, "No, what do we need?'

He scanned the garden majestically, like Simba, off of the Lion King and said, in that voice that people use for going into dream sequences, "We need... A swimming pool."

Now this struck me as the bestest idea that anyone had ever had, ever.

Luckily, we knew people who had access to diggers, people who could plumb, and people who could tile.  We researched pools and their innermost workings, heating, planning permission and all sorts of things. even got a leaflet from our local builders' warehouse called something like 'So, you're building a pool?'

It explained in detail what a completely ridiculous undertaking it was, there are surveys that need doing, all sorts of rules about how far away it has to be from someone else's land and special insurance and subsidence issues to concider and everything.  But, every time we hit a snag, we just thought about young ladies in bikinis plunging in and out of our rear entertainment area.

One of the things it did suggest that you do before you got too excited about the whole thing was to contact your local services companies (Gas, Water, Electricity, Phone, etc.) and make sure that there weren't any buried cables / pipes where you wanted to dig a big hole.

SMick grabbed the Yellow Pages and I got a notepad and the phone - One by one, he would find the 'Customer Enquiries' number and I would call it.  The calls were all pretty much of a muchness:

• I'd explain that we were thinking of putting in a pool. 
• The person on the end of the phone would say that they wished thay could afford a pool.
• I'd say that they could come and have a go if we ever got it finished.
• There'd be some half-hearted laughter.
• I'd say that I needed to check that there wasn't anything of theirs that we might accidentally dig up.
• Then they'd either put me through to someone who had the records, or say that they were going to send someone out to check.
• Then SMick would call out the next number, he didn't bother saying who it was of course, but the person who picked up the phone usually said "Hello British Gas." or, "Good Morning, Severn-Trent Water."

So, imagine my confusion when a nice lady just answered the phone with "Hello?"

I looked at SMick, who had slammed the phone directory closed and just shrugged at me. I shook my head and launched into my spiel.

"Oh, Hi! Erm... I'm thinking of putting a swimming pool into my back garden and just thought I'd check that there's nothing of yours buried in my garden that I might accidentally dig up.  Would you be able to tell me over the phone, or would you have to send someone out?"

There was a pause from the other end of the phone, then she said, "You're asking me if there's anything of ours buried in your garden?"

"Yeah, wouldn't want to get a shock if I accidentally dug it up."

"No, I suppose not.  Who do you think you've called?'

"Erm..." I looked at SMick again, his face had gone a little red and he was trying not to laugh. He just shook his head and turned his back on me. I picked a name at random, assuming that he'd just given me the same number twice, 'British Telecom?'

"No, not exactly.  This is the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, is this a wrong number, or should I put you through to the mortuary just in case?'

I apologised and slammed the phone down, then picked it up again and threw it at SMick, which, on the whole would have been a lot more effective if it had been a cordless phone.

We never did dig that pool... And I can imagine that not many of you are in the least bit surprised.

I didn't help in the slightest... Well, not much anyway.

If you were reading the Blog this time last year, you may have read a post about a project that the MicroDandy had to do for school, all about Britain in the Second World War.

The post was pretty much a list of all the stories that my Dad told us that weren't completely 'appropriate' for a seven year old's school project.  I thought at least a couple of you would be interested in reading what actually did make it into the project.

Or not...

Either way...

Here it is.

-oOo-

My Grandad in the RAF

In 1947 my Grandad Fred, who was 18 years old and training to be an electrician was conscripted into the Royal Air Force.

This meant that he had to leave his job and travel to RAF Innsworth in Gloucestershire to receive Basic Training in being a member of the armed forces.

After eight weeks of training where he learned, amongst other things, how to fire different types of gun and throw hand grenades.  He was one of four men in his group chosen to go to Northern Europe.

He sailed from Harwich to The Hook of Holland on the HMT SS Vienna (Picture below).

He then travelled, by train, up through Holland and Germany, to Hamburg and then to Flensburg, the most northern town in Germany and its Capital at the end of the Second World War, to complete his aircrew training, which meant that he was qualified to be a member of the crew of an aeroplane.

After completing his training he was made a Sergeant (Signals) and assigned to a part of the RAF called Headquarters 46 Group - Transport Command.

Signaller Brevet (Badge)

Sergeant's Stripes (or 'Tapes')

During the next four years he crewed transport aircraft all over the world, visiting places such as Cyprus, Hong Kong, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia and Malta.

One of the largest operations that he took part in was the Berlin Airlift.  Between 1948 and 1949 the Russian army blockaded the city of Berlin in Germany.  This meant that food and fuel could not get in to the people there. So the RAF and the United States Air Force used hundreds of aeroplanes to deliver thousands of tons of supplies every day.

At the busiest times, around 1,500 aeroplanes were landing every day in Berlin, that’s one every minute! The pilots of these aeroplanes had a very difficult job, flying at 150 Miles per Hour, sometimes only 150 meters apart.  Sometimes an aeroplane would crash onto the runway, if this happened it had to be pushed out of the way very quickly by a bulldozer so that the next one could land.

My Grandad remembers that there were times he had to work for 36 hours in a row flying in Avro Yorks and Douglas Dakotas loaded with Coal, Oil, Food and Mail to make sure that the supplies got delivered in time.  Sometimes, on the return trip, his aeroplane was loaded with some of the 11,000 children who were being evacuated out of Berlin to live with families in the West.

Whilst stationed at RAF Jurby on the Isle of Man he was one of the crew that flew training aircraft that were used to train new Navigators, these are the people who tell the Pilot where the aeroplane is and how to get to where he needs to go.

And one of his jobs when stationed at RAF Wunstorf  in Germany was to help fly Mosquito Fighter/Bombers back to RAF Broughton in Wales.  These Mosquitoes had been sold to the Post Office (now Royal Mail) and had been converted to carry mail.

I am really proud of my Grandad and the things he did in the RAF.

-oOo-

On the next few pages are some facts about the aeroplanes that my Grandad flew in and what he thought about them.

Handley Page HP67 Hastings

The HP67 Hastings was a transport aircraft used by the RAF between 1948 and 1977.

At the time it was introduced, it was the largest transport aircraft designed specifically for the RAF.

Its first and most famous job was to transport coal and other cargo into Berlin in Germany during the Berlin Airlift.


My Grandad Says:

‘The lights that told you whether the wheels were down properly when you were landing often didn’t come on… Usually because the bulb had popped, we used to keep a bag of spare bulbs, just in case’

-oOo-

Avro Type 685 York C1

The Avro York was a transport aircraft used by the RAF between 1944 and 1964.

The York was often kitted out as the personal aircraft of VIPs

Famous York included:

‘Ascalon’ The personal aircraft and flying conference room of Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain.

‘Endeavour’ belonging to HRH The Duke of Gloucester.

‘MW102’ Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Viceroy of India had his York specially painted light, duck egg green to try and keep it cool in the Indian sun.


My Grandad Says:

‘Once, when we were landing a York at an airfield in Germany, one of the tyres burst… It was pretty scary!’

-oOo-

Douglas C47 Skytrain (Dakota)

The C47 was called the Dakota by the RAF.  It got its name from the acronym "DACoTA" for Douglas Aircraft Company Transport Aircraft.

It was used by over 100 Air Forces all around the world including the RAF and the German Luftwaffe at the same time!

The Dakota first flew in 1941, but the RAF still uses the Dakota now, 70 years later, as a training aircraft for the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.


My Grandad Says:

‘The Dakota was really noisy and uncomfortable, there was a big pipe around the doorway of the cockpit that carried air to the engines, and it made some very strange noises!’

-oOo-

Airspeed AS10 Oxford

The Oxford was mainly used for training aircrew (Bombardiers, Gunners, Navigators and Wireless and Camera Operators).  It was also used as an Air Ambulance.

They were first produced in 1937 and more than 8,500 were made.

On the 5th January 1941, the famous aviatrix Amy Johnson disappeared in an Oxford, never to be seen again!


My Grandad Says:

‘We used the Oxfords as flying taxis.  If someone was stuck at an airbase and needed to be somewhere else quickly, they’d usually go in an Oxford’

-oOo-

Avro Anson

The Anson was mostly used as a training aircraft by the RAF between 1936 and 1968.

In June 1940, a flight of three Coastal Command Anson were attacked by nine Messerschmitt Bf 109s of the German Luftwaffe.  The Anson shot down two and damaged a third before the dogfight ended with no British losses.

In September 1940, two training Anson of the Royal Australian Air Force collided in mid-air and got stuck together.  The two aircraft landed safely, still stuck together!


My Grandad Says:

‘If I could own any of the aeroplanes that I used to fly in, it would be an Anson’

-oOo-

de Havilland DH98 Mosquito

The Mosquito was a Fast Fighter/Bomber made almost completely of wood!

The engines used in the Mosquito were designed in Derby by Rolls-Royce.

It could fly at over 400 Miles per Hour!


My Grandad Says:

‘When we were flying Mosquitos back to Britain over the English Channel we would sometimes fly really low over the waves and try to scare the captains of fishing boats, but don’t tell anybody!’

-oOo-

All the MicroDandy's own work... Gawd's honest truth.  I'm not one of those parents that does their kids' homework for them so as they look more impressive.

Cross my heart, hope to... to... Erm, suddenly I don't feel so good...

*Expires theatrically, stage left*

And then I killed Bobby Davro

Well, I hope you all had a happy Easter. And I hope it was happy for the right reasons, not just because you were whizzing your mammary glands off due to having eaten the GNP of Matabeleland in chocolate.

I had a pretty quiet long weekend; I ate merely a reasonable amount of chocolate, drank some wine and played an awful lot of Mass Effect. (an awful, awful, lot of Mass Effect if the snorts of loneliness coming from the memsahib were anything to go by.)

But that's not what we're here to talk about is it? You want to know why I'm wildly claiming to have killed a popular 80's comedian and impressionist who happens to have been born Robert Christopher Nankeville and is both the son of an Olympian and is an all 'round good guy (or so I've heard, I mean, I've never met him or anything - But he looks the sort, always smiling, not afraid to cross-dress for comedy purposes - You know what I mean.)

And there's something that you need to know before I continue - I don't much care for fairground rides - It's not that I'm easily scared by loud noises or quick changes of direction or anything... Honestly, it's because... Ah... It's just... Well... You see... Some of those noises really are rather loud though aren't they?

-oOo-

Just before the holidays, Mrs Dandy suggested that we do something nice for the children whilst I was away from work.  I reminded her that I had just spent literally tens of fine, English pounds on less than two pounds worth of chocolate for them (And that was EACH, I'll have you know, not in total!) But I was informed that this was insufficient and that we would be 'Going somewhere' to have 'Fun' Then I was grabbed, unceremoniously by the collar, lifted bodily from the floor and reminded, more forcefully that I thought wholly necessary, that I would be having 'Fun' even if it killed me.  I looked down at the cherubic face of the Mini-Dandy as she bent her younger sibling's fingers back almost to his wrists until he sobbingly cried 'Peanuts!' and agreed, 'Yes Dear, let us do something nice for our delightful children.'

So, Good Friday came and we stuffed our young into the Yew-panelled steerage compartment of the MkII Dandymobile, Stoked the gargantuan engine into life, and set sail for the heart of the Sun (or Drayton Manor Park and Zoo as I understand the hoi-palloi call it.)  Our plan was to arrive at our destination as it opened, and therefore 'beat the rush'.  Luckily, only twenty or so thousand people had had exactly the same idea.  We left our vehicle in a grassy field that was masquerading as a car-park, and instructed Heckmondswycke, our faithful native bearer, to guard her with his life. 

We then joined the queue for entry and wondered at the many wonderful ways that one could pay to enter the Pleasureopolis itself. I was shocked to find that, if we had merely 'turned up' at our destination, it would have cost us £141 ($232) to get in. The irony of this being more than I had recently sold the MKI Dandymobile for was not entirely lost on me.  Luckily, along with almost everyone in the queue it seemed, I was in possession of a 'BOGOF' voucher which cleanly cut the price in half.

As we entered the garden of Earthly delights, we were informed that 'The rides didn't actually open until 10:30.'  And as we had 45 minutes to kill, we decided to split up, the girls went to go and queue for an hour for a 30 second ride on a frankly flimsy looking, ramshackle collection of ironwork.  Whilst we boys decided to repair to the amusement arcade to, as my father once described it, 'Throw good money after bad.' However, on the way to the Perfidious Pachinko Palace we were accosted by a pretty young lady holding a basketball, 

"Psst!" She Pssted, and beckoned us over, "You look like someone who'd be good at this. One basket wins any prize." Then she looked at the Micro-Dandy, "You'd like your Dad to win you one of these wouldn't you?"  

My son stepped back to look at my athletic physique, struggling to be contained by my XXL Darth Vader T-Shirt and rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'd love my Dad to be able to do that.' He replied, then he shrugged, as if to say 'But whaddya gonna do?'

"Well, I tell you what, it's normally £3 for one shot or £5 for three. But we've got a special on today where, if you give me a fiver you can play until you win." She winked conspiratorially as if to say 'No, it's not just so that other punters see you carrying a prize around and think that it's possible for a normal, overweight, human being to win one and then have a go themselves.'

Needless to say, I passed over the required fee and stood there for a good fifteen minutes, abortively bouncing my balls off her rim until, against all of the assembled laws of physics, my spherical plaything entered her waiting aperture with a rubbery 'Thunnnggg'. 

"OK," she breathed in relief, wiping the sheen of sweat from her brow, "What prize would you like?"

My son pointed at one prize, which she inspected. "Ah, it looks like the stitching's going on that one."

He pointed at another. "I can't actually reach that one, sorry." She stretched up to show that she was a good foot too short. 'How about this one?' She hefted a large, red, fluffy bean-bag at him.  Which he happily accepted as tribute and then gave to me... And then I had the honour of carrying it around the park, for the next six hours, along with the two ducks (One with, and one without a humorous pink mohawk) and a camel with a pink hump and a shock of pale-blue hair.  

The rest of the day passed in a similar fashion, whereby the girls would spend a vast proportion of their time queueing to feel sick, queueing to get wet or queueing to close their eyes as noisy things happened around them whilst we boys had a ride on a train and visited the arcade, or giftshop, or hook-a-duck emporium over and over again.  There was a break for lunch at 'The Grill', which was very nice. And in the afternoon the jollity continued, up until the point where the MiniDandy convinced her brother to go on the Pirate Ship.

I have had emails from my friends in America to say that they could hear him screaming, at one point he reached the frequency required to loosen the bolts that held the ride together, flecks of paint and surface rust fell to the ground like the fallout from an exploding scrapyard - Obviously we were asked to leave, which we did.

All in all, it was a good day, apart from the life-time ban from all UK-based theme parks that is.  My son even won enough tickets in the amusement arcade to purchase a radio-controlled car for himself, which is absolutely splendid for tormenting the dog with.

Oh Bugger!

I missed out the Bobby Davro bit didn't I?

The MiniDandy and myself were sat outside some water-based Pirate ride (which was billed as an 'Experience' and therefore interested me not one little bit.) waiting for the other members of our party when suddenly, from out of nowhere, a flying caterpillar hoved into view.  Well, I say flying, it was actually dropping from the tree above us on a silk line.  It was duly caught and forced to race across various parts of my anatomy by my dear daughter which was about as entertaining as it sounds.  My repeated attempts to put it back into the undergrowth all failed until I felt a tickle on the back of my neck. I reached around, expecting to find another, similar creature, but instead found a tiny spider. 

"I wonder if they'll fight?" asked my somewhat bloodthirsty daughter, moving the mini-beasts closer to each other.

"No! He might eat Bobby Davro!"

She looked at me as if I had just suffered a major psychotic episode and said, "What?"

"Bobby Davro?' I held up the small caterpillar, "I panicked, it was the first name that I thought of."

She shook her head and put the spider in my other hand.  I lowered both of my hands, until first the spider and then the caterpillar disappeared into the nearby shrubbery.

"The spider will hunt down Bobby Davro and eat him you know, he's got his scent now.' She grinned.

"Stop it..."

"And it's all your fault..." At this point she raised her voice so that the surrounding families and their children could hear and called, "Dad! You killed Bobby Davro!"

One wonders if everyone's family days out are like this?