| SEVEN
- FLYING
Flying
aeroplanes and getting up to play on a stage have one thing in common:
Every time is like the first time! Oh you might have done it a thousand
times before, but if ever you get to the point where you feel blasé
about it, that's the time it will come and show you that you're just a
beginner.
They both seem to be endeavours where an inordinate amount of time is
spent hanging around in a torpor of boredom waiting for something to
happen. Then, when something finally does happen, you find yourself
catapulted into the opposite extreme, an all too brief slice of time
spent working at 110% in a whirlwind of intense nervous activity.
But then afterwards… Ah! When the wheels touch down; when you step off
a platform back onto mundane reality, back into the benevolent service
of gravity. That's when you know why you do it.
The fact is both flying and getting up in front of people is one part
ordeal and two parts blessing and privilege. Both never cease to be a
challenge to me.
Aerobatics
Kevin was a fellow musician who used to frequent the 'Rum Runner'
night-club where I played with Magnum. No sooner had I got my Private
Pilot's Licence in 1974 than I began canvassing pals who set foot in the
club with the question: 'Would you like to go flying with me?'
Kevin jumped at the idea and was immediately hooked by it. We spent a
lot of time flying around together and often, when we were safely aloft,
I would show him how to do various things. Really it was the result of
flying with Kevin that first invoked in me the astral notion that one
day, maybe I could teach people how to fly.
Before very long, Kevin's interest in flying had propelled him to take
up a course of training himself. He was a star pupil, going solo after
just four hours of instruction. It was an all-time record for the flying
club at Birmingham. Apart from his natural aptitude, he always
accredited this to the time he spent being unofficially coached by me.
But as soon as he completed his training and got his own licence, his
love for flying took off in a big way. Kevin quickly zoomed past me in
the number of flying hours and qualifications he amassed: Before long he
had obtained an instructors rating, then an Instrument rating, then a
Commercial Licence, then he sold his stationery business and purchased a
flying club at Birmingham. One day he suggested to me that we go up
together in the aerobatic Cessna he had just acquired for his flying
club, so that he could show me the aerobatics he'd just learned.
We climbed into the little machine. The cockpit was distinguished from
the non-aerobatic variety by an industrial array of heavy-duty seat
straps replete with military-looking buckles. Being strapped in was an
experience in confinement which brought to mind being a guest of the
electric chair.
We got airborne and aimed ourselves into the 'FIR' - the Flight
Information Region - safely away from Birmingham's busy airspace. Kevin
immediately set about imparting to me some of the tricks he had learned.
It turned into as much a lesson in English as one in aeronautics:
'I'll talk through a barrel roll' he said, and began diving the aircraft
while giving a running commentary to explain what he was doing:
'Now I pull back and raise the nose fifteen degrees. Now check…' (I
thought I wonder what 'check' means - it must mean check the nose is
where it should be before the next bit) 'Now full aileron and some
rudder'
The sky quickly rotated in unison with my stomach and we were thrown
this side and that in the little cockpit before finally everything went
back right-side up, blue sky up above, brown earth below.
'Right, now you have a go!'
Kevin talked me through as I took over the controls:
'Dive the aircraft. That's right, now pull back, raise the nose fifteen
degrees, now check!' (There he goes again with that 'check' thing - I
thought - ah well, the nose is where it should be..)
'Now full aileron and some rudder' he intoned over the gale of wind
noise. The sky began to rotate in an entirely novel fashion as we both
gazed out of the window, buffeting against each other.
'What are you doing?' he yelled as we found ourselves looking down at
the blue sky - and up at the brown earth. We were hanging by our straps,
upside down, as the aircraft slowly ran out of energy. It tottered there
for a couple of seconds while the two of us pushed and pulled the
controls like bumbling idiots in a Hollywood comedy, all the while
shouting at each other. Finally, the little machine collapsed into a
corkscrew dive, performing what must have been an un-catalogued
manoeuvre, before eventually coming to a state of equilibrium right-side
up.
'You didn't check!' said Kevin accusingly, while we both giggled
nervously at the clumsy arc we had just described through the sky.
'Well, what exactly do you mean by CHECK?' I shot back.
'It means you pull back and then check! - STOP pulling back!'
'Oh' I said, duly corrected, and we both laughed and jibed at each other
with insults and blame for the incompetence of the whole spectacle.
Once the significance of the word 'check' had been duly etched on the
tablets, Kevin continued on with his display of aerobatic prowess. He
seemed to enjoy making all the manoeuvres as fierce as possible,
something which I have never cared for. The whole exercise left me with
no longing to take up aerobatics myself.
Hector
As Richard Bach wrote: 'You always teach best what you most need to
learn.'
I found I had a flair for teaching people to fly. Really it was only
because my appetite for learning it myself was so ravenous. And so
eventually I took the course of training to become a flight instructor.
Like a motorists who must sport 'L' plates on their car, a flying
instructor in England must first work in reduced capacity as an
'Assistant Instructor.' This meant being under the supervision of a more
qualified person, a device that meant you could not, for example, send a
student for first solo.
In 1979 I spent the summer at Humberside Airport, learning how to be an
assistant instructor.
'We can give you guidance as to how to instruct' the man had said, 'but
we can't show you how to teach. Your students will do that!'
('What a cop-out' I thought, 'that's exactly what I'm paying you all
this money for!' )
But how true it was.
I was later to discover for myself that students do indeed show you how
to teach - and how not to teach - as indeed I, as a bungling pupil, had
shown Kevin that day.
But I wanted to tell you about Hector…
Hector was a wizened old man of about 80 years of age, a legend in the
British flying fraternity. When I first met him at East Midlands Airport
in October 1979, he was stood gazing out of a window, a cigarette
permanently wedded to the fingers of one hand, a cup of tea occupying
the other.
I introduced myself - Yes I was the bloke booked in to be tested for the
issue of an Assistant Flying Instructors Rating, I proudly confirmed.
He looked back out of the window and up at the sky.
'Hmmm. It's a nice day for aerobatics David' he said with his thin shaky
voice, 'would you like to do some aerobatics?' His voice sounded for all
the world like a Spike Milligan impression.
(Aerobatics - Ugh! The thought of hanging upside down by the straps
again passed before me…)
'Er, no thanks' I said cowardly.
'Oh' said Hector, the friendly smile fading from his face.
The atmosphere changed as suddenly and surely as if my words had caused
the sun to go behind a cloud.
'Right' he said coldly, 'well, off you go, check the plane over please
and I'll be out in five minutes.'
Soon Hector and I were ensconced in the little Cessna and he was giving
me a list of things he wanted me to do. What had before been the squeaky
little membrane of an inoffensive old man had suddenly gathered all the
fearsome gravity of a Richard Burton oration…. Hector had turned into
a monster.
He remained so for he duration of the test, even slapping my hand after
we had landed and I reached to retract the flaps: 'Don't EVER let a
student see you do that - one day it will be the undercarriage lever!'
he roared scoldingly.
I thought: 'That's it! My first instructor's test and I've failed!'
'Pull off here' snarled Hector pointing to a taxiway.
The aircraft came to rest and I began running through the after-landing
drills, trembling inside.
'Yes, well that's all right David,' he said, his voice singing sweetly -
the change took me by surprise. It had gone back to the Spike Milligan
impression again.
'What - you mean I've passed?' I asked incredulously.
'Yes, of course David. No problem. Park the aircraft over there please,
and we'll go and have a chat, get a cup of tea and write up the forms.'
The
next time I arrived for the instructor's test with Hector it was like a
Déjà vu experience:
He was stood by the same window, clutching the same omnipresent cup of
tea and cigarette. He gazed up at the sky and said exactly the same
thing:
'Nice day for aerobatics David. Would you like to do some aerobatics
today?'
'Yes please' I said, and the spell was broken. The sun carried on
shining and Hector beamed back at me.
'Shall I go and check the plane over?' I asked.
'No, that's okay' he said, stubbing out his cigarette, 'we'll do it
together'
Hector was a different man.
I sat watching the world turn around like I was watching TV. There was
hardly any 'g' loading - the thing that makes your stomach reposition
itself to somewhere just under your chin - it was the exact opposite of
the ungainly fairground ride that Kevin and I had before. Of course,
Hector was a past master at the art of aerobatics and Kevin, by
comparison, had been but a beginner.
I got to do several annual renewal tests with Hector and got used to the
drill: If he asked to do aerobatics I always said 'Yes'.
One time while we were airborne on a test, he asked me if I had ever
heard the 'Blue Danube' played on the Stall Warner. Now the Blue Danube
is of course, a Strauss waltz, and the stall Warner - well, that is a
device fitted to the airplane that blares out in an ungraceful 'honk'
when the aircraft approaches the stall.
'Er, no I don't believe I have ever heard that played on the stall
Warner Hector' I said bemused, wondering what on earth was coming next.
'I have control' he said, and then began humming the first bit of the
Blue Danube tune: 'Da da di da da' - and then suddenly, he pulled back
so quickly and violently on the controls that the stall Warner followed
on in perfect timing with 'Honk-honk, Honk-honk.'
After the flying there was the oral test where he would seek to
discover the extent of a student's knowledge base, always with the
cleverest of questions, couched in his playful and wacky way:
'If you and I were in jail for a long time David, I dare say we would
get to talk about flying quite a lot - you know to pass the time away -
Maybe one day I might be discussing with you why it is that maximum
control deflection can be made at a higher speed in a heavily laden
aeroplane than in the same aeroplane when it is lightly loaded. It's
strange isn't it? Would you be able to tell me why that is David?'
That is how Hector would eke out of you the bounds of your aviation
wisdom. He sometimes asked for hard facts, but more often asked the sort
of question that betrayed your intuition, or lack of it, for aeroplanes
and the atmosphere they inhabited.
Yes Hector Taylor was a wonderful old-timer of the Spitfire vintage.
Like every instructor I have ever flown with, I always learned a lot
from him.
First solo
'Okay off you go. One circuit only please. Just do everything the same
as you've been doing and er… don't forget …' there is the sudden
check list of things which looms and falls like an avalanche, usually
ending with..'and I'll be watching you' - although not spoken remotely
like a threat and certainly not with any tone of concern; just the
platitude of mom shoving her baby on stage with her angel costume pinned
just so and her fairy wand stood ready to dance in time to the script of
ten words that she has never yet quite spoken in the right order, but
never mind, she has in fact spoken them. So darling off you go, once
around the crib please, remember your lines and try not to bump into
Gabriel and mommy will be right here and you're gonna do just great, and
never let it be alluded to that mommy will be beside herself in
mortified dread until you come back and then she will be rendered
perfect in a state of bottomless joy if, or should I say when, you
return victorious from the footlights with or without honour, just with
your costume and smile intact…..
The slipstream from the prop tugs at the door bidding you to close it
and buzz off, and you turn to do just that but then an afterthought
commands that you dive back inside the little cockpit:
'Oh and I've left my map here on the seat - No, of course you don't need
it but it is a legal requirement that you carry a map.' That's right,
forget the sick joke about it being repatriated in an uncharred
condition, or the one about its usefulness in finding the way back from
the Irish Sea.
'Do you really think I am ready?'
'Of course you are. You'll be fine.'
Slam.
The door closes and you walk away in a royal stride of confidence while
inside you are shrivelling around the knot that has invaded the place
where your stomach is usually found. You wonder how it is you can dare
to make such bold predictions - 'you will be fine' - and you think of
all the little items you have forgotten to mention and all the other
items you have rammed home with far too much verbal and far too little
example and so in all probability, to zero avail.
But life is a wonderful thing. After all, life is a first solo.
The wheels leave the ground and you are committed to sit in your machine
until you and it have fumbled around that invisible racetrack and then,
with a little help and a maybe pep talk from you, aimed back down the
gulley of beckoning white lines and onto that enormous welcoming pillow
of black tarmac with big white numbers and either side, grass and
gravity and mom with a bar of chocolate.
A first solo is always preceded by the instructor's radio call asking
the tower :'Can you accept a first solo?' which really is a coded way of
enquiring if the fire department is on station and ready to ride their
greasy pole or whatever else they need to slither down in order to get
the foam squirting in short order. It is a legal requirement - that the
fire team are ready to go - but of course you don't let on anything
about that. You try to say it quick so that the student maybe misses it,
but then any student alert enough to drive himself around the sky should
be compos mentis enough to spot the strange radio terminology wafting
past. I remember hearing my instructor say it as we taxied around
Birmingham Airport that autumn day in 1973 - 'Can you accept first
solo?' - and the bolt of adrenalin followed almost immediately by the
spanner of denial - no I hadn't heard him right, I must have imagined
it.
For who wants to hear such a thing before its appointed time?
It was in 1993 that I completed the short course to upgrade from
Assistant to Full Instructor, a nomenclature that carried the dubious
privilege of being able to send students on their first solo.
A scan through my log book reveals that since then I have sent about
forty people first solo. I am pleased to report that all have returned
with their costumes intact. But always it is an ordeal of special
magnitude for the instructor as well as it is, of course, for the
student.
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Vulcanology
Outside the flying training club where I work at Stratford there is an
aeroplane parked up, slowly trying to corrode away. It is no ordinary
aeroplane, not even the same shape that most aeroplanes are - it has no
tail plane but instead one gigantic delta-shaped wing. It sits there,
year in and year out, grandiose and resplendent in it's blue and grey
camouflage, like a sentinel guarding the club, the airport, the empire!
(for sure it doesn't know the empire has faded and equally for sure no
one has the heart to whisper such a blasphemy within it's earshot).
It is a 'Vulcan' bomber and it is big. It's massive wing swallows up
four engines of a type that became the basis for powering Concorde, and
the whole delta shape of the Vulcan was a precursor to the supersonic
design. The difference is the vintage - whereas Concorde first appeared
in 1969, the Vulcan is almost twenty years it's senior, first flying in
1950.
But there are dark things about this behemoth - the darkest being that
it was designed to atom-bomb Russia. And it's name - 'Vulcan' - is also
suspicious, belonging to no English town, city or settlement that I know
of. Not only is it not named after a town, it is also not named after
Lieutenant Spock, as much as this knowledge will devastate the Trekkies
amongst us.
On
the ground it is a giant camouflaged gazebo which I often walk under
between training details, gazing up at it's cavernous bomb bay, lost in
a daydream where I see it loaded up with nuclear nasties, it's engines
revving away, while inside five freshly shaved young men talk numbers to
each other in their professional clipped calm as they go off on their
mission to end the world.
I climb inside it. In the cramped compartment, over to one side, is a
metal box with 'Handle Like Eggs' stencilled on it. I ponder what manner
of foul genie lay stowed in that container, waiting for the coded call
to set it free. Up in the cockpit, I squat in one of the two ejector
seats (the other three guys down below had to jump out of the bottom). A
Red painted handle glares at me, daring me to pull it - a note suggests
that the firing pins have been removed, but have they?? Around the
windows, a thick nylon curtain lies coiled, ready to pull down when the
bomb is dropped, so that you will be preserved from the blinding flash
and able to see where you are going. Able to use your eyes to fly back
home and see for yourself the black lifeless ruin it has surely become.
The
Vulcan was the product of the Avro company but I have it on the
authority of the Encyclopaedia Maximus Galactica that ever since the
invention of the catapult, all Avro company bombers have been named
after an English city or town (we all remember the 'Lancaster', even if
we've never heard of the 'Manchester' or the 'Lincoln'). The strange
fact is, my extensive library of maps does not show a place called
Vulcan anywhere in Great Britain.
But there must be one somewhere, because there is definitely an Avro
Vulcan bomber parked outside our flying club. There must be a place
called Vulcan, probably even a county called Vulcanshire. There must be
citizens called Vulcans - or Vulcs for short, and the thing is, the more
I ponder this machine, the more I think I am one of them!
For I belong in that place where memories live, where the past refuses
to be pronounced dead, where the dead refuse to be buried, a place
colonized by those among us who are stricken with the malady called
'nostalgia'. And it's not just me….
Looking
out from the clubhouse, I constantly notice a curious thing: The
Vulcan's final trip to the scrap heap is forever being put back by a
dads-army posse of unsung heroes. These 'Vulcs' (they must be Vulcs),
are Royal Air Force veterans who spend their own free time lovingly
attending to the many demands of this venerable machine. After striking
up conversations with the Vulcs I have become privy to many interesting
snippets of information. 'Our' Vulcan is one of the last ones made - a
'B2' (that means bomber mark 2). I can reveal that a mark two is
distinguished from a mark one by an extended tail which houses
electronic jamming equipment, and small protrusions under each wing
which betray, like the glint of a concealed dagger, the evidence of
betrayal in high places, for these hide the stubs of pylons where the
Skybolt stand-off missile was to have been attached. The Americans
thoughtlessly went and cancelled Skybolt after Her Majesty's government
had gone and built these planes to carry it!
But thankfully, the Vulcan was never called upon to fulfil its primary
duty, and never dropped anything in anger except a few ineffectual bombs
upon Port Stanley airport in the Falklands, in 1982.
Yes,
unrequited history is built into this aluminium artefact along with all
the substance of drama, glory and heritage, and that is why these men
scurry so tirelessly about it. For one day the glory must finally be
gone, but please, let it not be today.
I understand that! But then, I am a Vulc.
|
|
May
the Fourth be with you
While the British were plotting to send one lone Vulcan Bomber to the
Falklands in 1982, I was busy getting married for the first time.
Pam was a wonderful American lady who I had met near the beginning of
ELO's American tour - she actually picked me up in the most romantic
manner by chasing me around gaming machines in a Las Vegas hotel lobby:
It was 18 September 1981, a few days after the start of the American
tour and ELO had just jetted in from Fort Worth, high on our fame and
good fortune, me higher than most. The lobby of the Aladdin in Las Vegas
was laid out like a supermarket, with aisles crammed full of one-arm
bandits. I'd never seen anything like it - it was a teeming bazaar of
beings doing battle with row upon row of burping, winking robots. People
sat on stools transfixed like zombies, pulling handles while staring
intently at the strange hieroglyphics which forever betokened the
promise of the next pull being the last you'll ever need.
As Richard and I negotiated our passage through the crowded aisles
toward the lifts, I noticed a girl playing a machine seemed to be the
same girl I'd seen in the previous aisle. Sure enough as we came to the
last aisle, she re-appeared around the far end and quickly insinuated an
interest in another machine along our line of travel.
That was how I met Pam: 'Didn't I just see you back there?' I said as I
passed her again.
'Who me?' she said with a beaming innocence.
She
was a beautiful black-haired lady of Red Indian descent, a person
without negatives, a free spirit and pillar of strength. She never got
depressed, in fact the word 'depression' was not in Pam's vocabulary. My
Mom loved her, and why not. She was a joy to be around. She was forever
'Yes' while I was forever 'definitely maybe.'
'Will you come to New York?' - Yes.
'Will you come to England?' - Yes.
'Will you marry me?' - Yes.
We were married seven months after we met - in Birmingham, on May the
fourth, 1982.
'May the fourth be with you' joked Richard in homage to the famous 'Star
Wars' line.
There was a short clip on the local TV evening news about it, but the
main news that day brought the word 'Exocet' into our vocabulary - it
was the day the British Cruiser 'Sheffield' was sunk in the South
Atlantic.
At the reception, Jeff Lynne, Jim Cleary, Richard and myself all got up,
togged out in posh suits at the Strathallan Hotel, to play music to the
gathered guests.
My marriage to Pam lasted two years and the reason it failed was my
womanising and depressions. I was a serial womaniser and that, coupled
with my bouts of communication blackouts, defeated our marriage. Nobody
else was to blame but me. I had somehow thought that being in the
ambience of her eternal optimism would heal me of my demons. But it
didn't, it just painted over the cracks for awhile.
Yes
I was a serial womaniser. For a couple of years in the late 70's I lived
with Sheila, who later married Richard Tandy. She was a resourceful and
supportive lady but I cheated on her like I cheated on pretty well every
girl-friend I ever had.
I met my second wife Karen on a blind date in 1984: Phil Hatton and
myself were at a loose end one night (Phil was later to become Jeff
Lynne's personal road manager). He suggested we could maybe meet up with
a couple of girls he had met at the 'Elbow Room' recently. Out came his
'black book' of phone numbers and before long, two girls were knocking
at the door. One was Karen. I never dreamed I would fall in love with
her, but before long, that's what happened.
Then one day, equally unscheduled, she announced to me that she was
leaving to marry her boss!
I was gutted. I pursued her with letters and messages and songs and
finally she came back.
By
the time we got back together I was healed of being a serial womaniser.
Karen was the first lady I never cheated on. We were together for almost
10 years.
Parallel
Universes
The phone rang: 'Mr. Morgan?'
'Yes'
'My name is Kennard and I'm attached to the Patent Office. I am calling
with reference to the application you made on 25th November 1980,
regarding 'wing tips'. Can you confirm it was you who made this
application?'
'Er.. yes.' (I am thinking: 'Oh no, he's going to say stop wasting our
time with your silly ideas.')
'Are you aware Mr. Morgan that under section 22, paragraph 1, of the
patents act, the comptroller can prohibit publication of any application
deemed to be of potential interest to the Ministry of Defence?'
'Er, yes I am' I had vaguely read something to that effect in the
pamphlet.
'Well I am directing that that be so in this case. As of now, you will
not publish or communicate any information relating to this application
to any person who has not been authorised by this office to receive it.
Is that clear?'
'Y-yes.'
He went on to ask me if I had already discussed it with any person or
company and I told him I hadn't.
'Very well then, you will receive an official notification of this
conversation by return of post. Is all that understood?'
'Yes.'
'Thank you, good day!'
(!!)
Mr Kennard's letter arrived the next day. I still keep it as a memento.
The wing tips idea ('Vortex Management Wing Tips' - a lofty name for a
very simple idea) was an extra-musical project I was pursuing at the
time. I had made some rough sketches and sent them off to the patent
office as a provisional application. It was a shock to get the secret
order slapped on it and of course it didn't last long: Some two months
later the letter came saying that the defence of the realm could survive
without my idea after all, and I could now tell the world about it.
The rigmarole of trying to obtain a patent was something I had already
become familiar with a few years previous:
The first 'idea' that I ever went the full course with was something
that came to be called a 'Timescale'. - A printed piece of elastic
fabric held in a plastic container, it looked a bit like a slide rule.
The fabric had a scale of minutes printed on it and could be adjusted
between a range of speeds, the whole arrangement being designed to
correspond to the scale of aeronautical charts.
I had just got my Private Pilots Licence in 1974 and was planning
cross-country trips, measuring the distance along sectors and then doing
a sum on a circular slide rule to figure out how long it would take.
Suddenly the brainwave came to me: What if I could make an expandable
scale able to cope with the different speeds over the ground (according
to whether the wind is for you, or against), then I could just read off
the time by measuring it straight off the map!
'But does a strip of elastic fabric expand equally along its length?' I
thought. I tried it out quickly, it worked. Eureka! I shot around to a
friend's house with a hastily convened mock-up and showed him. He
encouraged me with the look of someone who is not really sure if I
needed hospitalisation or not…
That little invention became like Frankenstein's monster, a creature
that took over my life. As well as running the gauntlet of a patent
application, I ended up forming a limited company to manufacture the
Timescale. By 1978 running the company was taking nearly all of my time.
I sold a lot of those 'Timescales' all over the world, making many
interesting contacts doing it.
Hal Shevers in America was one. He owned the foremost shop for pilot
accessories in America - in Cincinatti, Ohio. He was one of my biggest
customers and when I went to the States with ELO, I called him up and
told him I was about to start a USA-wide tour with a pop group.
'Oh really Dave, I didn't realise you were a musician' he said.
(Well I hadn't told him. Making gadgets for pilots and playing music in
a pop group seemed like they belonged in parallel universes).
'Say, what's the name of the group you're playing with Dave?'
'They're called ELO'
'Sorry Dave, what was that?'
'E-L-O, it stands for the Electric Light Orchestra.'
'Okay' he said in an uninterested monotone, 'well if you make it to the
Ohio area, give me a call. Maybe we can meet up.'
It was early November when I looked at the schedule and realised we
would be in Cincinatti on the sixth. I called Hal's office.
The secretary put me through with lightning speed and Hal's voice was
suddenly singing down the line:
'DAVE!'
'Hello Hal…' I said, but he quickly interrupted:
'Dave… it seems I was the only person in the whole WORLD who didn't
know who the Electric Light Orchestra was! When I asked the guys who
work here if they'd ever heard of the name they went ballistic. Listen,
is there any chance you can get any concert tickets for my staff,
otherwise my name is mud around here?'
I told him I would see what was available and get back to him and then
he asked:
'What airport are you flying into?' I checked the itinerary and told
him.
'I'll be there to meet you!' he said.
And he was. He flew to meet us in his Piper Aztec and was waiting on the
tarmac as our Viscount pulled up.
My future wife Pam was travelling with us for that part of the tour, and
while the rest of ELO left in limos for the hotel, Pam and I departed in
Hal's private plane. He chaperoned us via another small airport to his
house and then on to the show at the Riverfront Coliseum. After the show
there was a restaurant dinner with the staff from Hal's company (I think
there were 26 in all who I had managed to obtain tickets for). The next
morning he gave us a tour of his business (Sporty's Pilot Shop) before
we rejoined the ELO airplane to fly to the next (and last) date in
Bloomington, Indiana.
Making the Timescale work was for me, a joy. It took me up a learning
curve that tested me, and stretched me so much I thought I would snap
like the elastic that composed it. But in the end, the many technical
difficulties and financial impediments were overcome and it became a
reality.
But I have to admit, as it metamorphosed into a business, it slowly
turned into drudgery. I became the pick-up truck, the invoice clerk, the
packaging agent - everything I was never cut out to be. I suppose it
would have been different had it actually made any real money, but
although the developed Timescale worked great (it even got a write-up in
Flight International), as a business it was a flop. For a while I was
imprisoned by the business machine I had created, a machine that was
essentially a cripple. Some of the time while I was nominally a
'Managing Director of a limited company' I was also on the dole!
But the thing that was to unshackle me from this monster was totally
unrelated and unexpected:
A telegram arrived one day in March 1979 (yes, those were the days when
news, good or bad, arrived by telegram). It simply said:
IF YOU WROTE HIROSHIMA PLEASE TELEPHONE xxxx (a London phone number).
I phoned the number and was told that my song 'Hiroshima' had been in
the German Top 50 for almost a year!
I
had almost forgotten about it. The telegram caused me to remember that I
had once been a songwriter! The sweat I had put into songs had come from
the pores of my soul, whereas the Timescale had drew me closer to middle
earth where the normality gene thrives, songs could always claim the
higher ground because they were dredged from a deeper well.
It was the recording of 'Hiroshima' that Lou Reizner had done with the
group Wishful Thinking, the one that had made me grimace with dismay
when I first heard it in 1970. The Germans loved it and had bought it by
the bucket load! Apparently, it first got noticed because of listeners
in East Berlin calling to request it on a West Berlin radio station!
Such is the rhyme and reason of rock 'n' roll history - unfathomable!
That a song about the ultimate weapon should find its only fertile
ground straddling the ultimate divide of the time - the Berlin Wall.
The telegram had come from the German publisher who was hanging on to my
royalties instead of sending them to Lou's attorney in New York. He
suspected I might not get paid if he sent them on. Before long, with his
help, a legal way was set up for me to receive royalties direct from
him.
The money paid for a decent car, an eight-track Teac tape recorder, and
a trip to America in 1980.
I still ran the Timescale business but it slowly wound down like a rusty
flywheel - and I had no more energy to spin it up again. In 1982 I sold
the whole thing to an Australian.
Some years later, in 1988, I was involved in pursuing another idea,
which I really expected Mr.Kennard to call about, but he never did. My
'Force-Generating Apparatus' (as the patent application was somewhat
anti-septically labelled) is a revolutionary contraption, which although
I have spent a lot of time and money on, has simply not worked - yet!
It is a gyroscope 'machine' - an inertial engine. Years ago I left the
prototype stored at Richards' house. He called up one day asking did I
want to collect it. - 'It sure is heavy for an anti-gravity machine' he
said!
But I still harbour hopes of making this idea work one day.
Airtax
The Timescale had not long evaporated from my horizon when along
came the 'PC' - the Personal Computer - and by the mid 80's I had
acquired an interest in writing computer programs. At the time, my
flying mate Kevin wanted a routine to work out flight quotations for his
air taxi business and I developed one for him. My first wife Pam came up
with the name for it: 'Airtax.' By the late 80's it had grown into a
whole suite of programs for the aviation market, and for a couple of
years in the early 90's, these sold like hot cakes.
One day an order came in to send a copy of Airtax to an outfit in
Saudi-Arabia called Bin-Laden Aviation who, if my memory serves right,
operated HS-125 business jets. It wasn't until some ten years later that
the name took on its infamous cadence - Bin-Laden, a real life Doctor No
- and I recalled with a cringe the ephemeral connection I had back
then with the master of terror.
Kevin had been the prime mover in establishing the technical
requirements for the 'Airtax' programs - his company was the flagship
user of it and he actually changed the call sign of his company aircraft
to 'Airtax'. Years later he sold the company and all its accoutrements,
including the call-sign, to another operator based at Birmingham and it
just so happens that I now work as a Commercial pilot for that
company.
So our call sign is 'Airtax', the name that Pam thought up all those
years ago.
The genesis of an 'idea' is a process not dis-similar to writing a song
- it's a notion that comes in the night, in the morning, in the bath, in
the lift, on the bus, anywhere ...
Like a song, a new idea is always the most fragile of things. A cob web,
you see it for a second, then you move your head, or the wind blows, and
it's gone. It can take a lot of stubborn sweat before you can hang your
cob web against a backdrop where anyone else can see it.
Ideas are no more than dreams, voyages into a reality that may or may
not exist when you wake up, or if you are awake already, then when you
snap out of it! The pursuit of a dream always takes you to places you
could never imagine. Some of the journeys are fruitful and some are a
complete waste of time, but the fun is in the travelling not the
arriving. I consider it a bountiful gift to have been able to birth some
of the ideas - some of the dreams that I have been allowed to dream.
Compost Heap
For a while I thought that I had dreamed up the title for this book, but
in fact it's a line in Carl Sagan's novel: 'Contact.' I honestly don't
remember reading it, but there it is, in a line of dialogue: '… the
patterns in the chaos.' Maybe it's because of the compost heap
syndrome...
I have always been of the opinion that many people probably make up
songs. They ham a little ditty together and hum it to themselves. Maybe
they catch a phrase, or else some inspiration drops into their spirit -
something of special or personal weight - and they play with it like a
rosary bead as they walk along the road, never thinking it's worth
anything. I know, that's exactly what I thought about it for years:
'This song can't possibly be any good - I made it up!'
But you can't get serious about doing anything for too long before you
become 'professional' - and for a writer that means becoming proficient at being a
certain kind of sleuth - the kind that is a raving kleptomaniac preying
on ideas. When you are a songwriter every thing you hear becomes a
potential lyric or maybe a title. The most mundane conversation if it
hits you right, can throw up a line that gets wedded to a song. Nothing
is safe. In my experience the trick of being a writer is to become a
kind of compost heap into which everything goes, to get sifted through
later and maybe used as fertiliser.
I think it was Buckminster Fuller who wrote: 'If you're not confused by
what's going on in the world, you're not thinking straight.' But I know
it was Richard Tandy - always on the lookout for a fitting ode - who
told me about it. I promptly refashioned it and put it into the song
'City Girl' (released on the album 'The B.C.Collection'): 'And if you
aint confused, there's something wrong with you.'
It's the compost heap syndrome, I can't help it! - Sorry Buckminster (is
that really your name?).
A writer is somebody cursed by a job that is, in the modern parlance,
twenty-four seven. You can't switch off. The commission is to
regurgitate and re-engineer all the reverberations of life that come
your way. Most of those resonations are centred upon love and romance.
Because it's a fact, love is on its own, it's top of the bill. When it
comes to town it causes the heart to vibrate on that one magic
frequency.
Talking of frequencies, there are only eight notes in an octave, twelve
if you count the black ones. It's inevitable that some of the
combinations get repeated isn't it?.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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