Reports about the Farnborough Air Show which has been taking place in Hampshire this past week brought back some fond memories. Every summer in the 1950s and most of the 60s I would stay at my grandmother's home in the village of Cove, which backs onto Farnborough airfield.
In the weeks before the airshow, it was really terrific as I would see all the new planes and some of the old ones preparing for the show. If you looked up, you would always witness some kind of plane doing tricks in the sky. In effect, it was a free air show on a daily basis.
The highlight used to be the Black Arrows (later Red Arrows) formation team and their Hawker Hunter jets as the nine planes would swoop low over the house, day after day. It was the loudest noise I had ever heard and I thought it was absolutely fantastic.
Grandma was less impressed by the racket and when the jets roared just above the rooftops she took refuge in the pantry where she would remain until the practice sessions were over. In 1959, the Black Arrows performed an amazing 22-plane loop, which remains a record.
But the Hawker Hunters weren't the loudest jets. That dubious honour went to the Avro Vulcan bombers, and what became known as the "Vulcan Howl". When they were taking off the whole house rattled and I was tempted to take cover in the pantry along with grandma. You would never mess with a Vulcan bomber.
A YouTube video demonstrates that howl, if somewhat repetitively. Be careful with your speaker volume.
Goodbye Norma Jean
On a more poignant note, I always associate Farnborough airfield with Marilyn Monroe of all people.
It was a week or so after the airshow, early in August 1962. I was strolling with my brother's fiancee by the airfield where we stopped to have look at the planes. Aged 16, I was carrying a Dansette Transistor Radio, listening to a rare BBC pop music show. (It sounds nerdy, but we didn't have smartphones to play with in those days).
Then there was a news flash that Monroe had been found dead from an overdose in her Los Angeles home. We were stunned because she was only 36 and one of the iconic women in the world.
A decade later Elton John was to pay tribute to her with the original Candle in the Wind.
Breaking news
On that same portable radio 14 months later, in my home,
I was to hear even more devastating news. I had a hobby of listening to overseas radio stations, mainly in search of music. On that particular evening, I was in the bedroom tuned in to Voice of America and heard the devastating breaking news from Dallas of the assassination of US President John F Kennedy.
I dashed downstairs to tell my parents whose initial reaction was understandably of disbelief I was playing in a table tennis tournament that evening and when I got to the event nobody believed me when I said Kennedy had been killed.
Much as I cherished that Dansette, I wish it had brought more cheerful news.
Blame it on Elvis
My attachment to the radio began in 1956 when I was nine. While I had already been packed off to bed, my older brother was downstairs in the kitchen tuning in to Radio Luxembourg and the amazing sounds of Elvis Presley singing Don't Be Cruel and Heartbreak Hotel came thundering through.
I had never heard anything like it. Later there was Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock. It was so different to the sanitised fluff I had been brought up on. It was raw, unrestrained and quite brilliant.
From that moment Radio Luxembourg became my station of choice, although alas a few years later Elvis fell out of favour with my fickle self when he went the Hollywood route.
Station of the stars
I bought the Dansette in 1960 so I could listen in my bedroom without disturbing my parents.
BBC radio at that time played hardly any pop music, so like many other teenagers, I religiously turned to Radio Luxembourg at 7.30pm for pop music. It was on 208 medium wave and the reception was extremely variable, drifting in and out. Sometimes you could hardly hear it and then it would come blasting through.
It promoted itself as "Your Station of the Stars'' and I was hooked. It became my main source of popular music until the pirate radio stations emerged in 1964.
Bad language
President Donald Trump's less than convincing, but highly entertaining, "Double-Negative Defence'' suggests he might need a little brushing up on the fundamentals of the English language. Here are a few basic tips that might help:
- Don't never use no double negatives.
- Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors.
- Never, never, ever use repetitive redundancies which repeatedly repeat themselves.
- Avoid commas, that are, unnecessary and other -- punctuation marks; such as dashes which -- interrupt the smooth! flow of a sentence.
- Always avoid awkward and aimless, affected alliteration.
- Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.
Admittedly, I am on thin ice when it comes to the usage and abusage of the English language. As readers are aware, on occasions I have been known to leave my prepositions dangling.
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