[WWI] How did you get here

[peter leonard]

Much the same. I had already read 'Biggles of 266' when, I was about 10, I
bought the Airfix Camel. I am 61 now. You do the maths.

Peter

On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Helen and Chris <2kermavio at orange.fr>wrote:

>  > Another angle, how'd you get here?
>
> Mine was a much more tortuous route.  As a kid, I was a great reader.  Aged
> about  8 or 9, I was seriously into the Biggles books.
>
> Around that time, Woolworths (a chain of shops connected to, but different
> from, the American chain and now, as of two days ago, no more) were offering
> "classic" books at very low prices in hardback.  Amongst the titles were
> two(?) early Biggles books describing his exploites as a Camel pilot with
> 266 squadron in France.
>
> My imagination was fired and I started to write my own stories.  Very
> quickly, even as a kid, I found I needed more information.  In those days,
> it was hard to get.
>
> Then, someone bought me an Airfix kit of a Camel.  Disappointed that it was
> an RNAS kit and not an RFC one, I nonetheless cobbled the thing together.
> It took about 10 minutes.
>
> Huge stalagmites rose from horizontal surfaces where they had come into
> contact with gluey fingures. The top wing was about 40% in alignment with
> the bottom wings. Decals found their own resting places and paint was
> something for the future.
>
> This got refined as the Aifix and Revell range was discovered and built.
> Ish.
>
> But the WW1 stuff ran out very quickly.  So I moved onto WW2 stuff and the
> Spits my dad flew and the Lancs my uncle captained. Politics quickly raised
> their collective heads and I was forbidden to depict the aircraft of certain
> pilots.  Interestingly, they were all Allied pilots.
>
> From what I can remember, Stanford-Tuck and his bunch of Merry Men were
> good guys.  Mention of Jonnie Johnson was an invitation to make an
> appointment with a dentist.
>
> An ace in his own right, my father had respect and admiration for Adolf
> Galland, so I was allowed to assemble a Me 262.
>
> Although I was allowed to build the DH89 Dragon Rapide that he flew us in
> to north Africa in 1951 when I was 3 (the build came much later), his
> censorship and the lack of available kits deadened my interest.
>
> Until a couple of years ago when I was messing about on e-Bay and
> discovered there were kits I'd never heard of going for not a lot of money.
>
> That's how I got here.
>
> Chris.
>
>
>
>
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