Sailplane & Gliding 1966 - Lakes Gliding Club

READV-
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~~ STEADY- jBy Wally Kahn
Office. Oh could you, Oh would you?
Would I! Saturday, my sweet Met. man
said. No sleep, tried counting thermals
jumping over gliders at forty miles
divided by eight hours? Friday, another
can before work. goose still straining.
Work all day, impossible odds - I
oought three lots of forty miles an hour
from two Dutch factories and resold
them to the Customs and Excise and
three customers - I wonder what they
did with them?
Pressure awful now: home - camera,
wife, Polo mints, radio, dog, sunglasses
into car. Don't think about 500 km.;
concentrate on driving. Yes Ma'am!
Make smaIl talk with dog, damn ­
not dog, with wife. Damn - forty miles
per hour speed limit sign - back to
forty miles for eight hours, then motorway
- fifty speed limit - thinks: fifty
only six hours and a bit. Then seventy
limit - seventy between thermals, not
enough. No police cars - eighty. Ab.
NCE uj)Qn a time, when Pundits
O flew Olympias and WaIly Wallington
was just a met. man and not a god,
Lame Welch hatched a Golden Plot. It
was simple really: WaIly or Jock Findlater
would telephone us and pass the
magic words ''The Golden Goose will
lay a Golden Egg" and we knew that
tbe weather was cooking up for a Gold
downwind dash. Somehow, the goose
never did lay.
Cooking Olympias moved on and so
.did the Met. office. Our any turned
Eagle, then Skylark amI now Dart. In
Ollr halcyon Skylark days the cry was,
"Dogleg, Lasharn-Long Mynd-Yarmouth
for Diamonds". Ahbough the Met. office
moved nearer to mine, that goose never
laid either.
With our new Dart came the latest
form of masochism caIled Diamond Triangles.
Religious incantations sounded
like " eighthoursatfortymilesanhour ".
Downwind dashes were out, taboo, old
hat and rather square.
Wednesday, 29th June, our goose
turned ever so slightly Diamondish. Friday
or Saturday we eat egg, my clairvoyant
Met. man said. Thursday, ilie
goose was distinctly broody, so we
moved the isobars out just a little.
Dinner that night with cricketing friends
was hell until I heard that they had an
important match that week-end and I
offered there and tben to ring the Met.
380
eighty between thermals, be back for
tea, cakes, polish finger nails: "You
see, chaps, what I did next was ..."
Suddenly, big weightlessness trick ­
camera, wife, dog et at floating - iliat
damn hum!? bridge at Odiham at eighty
between thmks!
Lasham - batteries - alarm clock ­
sleep. Sleep? Not a hope, count gliders
jumping over thermals • • •
Saturday, broody goose, isobars
formed solid floor, fly local, bloody
goose, bloody Met. men, bloody gliding.
Saturday night all smiles again; some
idiot has seen TV weather forecast. Take