I belong to a free and sort of wild generation, part of the post war baby boom where there seemed to be hundreds of kids around. We played in the streets without fear and had little in the way of restriction. You were expected to go missing for hours at a time without alarm bells ringing...it was obligitory! A little memory from that time.
THE AVIATOR
I was once a wartime aviator…an ace…
straffing bullets through luftwaffe formations…
rolling over Dover’s cliffs hard on the tail of Stuka’s
taka taka taka… tracers streaking across grey skies…
bright strikes, cut, sheer and slice …a kill
trailing white clouds draw the enemies demise.
Plumetting to earth the wounded fell to their death
and without remorse or pity,
another mark was tallied on my painted airframe
and when the fog descended, as it often did in industrial Clydeside,
I felt safe… hiding in the clouds from marauding German fighters.
All this was done while flying to school aged 9…Being a post war wean was a serious business.
Looking the part was easy…helmets were regular wear for weans in the 50’s but where I stood out was my ability to rattle up a decent pair of goggles cut from cornflake box cardboard strapped with knicker elastic.
Identified as a spitfire my Rolls Royce engine was fabricated thus…a propellor cut from a fag packet tacked to the head of a clothes peg with a drawing pin. Twist of the blades ..jammed between the front teeth and at good speed she turned beautifully …arms spread, I flew….as did my contemporaries …our squadron, '301 Radnor Park' ( primary 3.)
In the words of Thomas A Edison ..Discontent is the first necessity of progress.
Ricki Bowman, a wean who had been brought up to believe in his superiority of class, appeared at the Monday morning pre sorte briefing…with two clothes peg props and announced his Spitfire days were over, he was now a Mosquito. Two engines, one in each hand…freed the mouth to mimic credible machine gun fire and engine noises. '301 Radnor Park' (primary 3) transformed into a Mosquito squadron.
After a week of serious formation flying and bombing targets of opportunity Ricki appeared at the following Monday morning briefing with three engines…”am fed up being a mosquito ah think we should be bombers”…."whit!!!" screamed the squadron in unison…"the only bombers with three props are they hellish tally jobs! non of us would be seen dead as a Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero (sparowhawk)". It’s a Lancaster or nothing!.
Now this is technically difficult…thee props easy…one in the mouth and the other two clutched at wing extremity…but four ! where to stick that last prop…”Let wee McKendrick figure it out”…declared Ricki!
I had a reputation for ideas…the creator of double decker bogie and the mighty mega bogie with a three piece suite mounted atop and a crossbow that operated with slices of car tyre inner tubing… among my many innovations. I had been bestowed the honorary title of “ Street Inventor”.
Reputation at stake, I set about the task - wooden spar from the bottom a old blind halved....three clothes pegs, one in the middle pointing back as a handle, two pointing forward with fag packet props, times two…4 turning props and a extended wingspan….success and acclaim!
On route to school there was a hill of steep incline, the descent of which lent itself to good speed. Its peril was horse shit in abundance. John Brown's Shipyard still operated a horse and cart system to ferry its coup rubbish. This street part of the route.…(horses, in the interests of efficiency will unleash a load starting or climbing a hill). Riddle Street was aptly named.
A vision to the eternal memory …'301 Radnor Park' (primary 3) descending Riddle Street skilfully swerving in and around the horse shit, countless props ….turning in the breeze…poetry in motion….and in that same week we all took part in our first 1000 bomber raid.
sic transit gloria mundi…. and all the glories of the earth shall come to pass…
The comic of the day, the Beezer, issued every Tuesday, ran a promotion on 17 January 1957 with a feeble …the ‘Whiz Bang’…A cardboard triangle …that with the flick of the wrist created a very loud crack…ending abruptly the existence of squadron '301 Radnor Park' (primary 3)…with a bang!