AIRMAN CLARENCE

In the 1970s and early 1980s, veterans of the American 8th Air Force were making nostalgic return trips to Norfolk and Suffolk, and to their War-time haunts, on a four-yearly cycle. Then I realised that one trip would actually mark the 30th anniversary of the initial arrival of the Yanks, and I asked the organisers if they had anyone who was coming over for the first time since the War, and if so, if I might meet them. In the end the organisers sent the details of Clarence H, then a DuPont employee living in Hixson, Chattanooga, Tennessee, who was destined to become a family friend.
During the War he had been a radio op and waist-gunner on B-24 Liberator Lil Snooks, based with the 446th - the Bungay Buckeroos - at Flixton. Now he came striding out of Norwich's Post House hotel, smiling, smartly dressed, hair shaved to a thin fuzz, hand outstretched, apprehensive, but keen to see old friends and visit remembered places.
As we drove to Flixton he told me he flew missions to Essen, Brunswick, Giessen, Kiel, Hamburg, Bremen, Mannheim and Ludwigshaven, among others, being shot up on several occasions but finishing largely unscathed after 30 raids. Clarence was born in 1922, so he was in his early 20s then. If he was nervous at the time, well, now he was excited, and words poured out of him. 'Saw Warren from Uniontown last night. Hadn't seen him in 29 years . . . I'd love to see Dave again. He used to cycle round the base to fetch the laundry . . . And I want photos of John's grave at Cambridge to take to his wife . . .' And so on.  
As we got closer to Bungay he began to recognise things, a distinctive house chimney, a particular farm barn, a hall they used as a social club. Then we turned off the B1062 and stopped in the lane beside the church, where he carefully wrote his name and squadron in the visitors' book. At Flixton Grange, the former Aero Club was full of sacks of wheat and the old sports and social rooms piled with equipment. We searched for names they had scribbled on the walls, but couldn't find any. But he did locate the old fireplace. 'We used to drink our Cokes and buy our cigarettes here,' he explained.
Then he recalled a games master at a Bungay school who used to blow his whistle during rugby games as the B-24s limped home from a daylight raid, and the boys would form up on the pitch in a V-for-Victory shape as the battered planes roared overhead. The gesture had made a very deep impression on him.
Later, we walked down a tree-lined lane to the old barracks area where the hard surface was now covered by moss, and roadways branched off into dense foliage. Grasses and briars dragged at our trousers, and 30-year-old poplars and scycamores towered overhead. But Clarence knew instinctively where his hut had been, and he plunged into the undergrowth. And there was the remains of a blast shelter, where he once used to prop his bike, and under a carpet of moss and clumps of weed were the foundations of his old billet. He clawed through the greenery and stood once again where his bedspace had been.
Then we drove carefully along the remains of runway 230. 'Beachball, they'd say. This is Beachball. You're clear to land runway two-three,' and I'm sure he could hear the roar of aero engines again. A while later he found the exact spot on a hardpad where Lil Snooks used to park, and the nearby patch of grass where the exhausted crew used to clamber out and collapse. 'Been sick there many times,' he said.
Later still, at Flixton aviation museum, he was presented with a couple of fragments including a fire-damaged cap badge, salvaged some years ago from a crash site at Mendham where a couple of his buddies died. That was a tearful moment. And there was another when he got back to Norwich, when a group of surviving buddies, grizzled veterans all, gathered for tea and cakes in the lounge of the old Castle Hotel, and when some of them sat in a circle and took it in turns to hold a twisted cap badge.

DOREEN'S WAR

You don't see Doreen Wallace mentioned on the nation's literary pages these days, which is a pity because there was a time when she was hardly off them. A prolific writer, political agitator, farmer and gardener, she built a popular literary career especially from the 1930s until well into the 1970s, and indeed until a few years before her death in 1989.
Born in Cumberland in 1897, Doreen was educated at Malvern and Somerville College, Oxford, and in 1922 married Roland Rash, a farmer of Wortham, in Suffolk. It was here, in Suffolk, that she began to add the cadences and eccentricities of East Anglia to her palette of eperiences.
Her novels were good sellers in their day, and they included Barnham Rectory, published in 1934, Going to Sea, The Time of Wild Roses, Green Acres - produced during the Second World War - and later titles including Willow Farm, Sons of Gentlemen, Woman With a Mirror; and her last, in 1976, Landscape With Figures. She also wrote on other subjects, including gardening and the landscape, and was prolific in the short story field.
In 1975 Collins published several of her short stories under the collective title of Changes and Chances, and book in hand I went to Diss to meet her. She autographed it for me. I still have it, and it says, 'Sincerely Yours,' written in Biro, which now feels oddly out of kilter with her and her time, because I suppose I thought she would use a fountain pen. But mainly it is my memory of her as a charming, bespectacled lady which remains, because she deliberately played down the grit and sparkiness for which she was known in her earlier years. 
Doreen Rash was a battler. And the battlefield? The tithe system, a tax which was seen to be crippling farmers particularly during the difficult agricultural depression in the 1930s.
The Tithe Wars, as they became known, had a long history but they came to a head in the 1930s. High profile cases of bankrupts and protests made national headlines. Kent, with hop tithes of up to £1 per acre, formed a tithepayers' defence association, and Suffolk, with an average tithe of seven shillings per acre, was next to organise, followed rapidly by Norfolk and Essex. By 1931, nearly fifty organisations in England and Wales were linked under one national umbrella.
The bitterness ran deep. In 1934, and following non-payment, a bailiff and his men stripped Hall Farm, near Potter Heigham, in Norfolk, seizing futniture and cattle. Then in 1947 AG Mobbs, of Oulton Broad, a leading tithe critic, refused to pay £1 14s 2d. However, the judge at Lowestoft County Court declined to send him to prison, saying, 'There is nothing more foolish than making a martyr.'
As for Doreen and Roland Rash, the bailiffs arrived at Wortham in 1934, putting the farm under siege for six weeks. In 1935 a monument was erected nearby commemorating 'The Tithe War. 134 pigs and 15 cattle seized for the tithe. February 22nd, 1934.' The Rash family lost that particular battle, and they lost again in 1939 when Doreen and Roland were declared bankrupt and the contents of their home were put up for auction on the front lawn at Wortham. On the other hand, you could say that they, and AG Mobbs and others, actually carried the day, because tithes were finally abolished in 1977.
Doreen, who was carried shoulder-high off the lawn by her supporters on that momentous day all those years before, concentrated once again on her writing. And she did so successfully, so you could say she won several major battles.
(Changes and Chances, by Doreen Wallace. Collins, 1975)
 

WRITING ON THE WALL

Two or three decades have gone by since I called in at Salthouse church, on Norfolk's north coast, to take a look at the maritime graffiti incised on the stonework and - I seem to remember - on the backs of some of the pews. Ships, mainly, if memory serves me; and moreover, the sort of ships a choirboy of the time might have seen had he stood on the hill beside the church and gazed out to the sea. 
Puzzles remained, though. Why were the drawings done? The naughty choirboy thing doesn't really stand up because there were so many of them, and they must have been visually apparent to everyone. Also, some of them would have taken a long time to do. So, were they 'good luck' symbols, a local way of blessing a ship and its crew, perhaps prior to a voyage? And the biggest question of all: how old were they?
The good news is that the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey has been busy carrying out research which will ultimately involve examining every Medieval church in the county. And they have already found plenty, with examples being spread around over 30 different church of the 50 or so investigated so far, including not only Salthouse but also Blakeney, Cley, Wiveton, Colkirk, Binham Priory, Litcham and King's Lynn.
And not always scratched ships, either, but crosses, words, names, patterns and symbols, even the crudely carved outline of a hand and a grotescue head.
Nor were these drawings necessarily made by naughty children or other miscreants, for the survey has also shown that the surviving images could have been cut by a commoner, priest or nobleman, man, woman or child. They evidently crossed the boundaries of class, and there seems little doubt that, taken as a whole, they reflect the hopes, fears and humour of Medieval parish inhabitants.
Some of the most interesting are to be found in the four churches of Blakeney, Wiveton, Cley and Salthouse, presenting the four parishes that surrounded the mouth of the river Glaven and the big, bustling port that developed there during the Middle Ages, which handled not only herring and cod, but also pilgrims heading for and away from Walsingham.
Indeed, these four churches display vast quantities of graffiti from the Medieval and post-Medieval periods, including merchants' marks, illuminated capitals, prayers and symbols. At Blakeney, for example, more than 30 ships' images have been found.
The subject goes further than this, however, for another major surprise was uncovered at Binham Priory, where blueprints for the master mason's design for a West Front had been carefully and accurately etched into the walls.
And here's another thing. By 2014 the survey had expanded its field of research to take in inscriptions and drawings from churches in Suffolk, for the two counties, between them, have over 1,100 Medieval churches, many of them of similar architectural style. What the survey has already shown is that there are county differences in graffiti subject matter and distribution. Indeed, it seems that windmills and astrological symbols are common Suffolk, while Norfolk has more curses.
I'm still trying to work that one out.
(Current Archaeology, issue 256, July 2011; and issue 291, June 2014)

THE HOLLER

It began in the flick of an eye. In 1982, and in an idle moment at the office, I picked up a new tourist guidebook to the West Coast of America which happened to be laying on someone's desk, and riffled quickly through the pages. And then stopped. For there, on page 83, was an entry which caught my eye.
It related to the Hoquiam/Aberdeen district near Olympic National Park, and more specifically, to Highway 109 and a place named Ocean Shores. The entry told how - because the area was so often fogbound - Ocean Shores had introduced a number of unusual festivals on to its social calendar, perhaps the silliest of them being Undiscovery Day. Naturally, I read on.
On April 27, 1792, so the entry went, Capt George Vancouver sailed right by Ocean Shores (which did not exist at the time, of course) without noticing the land. Thick fog, you see. So to rectify the matter, every April 27 from 1973 onwards the partying community has gathered on the shore to yell, 'Hey, George,' in the hope that the explorer's ghost might make up for his earlier neglect and pay a belated visit. After which they all retired to their local pub to drown their sorrows.
Daft, of what? Anyway, other dates on the calendar evidently included a Fog Festival and a Clam Prix, which I won't go into now because it was the Holler which interested me, as any mention of Vancouver also meant King's Lynn.
I soon established that (1) Ocean Shores was one of those smart American retirement communities, with no history of its own, and (2) that the invention of some of these 'traditional festivals' was largely down to the imagination of the then newspaper editor, Bob Ward, who brought into being the tongue-in-cheek American Historical Hollering Association (or AH-HA, as it was known).
It duly became more famous than Bob could possibly have imagined, for the story was eventually picked up by a San Francisco radio station which urged listeners to go into the streets at midnight on April 27 and Holler with all their might. This was followed by newspaper and magazine stories. Then some ex-Ocean Shores' residents living in Singapore 'hollered' by phone across the South China Sea. Meanwhile, in 1982, it was written up in the guidebook. Which is where I came in. 
Why not, I thought, try to arrange a Holler between Ocean Shores and King's Lynn, Vancouver's birthplace? And so it came to pass that in April, 1983, the first-ever trans-Atlantic Holler took place between 65 Undiscovery Day residents gathered in Ocean Shores' Legend Tavern, and 30 King's Lynn Vancouver Round Tablers in the Black Horse pub in Gaywood.
At the appointed hour a phone link was established and amplified, and the ritual enacted. From Ocean Shores: 'Hey, George.' And from Norfolk: 'Wadda you want?' In fact, and thanks to the amplification system, the two groups hollered, chatted, and sang to each other for over half an hour.
But the story did not end there, because in April, 1985, three residents of Ocean Shores, including Bob Ward and former mayor 'Bun' Lewis, actually flew to England to take part in the Norfolk end of the proceedings.
It was a particularly poignant international Holler that year, leading one of Gaywood's American guests to comment, 'Helluva way to come to make a phone call home!'

THE EBBING TIDE

It was always a source of wonder to me to hear that my home town, Long Sutton (Lincs), was once so close to the former Sutton Wash estuary that old-timers - so my father maintained - would talk of standing near the church and being able to see ship's masts in the distance. Wonder, because as I understood matters, our little market town was at least three miles from the banks of the river Nene and all I could see, standing by the church and gazing east, was trees, the church hall, and houses.
Even on the edge of town, from the roadway on Roman Bank (a sea bank, said to be Roman-built) the seaward views were again nautically uninspiring, containing few clues, the space actually being filled by flat fields, farm buildings, greenhouses, a canning factory and, at a push, a distant glimpse of the next village, Sutton Bridge.
Whether these ancient sights of masts ever inspired anyone from the town to become a sailor I do not know, but the fact is that a story which might appear to be based on a sort of visual discrepancy is easily explained. Indeed, the story is probably true. Sutton Bridge, as a village, did not come into being until the 19th century, and while the Roman Bank is almost certainly not Roman, the old estuary was once much closer to our town, even within sight of the church; there was very little building on this east side of the town; and the estuary was once busy with shipping.
Long Sutton and its neighbours Lutton and Tydd St Mary, once occupied a vulnerable peninsular of land west of the old Nene estuary, within sight and smell of the sea. Some attempts at drainage were made during the medieval period, most obviously Morton's Leam, a canal which collected the waters of the Nene near Peterborough and deposited it across the fens as far as Guyhirn, near Wisbech. Sea banks were also built. But it was not until the 16th and 17th centuries, in particular, that some landowners, seeking to extend the grazing season on their often waterlogged peat grounds, began to take a serious interest.
It was not an easy struggle, for inundations and flooding had the effect of putting some of the land under constant siege. Then in 1634 work began on Vermuyden's scheme to construct the Seventy Foot, or Bedford River, which ran dead straight for 20 miles from Denver to Earith and which effectively diverted the waters of the river Ouse.
It was a major step forward for fenland as a whole, but as far as Long Sutton was concerned the town really had to wait until the middle of the 19th century - when a causeway was built across the width of the old Wash estuary, and the Nene itself was straightened and strengthened - before the regular inundations were finally defeated, the land between the town and the estuary was drained, and the community of Sutton Bridge was able to flourish.
This region's battles against the sea, or rather its battles against flooding, have largely passed into history and, in certain ways, have been forgotten, to the extent that today bored motorists fed up with the flatness and apparent gloominess are able to sigh with impatience as they cross this territory. But that is beside the point. The real point is that, slowly, over the centuries, these communities and these settlements, and their landowning backers, actually fought great battles against nature, pushed the limits of the landscape further and further out to sea, and made sure that today's bored motorists at least have a roadway to drive over. 

DIARIES OF YORE

It is a matter of small regret that I have never kept a diary. I say 'small' because of a feeling that had I done so it would have left me with shelves filled with the most banal rubbish. Of course, dates of occurrences are useful, and even banal notes can prove handy if you are trying to recollect something, such as what happened, and when. So small regrets, yes.
None of the clergymen-writers mentioned below did anything small, however, most notably Parson Woodforde, of Weston Longville, who was expansive in the extreme. Yet these three diaries, or more accurately their edited extracts, are essential reading for anyone interested in this region's history. They cover the period from about 1776 through to the end of the Second World War, not entirely in sequence and not completely, but near enough to give the reader a flavour of this span of 170 years.
My edition of Woodforde is a concise version, for the complete diaries would fill nearly all my shelves and do contain a deal of day-to-day trivia. But I love Woodforde, his sense of fun and duty, religious and familial. He was inquisitive. He did things, met people, went places, worried about his relatives and his congregation, and enjoyed his food.
By comparison, the Rev Benjamin John Armstrong, MA (Cantab), vicar of East Dereham from 1850 to 1888, was a bit of a sobersides. He noted happenings in the locality, but there is more of the touch of the scholar about him, involved as he was in the detail of church procedures. In some ways it is as though Woodforde's relaxed attitude has been replaced by Armstrong's Victorian straight-laced demeanour.
Indeed, the frontispiece photograph used in my volume, taken about 1865, shows him as a frock-coated clergyman posing between a chair and an ornate table, with his right hand on if not The Good Book, then at least A Book. He would have been around 48 years' old at the time, and he looks both serious and pleasant.
Completing my trilogy are the chronicles of Canon Reginald Augustus Bignold, rector of Carlton Colville, in Suffolk, from 1898 through to 1944; and indeed, many of his last entries written in the months before his death are concerned with events in the latter stages of the Second World War. He was greatly concerned with the First World War, too, and his concern for his parishioners, like the noise of the guns in France, rumbles in the background.
The bushy-bearded Canon Bignold - and a photograph also suggests he was likeable and approachable - seems to have been a hands-on sort of a chap, busy in all aspects of parish life. Indeed, he helped with rescue work after an air raid on Lowestoft, administering to the injured and dying. And he faced up to his conscience when, having recruited tirelessly in his role as Enlisting Officer, he then saw so many of his local boys killed or wounded.
I like all three of these diarists who, in their different ways, dealt with the troubles, dilemmas and delights of their times. Together, these pages provide a rich regional tapestry, and one we would not have had if they had not all taken the trouble to put pen to paper.
(The Diary of a Country Parson, 1758-1802, by James Woodforde, edited, The World's Classics, OUP, 1972. A Norfolk Diary, by Rev Benjamin Armstrong, edited, Harrup, 1949. The Carlton Colville Chronicles, by Canon Reginald Bignold, edited, Parochial Church Council and Norwich Union, 1982).

'HIDDEN' CEMETERY

It began with a public open day at a Norfolk railway station, the 'selling point' being that the station in question, County School, had not been used for years because the line had ceased business and grass was growing between the rusty rails. In fact, passenger services had stopped in 1964 and freight services in 1981. Then a group of railway enthusiasts took it on with long-term plans to get the trains running again, and they began the task by renovating and sprucing up the place.
County School rail halt, a few miles from North Elmham, is what urban dwellers would describe as isolated and lonely, or 'out in the sticks.' Though not as lonely, perhaps, as Berney Arms rail halt in the middle of Halvergate marsh. However, once upon a time County School was connected to the East Dereham line and was so-named because there was actually a school there. Or nearby, on the other side of some belts of trees. Originally known as the Norfolk County School, this extensive establishment later became the Watts Naval Training School.
Norfolk County School was opened in 1873, the foundation stone being laid by the Prince of Wales, later Edward V11, but it lasted only until 1895, after which it stood empty and remote in its 60-acre grounds. Then in 1901 it was taken over by EH Watts as a home for Barnado boys and was ear-marked, two years' later, as a training school for selected Barnado boys destined for the Merchant Navy.
The Naval Training School finally opened in 1906 with nautical classrooms, hall, chapel and library. Later still, after the training school was closed and demolished, the chapel was converted into a house. Then trees grew around the site, sheltering it even further from public gaze.
Meanwhile, the open day was a great success. We wandered around the renovated and redecorated platforms and buildings, and recognised what a great deal of labour the volunteers had put into saving this most modest little rail halt. Even so, it was still a work in progress, and still is for that matter, for the dream of bringing trains from Wymondham through County School once more has still not materialised. Yet the volunteers continue to toil, and hope.
Anyway, we looked around the station, bought some souvenir postcards, and then went for a stroll in the sunshine over the level crossing and along a tree-lined lane on the other side. We did not realise it at the time, but this was almost certainly private land. So we continued to stroll, and after a few minutes our eyes were attracted to what looked like sections of ornamental railing partially hidden in the trees and a stride or two off the main route. We stepped into the trees, and discovered the little cemetery.
We found a handful of graves, marked by headstones, locked into the silence of their woodland surroundings, and most of them, so it appeared, the final resting places of Barnado boys who had died during the years when the naval school was open. The grave markers showed most of them to have been in their early teens at the time.
Quite how many boys were buried there I do not know. Nor do I know the reasons for their demise, though I assume - and this relates to the early years of the 20th century, remember - that childhood illnesses and infections were behind most of them. Nevertheless it was, I recall, a beautiful and lonely place, redolent with sadness. Not the sort of words you would usually use to describe the environs of a railway station.

WHO GETS THE VOTE?

These are stirring times, politically speaking. Scotland's independence referendum. Talk of a possible in/out vote on Europe. The rise of Ukip, and a General Election on the horizon. It all seems to give added significance to the ballot box. Scotland, of course, has already had one vote. But in terms of the upcoming General Election, I keep asking myself: who do I vote for?
I know who I have voted for in the past, but this time it feels different. And I also know at least two parties I will not vote for. But it is not a decision to be taken quickly because it feels as though all the main parties have moved so close together, in some respects, that radicalism has all but disappeared and trades unions banished to the periphery. Thus for the moment the future does not look particularly pretty, because a zero-hours contract England could also find itself, politically at least, isolated and alone. So, what do I want?
I want to see the Union survive, perhaps with more devolved powers.
I want to remain in Europe, because I'm sure we are better served in than out and because I want to see industrial and work-time rights and regulations, including the minimum wage and human rights, stay on the statute book.
I want to see a serious attempt to solve the housing crisis, meaning more affordable homes and maybe even new council houses. And how about some modern prefabs?
I want multinationals, offshore companies, top bosses and wealthy bankers taxed to the hilt. After all, if you trade here then you pay your taxes here, surely. And I want small businesses to receive far more encouragement.
I want the gap between the top-echelon rich and the debt-ridden poor narrowed considerably.
I don't want 'choice' in the NHS, I want the nearest facilities to offer the best care possible. Clearly, the NHS needs better funding, even if it means patients paying for their meals, etc.
I'd like to see hospital and school 'league' tables scrapped; regular competitive sports brought back into the curriculum; and religion-based school slowly absorbed into the mainstream.
I'd like wind, heat pumps and solar energy sources promoted more strongly, so that 'green' input into the national grid reaches a higher percentage, with the balance covered by the construction of (as few as possible) new nuclear power stations.
And I want to see utilities (many of which we once owned, remember) brought back into public ownership. Quite why we have sold the silverware and the silverware cupboard I don't know, but I certainly want the current flow of privatisation schemes - hardly any of which have actually improved anything for users, or workers - halted and reversed.
And I want more concensus politics. Surely there is a case for taking at least the NHS and Education out of the political arena completely, so that sensible ten-year planning can hold sway.
Mind you, all of that is just for starters.
Meanwhile, which party to I vote for? The important thing is to vote, of course, because those who don't vote, or who say they can't be bothered, should not expect their subsequent grumbles to be listened to with any degree of sympathy or seriousness.

GLIDING ALONG

In 1983 I went for a week's tuition at a gliding school at Tibenham, in Norfolk. But for the life of me I cannot remember why, because I could not possibly have afforded to buy a glider or even acquire a part-share, and I certainly didn't really have the time. So I suppose it must have been because I liked the thought of it, having been aloft two or three times beforehand. I came across some of my course notes again only recently, and they served to underline the fact that in the intervening years I had completely forgotten not only my CBSIC but also my USTAL. James Stewart, who was based at Tibenham, would never have done that.
Anyway, we were a small, keen group of learners, and we began with schooling on the ground. Hence CBSIC, the pre-flight reminder, which translated as: controls (stick, centre; trim and close; pedals central; airbrakes, lock); ballast (weight limits); straps (secure and fastened); instruments (at zero; flaps and trim set for take-off); and canopy (closed and locked). Then, providing you got the all-clear, signal with one finger to the tug pilot to take up the towrope slack, and two fingers to say OK for take-off.
That last bit - using the tug aircraft to get the K13 two-seater glider up to 1,800ft - was my nemesis, and I remember dragging the poor tug pilot's tail this way and that with trillions of twitchy adjustments. In the end it probably did away with any romantic notions I may have had of becoming a regular flyer. But I do still remember the release from the tug. At 1,800ft, standby, hand on release. When the tug waggles his wings, pull the release, then turn left, steady and level, while the tug turns right.
In a way I 'enjoyed' the landings slightly more, and the USTAL - undercarriage, speed, trim, airbrakes, lookout. Join the circuit at 800ft, fly downwind to the high key (speed 50k, check landing area clear), then left and left again for final approach. Choose a threshhold, or landing point; airbrakes, half-brakes; and thump and slither over the concrete.
Truth to tell, I was usually sweating profusely when K13 finally crunched to a halt and the canopy was opened. But I did enjoy the general flying, the silent soaring, the views and clouds, and learning about the lumpy bits, the dark and menacing clouds - or the clag, as they called it.
Actually, my notes also revealed a failure to complete the week's course - because of the weather, I hasten to add - thus signalling an end to any idea of a solo circuit on finals day.
On the Monday, with my instructor in the back seat, I did three flights with an aggregate time in the air of an hour. My notes say: 'Hot, clear, bumpy at 1,200ft, crosswind to 10k, erratic and tense all day.' Me, that is. And maybe the instructor, too. Tuesday, with three more flights totalling 48 minutes, when I noted: 'Hot, clear, less bumpy, wind straight. Better, good landings, slight improvement behind tug.' But on Wednesday, two flights only totalling 34 minutes: 'Cloudy, ceiling about 1,500ft, spots of rain, smooth.'
A warning was there, for there was no flying at all on either Thursday or Friday. We were grounded, my notes recording: 'Dull, clammy. Unable to fly because of low cloud. Muggy. Ceiling 800-600ft.' The words do betray a feeling of regret, I think, because I really had hoped to do a bit better. In the end, though, the weather and my nervousness, did for us all.
There was one slight and subsequent consolation, for when I wrote it up afterwards for my newspaper it attracted one of my favoutite headlines: Clag Over Aslacton, it said, Aslacton being a village close to the runway. Personally, I've felt claggy ever since.