standard of living had come to stay, and my parents started off with two maids in the house and a gardener three days a week. Money worries pursued them though I was virtually off their hands; they kept the situation under control because my mother all her life had kept accounts religiously, so that they knew exactly where they were. Their retirement, however, was not the carefree time it should have been and after some years they gave up the attempt to live in England in the only manner that appealed to them, and took to wandering, spending their winters abroad and their summers in a variety of hotels at home.
The motor bicycle had given place to a two-seater car, a Morgan three-wheeler, while I was at Oxford. I got rooms in Stag Lane just outside the de Havilland aerodrome and settled down to work, going down every weekend by road to stay with my parents. In Petersfield I soon discovered No. 1 The Square, an old half-timbered house run as a secondhand bookshop, art gallery, and custom jewellery shop by a crowd of artists led by Harry Roberts, an East End doctor who had a large, rambling estate of woodland in the hills outside the town, near Steep. I madeno other friends in the neighbourhood but they were enough.
In the spring of 1923 I learned to fly. The company by that time had started a flying school as another branch of its activities, and they were training reserve pilots for the Royal Air Force on Renault Avros, a somewhat unusual version of the well known Avro 504 trainer which was probably dictated by the fact that rotary engines were going out of use and henceforward training had to be upon machines with stationary engines. My flying had to be conducted with the strictest economy, for my parents were selling capital to provide this opportunity for me and flying on the Renault Avro cost five pounds ten an hour, a sum which even in these days of lessened money values would be regarded as prohibitive. Mr. Nixon was adamant in refusing to reduce this figure even for an employee, and I had seen sufficient of the economies forced on the company to feel no great resentment at this very economic charge. Indeed, even at the time when I was arguing for a reduction I felt a sneaking admiration for him in his uncompromising stand; the first objective of the company at that time was to stay in business. They had no elbow room for generosity, though individually they went to untold trouble over employees who were sick. It was a pleasant, friendly company, though tough in business, of necessity.
I see from my pilot’s log book, kept in the same paper-covered R.A.F. book of the first war for twenty-eight years, that I had nine hours’ dual instruction before going solo, about an average time for those days. That first solo flight was an anxiety and a delight; already I had seen a good many minor crashes and some quite serious ones, and the jocular phrase that one was going out to flirt with death was not entirely jocular in 1923. Humour was grim on Stag Lane Aerodrome at times. There was a crashwagon with fire extinguishers on it ready at all times when flying was in progress, as is usual, and this crash wagon was provided with a steel rod about eighteen feet long with a large, sharpened hook at one end; this was for the purpose of hooking the body of the pilot out of the burning wreckage when the flames were too fierce to permit any gentler method of rescue. It was the custom at Stag Lane when any pupil was to do a first solo to get out this hook, to show him that his friends had it ready to assist him in any difficulty that might arise.
The private pilot’s licence had not then been introduced, and a pilot was recognised as such when he had passed the tests for the Royal Aero Club certificate, which entailed an ascent to six thousand feet, flying several figure-of-eights at about a thousand feet, and a landing without damage. For some reason that I cannot understand I did not take this test till February 1924, perhaps
The motor bicycle had given place to a two-seater car, a Morgan three-wheeler, while I was at Oxford. I got rooms in Stag Lane just outside the de Havilland aerodrome and settled down to work, going down every weekend by road to stay with my parents. In Petersfield I soon discovered No. 1 The Square, an old half-timbered house run as a secondhand bookshop, art gallery, and custom jewellery shop by a crowd of artists led by Harry Roberts, an East End doctor who had a large, rambling estate of woodland in the hills outside the town, near Steep. I madeno other friends in the neighbourhood but they were enough.
In the spring of 1923 I learned to fly. The company by that time had started a flying school as another branch of its activities, and they were training reserve pilots for the Royal Air Force on Renault Avros, a somewhat unusual version of the well known Avro 504 trainer which was probably dictated by the fact that rotary engines were going out of use and henceforward training had to be upon machines with stationary engines. My flying had to be conducted with the strictest economy, for my parents were selling capital to provide this opportunity for me and flying on the Renault Avro cost five pounds ten an hour, a sum which even in these days of lessened money values would be regarded as prohibitive. Mr. Nixon was adamant in refusing to reduce this figure even for an employee, and I had seen sufficient of the economies forced on the company to feel no great resentment at this very economic charge. Indeed, even at the time when I was arguing for a reduction I felt a sneaking admiration for him in his uncompromising stand; the first objective of the company at that time was to stay in business. They had no elbow room for generosity, though individually they went to untold trouble over employees who were sick. It was a pleasant, friendly company, though tough in business, of necessity.
I see from my pilot’s log book, kept in the same paper-covered R.A.F. book of the first war for twenty-eight years, that I had nine hours’ dual instruction before going solo, about an average time for those days. That first solo flight was an anxiety and a delight; already I had seen a good many minor crashes and some quite serious ones, and the jocular phrase that one was going out to flirt with death was not entirely jocular in 1923. Humour was grim on Stag Lane Aerodrome at times. There was a crashwagon with fire extinguishers on it ready at all times when flying was in progress, as is usual, and this crash wagon was provided with a steel rod about eighteen feet long with a large, sharpened hook at one end; this was for the purpose of hooking the body of the pilot out of the burning wreckage when the flames were too fierce to permit any gentler method of rescue. It was the custom at Stag Lane when any pupil was to do a first solo to get out this hook, to show him that his friends had it ready to assist him in any difficulty that might arise.
The private pilot’s licence had not then been introduced, and a pilot was recognised as such when he had passed the tests for the Royal Aero Club certificate, which entailed an ascent to six thousand feet, flying several figure-of-eights at about a thousand feet, and a landing without damage. For some reason that I cannot understand I did not take this test till February 1924, perhaps
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