Flying high ..

I've just found another collection of my old photographs and, bizarrely, I have the First World War to thank ..

Over the recent 100th anniversary weekend I filmed a remembrance performance by a choir in which Lesley is a member and made it into my first ever little film. Trouble is, when I say little, it took up 94 gigabytes of memory on my computer and practically ground it to a halt. I had to clear the decks, as it were, to make more room for my film to work, so I set about sorting through all the folders on my desktop and transferring them over to an external hard drive. Stuck away in one of my folders was another folder, enticingly labelled 'To Do' and, when I opened this up, there was a whole new set of scans I'd made - God knows how long ago - that took me right back to the years before I was a professional photographer. There were shots in there from probably 1975 and certainly 1977, as I can see Queen's Silver Jubilee posters up in the background. What fantastic new additions to my archive. The only frustration was that I had to finish the film first but, now it's done and all 84 minutes of it are burnt to DVD, I can get to work on my new early Christmas presents. Two of the gems in there were the pictures I'm showing you today. Click on them to see them larger ..

The aerial shot is from a flight I took in a Cessna in 1977. Growing up, we were lucky enough to know a chap with a part-share in a plane at nearby Barton Airport. He invited me up for my first ever flight when I was still just 16 years old. The second picture is from Manchester Airport, back in the days when plane-spotters like me were allowed to walk around on the tops of the piers. I spent many a warm summer's day thrilling to the scream of jets and the whiff of kerosene. Great memories ..