COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
On most nights it was full to bursting and the rafters rang with
many a traditional gliding song. They tended to be simple and
repetitive but it hardly mattered. After a few rounds of beer and a
rollocking melody on the piano we were off.
Old Johnny Bugger he had a sweetheart
he loved her right from the bottom of his heart
she was skinny and he liked them plump
so he pumped her up with a bicycle pump.
CHORUS:
Singing I do believe
I do believe
Old Johnny Bugger was a gay old bugger
and a gay old bugger was he.
In the way of all the best ballads it told of the subsequent events
of Johnny Bugger's life. Although somehow they seemed to have got
into the wrong order - and the meaning of 'gay' has changed a little
over the years!
Old Johnny Bugger wasn 't feeling well
he called on the doctor his symptoms to tell
Doctor! Doctor! I've a pain in my side
But before they could cure him the poor bugger died.
And finally about what he left behind him -
Old Mrs Bugger she had a queer pain
so she called for the doctor to come round again
and the doctor said now listen my dear
there's soon going to be another Bugger here.
That pub and its convivial sounds was the background to a very
different tale as one of the Camphill regulars told the story of Louis
Slater's wave flight the previous autumn.
Letting down over an extensive sheet of cloud, his escape hole
closed and he had to continue his descent totally blind. Writing about
it afterwards Louis had described the outcome in his own inimitable
style:
After seeing 500 feet go by, and still no sight of anything but fog,
I became slightly apprehensive. At zero my hair began to push my beret
off - one eye was on the Turn & Bank and the AS I - and the other was
out on a stalk through one of the holes in the perspex. Looking for
rocks to hit. I was just approaching minus 500 feet when I came out
into the clear over the Bamford dams about 200 feet above the
water!......
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