COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER TWELVE
ELONGATED BALLS
There had of course been much more to life than competitive gliding.
Not least the opportunity to play a part in one of the first companies
to grasp the true potential of electronics, Elliott Brothers (London)
Ltd, which grew and prospered and in the fullness of time became
Elliott Automation.
Several years had passed between Ben Gunn's offer to join him test
flying at Boulton Paul and the late summer day in 1954 when I moved
to Elliotts at Borehamwood. Very different from the independent
airline business which had been my life, day and night almost seven
days a week, during my time with Hunting Clan.
As base manager at Bovingdon I had shared an office with Bryan
Greensted. A tough and irascible character, chief test pilot of Rotol
during the war years, he had acquired his air transport background
with Skyways on the Berlin airlift. Bryan was technical manager and
chief pilot and his arrival at work resembled that of a small tornado,
as he bounced in through the door, rotund and radiating new ideas.
But there was a darker side to his character. His liquid lunches
were notorious and the results totally unpredictable. Back at base in
the afternoon he might work harder, and be more demanding than
ever, or the lunchtime session could as easily turn into a lost weekend,
regardless of all other priorities.
One visit to Air Service Training at Hamble turned into just that.
It ended with a wary Jeffrey Quill joining us to dinner, at the Swan in
Bursledon, where we eventually stayed the night. The Quills lived in
a large house overlooking the estuary, not far from the Bugle which
Bryan and I had left towards mid afternoon, and the atmosphere had
been frosty when he arrived home to find the carpets rolled back, his
radiogram playing dance music, and the two of us entertaining his
somewhat bemused wife. It stayed that way for the rest of the evening,
for he knew my colleague of old, but Bryan was rather too well
lubricated to notice.
On the following morning we headed for Bovingdon, full of good
intentions, until Bryan developed an overwhelming thirst as we neared
Windsor Great Park. It took a vast amount of Pimms in the nearest
hostelry before he felt able to continue. When we finally got back
there was hell to pay. Maurice Curtis, the MD, had been on the phone
from London almost continuously since the previous afternoon, getting
progressively more irate, and nobody knew our whereabouts.
195