Watching the glittering bird sweep down out of the haze and kiss the grass brought out the barely concealed schoolboy in me.
I couldn’t make it to Goodwood Aerodrome in Sussex last Thursday to watch the return of the Silver Spitfire from her Longest Flight round-the-world adventure but the live feed caught the magic moment.
The 76-year-old aircraft, registration G-IRTY, has just spent four months flying 27,000 miles across 22 countries and four continents. Built in 1943, she carried out more than 50 World War Two combat missions.
At face value her trip was a pointless ‘because we can’ odyssey. It also suffered from poor social media updates which must have limited the people reached and funds raised for Unicef.
But the magic of the aeroplane that flew over the Statue of Liberty and the Pyramids, crossed the Jordan desert and the Alps, transcends that.
A Spitfire is not just a legendary warplane. It is a thing of real beauty. If it hadn’t been designed to kill it would be a work of art. And the distinct sound of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine sets that to music.
If you’ve never seen or heard one, next summer’s airshow season is not far away.
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For dealers in death, indie crime authors are a lovely bunch of people. One major player is Andy Barrett who, when not penning his books, is a real-life crime scene investigator. This guy knows his blood spatter!
He sends regular email to his fans and very generously included some fellow indie crimewriters in his current one – Sibel Hodge, Maggie James, Conrad Jones and me.
Check him out at https://www.andrewbarrett.co.uk/ – and on Twitter – @AndrewBarrettUK
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If you enjoy UK crimewriting you can mix and mingle within 9,000 friendly folk who relish talk of fictional mayhem and bloodshed in the UK Crime Book Club group on Facebook. Check out https://t.co/m72jIivicp
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I’ve just read Simon Kernick‘s new thriller Die Alone. Here’s my review…
Smoothie politician Alastair Sheridan is about to become prime minister. He’s charming, rich, model wife, perfect family… and a serial killer.
Disgraced cop Ray Mason is awaiting trial for murder when he’s busted out of prison by armed men.
The gunmen, who claim to be MI6 agents, say Sheridan is a security risk and want Mason to kill him in return for a new life. But the fugitive trusts no one apart from former lover Tina Boyd, an ex-cop.
Together they must peel back layers of deception in their search for a way out of a story that rips along at a breathless pace.
If Simon Kernick drives as fast as he writes he must have a thousand speeding tickets.
Keep turning those pages – Bill