My Arrival

A thunder-storm was raging over Leeds at the time of my arrival in September 1935. It must have been a memorable storm because my parents frequently regaled me with tales about it during my early years. Mum used to tell me that thunder was the noise God made stamping around his house in Heaven because someone on Earth had annoyed him. I often wondered who had annoyed him when I arrived on the scene: my parents or me?

I was delivered in the front bedroom at home. A visiting midwife was in attendance as was the fashion in those days. Dad, if he was even at home, probably stayed out of the way downstairs boiling large quantities of water. The house we lived in was one of many brand-new semi-detached council dwellings in what was then the rapidly expanding garden suburb of Middleton on the southern edge of Leeds.

Most people reached Middleton on the new, streamlined trams, route number 12 Circular. The trams on that route were fully enclosed on both upper and lower levels and were better sprung and far more comfortable than any that had gone before. From City Square they ran along Dewsbury Road past row after row of densely packed, dingy terraces of back-to-back council houses. The trams following the clockwise route turned off Dewsbury Road at Hunslet Moor Road and soon left the main road behind and started to climb steeply through picturesque Middleton Woods. Here the tram tracks were more like a railway and indeed what remains of that section of the tramway now forms part of the heritage Middleton Railway. The trams emerged from the woods at the top of the incline, rejoined the main road and then ran in a long right-hand curve through the new estate before descending gently towards Beeston and back down Dewsbury Road to Leeds city centre. Other trams followed the same route in reverse.

The Middleton trams stopped running over forty years ago but parts of the tramway’s central reservation through the estate can still be seen, overgrown with weeds and littered with rubbish but minus the rails and overhead power cables.

The local weekly newspaper, the Wakefield Express, reported that Sir Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus performed on the weekend of my arrival at Haig House Farm on Wood Lane, Rothwell, just a mile from our house. This is how it reported the event:

"On the Saturday a strong gusty wind permitted only one airliner and the autogyro to take to the air, it being announced that there was a danger to the lighter craft in landing. The autogyro attracted a good deal of attention. It has been described as the wingless wonder since it dispenses entirely with any form of moveable control surface. It has no rudders, elevators or ailerons. The pilot’s sole control is a joystick connected to the shaft carrying the revolving rotor. He steers the machine, banks it on turns, and causes it to climb or descend, by inclining the rotor. In other respects beside control, the new autogyro claims to be a great improvement on any other aircraft in existence. It can take off with a run of only a few yards and it can land almost vertically with practically no forward run. Owing to its ability to fly slowly and hover in the air practically stationary, it has been adopted by the London police and has been used for the control of road traffic. The autogyro is equipped with wireless.

"On Sunday the elements were a little kinder. The Flying Flea, the most talked-of aeroplane in the world today, was the centre of much interest. M. Henri Mignet, the inventor of this astounding eight horse power Meccano plane, says that his Flying Flea is the baby car of the air and as cheap to run as a motor cycle. It is claimed that this tiny machine can be built by any amateur for £70.

"Mr Lewis Rowley provided a thrill in one of flying’s most difficult feats by picking up with his wingtip a flag that had been fixed in the centre of the landing ground. He also in his new Tiger Moth aeroplane performed every feat known to aerobatics. He flew inverted only 30 feet from the ground. At both sessions on Sunday, quite a brisk trade in trips was done in both the liners and the planes and even a trip for stunting did not deter a few of the keenest air minded who were out for a real thriller."

The intrepid pilots of Cobham’s Flying Circus were in action again, this time over Woodhouse Moor, barely three miles away from Middleton, at the precise time of my birth. Their performance on that occasion was again interrupted – this time by the tremendous thunderstorm which raged overhead Acre Mount as I made my first appearance. So, aviation entered my life at the very moment I was born and that was the first of several coincidences. For many years I was a pilot in the Royal Air Force and for six years in the 1970s I flew Victor air-to-air refuelling tankers using a procedure pioneered by Sir Alan Cobham. From 1989 to 2001 I worked as the Public Relations Officer for the Red Arrows who became the modern successors to the Cobham Flying Circus.

I was actually the second-born. Brother Michael had been born a year earlier but had died of meningitis in Leeds General Infirmary when only four months old. I never did fully appreciate what a devastating blow Michael’s death must have been for my parents and what a relief it must have been for them when the midwife slapped me on my bottom, allegedly making me howl loud enough to drown out the noise of God’s anger. After weighing in at 4.8kg I was pronounced fit and well – and that must have been another relief to my Mum.