A not uncommon blip today

The Battle of Britain flight above the castle. I think their other four planes are off bombing the berbers out of Cyrenaica. Some unanswerable compulsion had made me go town and gawp and now a blip download is in order. Of course the RAF (blows bugle) were briefly the heroes of the day, keeping Johnny Foreigner from wading ashore (a role which had been played by the navy for centuries). The army.. well... there's a good piece in Mark Urban's book Generals about how the Army have historically been viewed in British Society. According to Urban, they were not looked favourably upon at all ('useful for skimming undesirables off the streets').

Of course this was due to a simple geographical fact - we lived on an island, and the army, always so important to the security of Russia or France had no such role here. It was the Navy who the public revered and politicians confided in. And that shouldn't be understated. Naw. As Orwell put it: 'a navy employs comparatively few people, and is an external weapon which cannot affect home politics directly. Military dictatorships exist everywhere, but there is no such thing as a naval dictatorship.'

Gawd, that's a bit long-winded. Even I can't be bothered reading it back. Anyway, good to see the old Lancaster, what?