No Blip time

Well busy in the garden and not a halfway suitable Bliptunity. The melting snow is revealing the masses of leaves lying on the grass. Within 24 hours we had frost, storm & snow which brought down the last of the leaves and there were lots of them. For weeks now they have been under snow and many very shadowy parts still are. Tried my best to clear what I could with lawn tractor and blower but not a great job - leaves still wet and partly frozen. Anyway kept me out of mischief.

So no Blip. Then occured to me I could add to some comments from yesterday and show a few 60's things.

1) In 1967 aged 12, I wrote a letter to the Chinese Embassy in London asking for a copy of Mao's "Little Red Book". When it arrived at school, I proudly wrote my name and full home address inside. A few weeks later and I was due to fly from London to Trinidad and wanted to take my new "bible" with me but suddenly got scared that the customs somewhere would come across it and lock me up as a communist spy. Quickly tore out & burnt the page with my name & address on it, hoping that "I happened to find it in the Heathrow lounge" would get me off the hook.

Luckily all went well and the flight went well with another entry in my B.O.A.C. Junior Jet Club Log Book. I was not an avid collector of such records but still have it together with a record my father kept of my flights. My 1st was on Lufthansa in March 1963, Heathrow-Frankfurt. The PanAm return flight was adventurous, an engine having to be shut down but it was a 707 so three kept us up in the air. By 1970 and after about 20 transatlantic flights had around half a million miles. Never bothered to get certificates.

I don't think I ever read more than a paragraph of the Little Red Book, just the bit on "paper tigers". Seemed very adventurous back then.

Just one more effort & the weekend and possibly the holiday starts for many.