Page 137 - Demo

135PC? WHAT%u2019S THAT THEN?At the beginning of the Seventies, %u2018PC%u2019 still stood for %u2018Police Constable%u2019. Add to that a bucketful of immaturity and there lies the basis for an embarrassing tale %u2013or two actually!Bloop 1At that time, amongst garrulous junior aircrew, the word %u2018spastic%u2019 was simply a derisory term applied to anyone who did not come up to some expectation or other; it was never considered as a potential insult to the disabled.In my second year as a first-tour Jet Provost QFI1 at RAF Leeming, I applied for, and got, the job of commentator for the Gemini aerobatic pair. There was a full season of shows, and sometimes I would fly the spare and sometimes I%u2019d fly with the Team %u2018Boss%u2019, who flew a solo display and was also the official Team Manager.On a particular occasion, at an air show in the West Country, I was flying with aforementioned %u2018Boss%u2019, who had completed his display and vanished somewhere into the crowd. I headed for Air Traffic Control to do my stuff for Gemini. The day was sunny, with a clear blue sky and about 20 knots of wind down the runway. On such occasions, I would explain to the assembled crowd that the supposedly synchronised manoeuvres at opposite ends of the runway had to be intentionally slightly out of %u2018sync%u2019, so that the subsequent opposition manoeuvres remained at crowd-centre, and the whole show did not slowly disappear downwind.I%u2019m sure that I%u2019m not the only person who has occasional mental blockages, but some times are worse than others. So it was here! As the boys pulled up for their (nearly) synchronised stall-turns, the scripted words vanished from my pea-like brain, and what came out over the Tannoy system was %u201cBlah blah blah%u2026..you%u2019ll notice that the stall-turns are not quite together, this is not because J*** and D*** are (pause/struggle) spastic but because blah blah blah%u2026.%u201d.Aaaarghh!