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292into Beauvais. This was a bit complicated, but Ian interpreted the Terminal Approach Chart while I flew the procedure. We broke cloud at about 500ft which was the minimum but we had no plan B so it was just as well. Mark Heaton was the boss at that time and said we would get a couple of taxis into the centre of Paris. I did not think that our accounts department would pay for them and give us Paris allowances, but they did, I think on the bases that everything had been booked before the French vetoed our plan and Serge had to have his medical. The wives met up with us at Le Circle and we had a great weekend, well most of us did. One wife moaned about everything. When we went to eat, we were in the bar and a waiter asked us what we wanted. It all sounded quite difficult so in the end, we told him to let the chef choose the meal for us. I would never have picked what they came up with but 15 of us thought it was fabulous if somewhat expensive. The Sunday night%u2019s meal was a bit more low key in a smaller dining room but the French people there were a bit intrigued with us and gave lots of advice. I presume that at some point Serge had his medical. It was only later that we realised that this was a civilian medical and nothing to do with the Air Force. We kept that information to ourselves. We had flown in via Manston as we had insufficient fuel to make it in one hop and went home the same way after a brilliant time. I had now been at Linton for coming up to 8 years and was worried about how much longer they would leave me there. I still had 8 years to serve and so anything was possible. I decided that I needed to cement in my position as a QFI and so decided I would go for my A1 category. This required 2 sorties one of which comprised of the usual instructional exercises and the second was general handling and navigation. There was also a day of ground school answering questions on all aviation subjects. The chaps in Standards would help but I had to do a lot of preparation myself. It soon became apparent that I could not revise the ground subjects at home in our noisy household and so I took Harry the