Saturday, 20 July 2013

The Summer House



This is the summer house in my garden.  The majority of The Witness was written in here, it's a great place to write and paint in warmer weather.  I use it quite a lot in the evenings and at weekends during summer months and when I 'give up the day job', this will become my study!


 
The summer house in the early days without the decking.
 
 
The view from the inside.  The apple tree in the foreground is a bit bigger now as this picture was taken probably five or six years ago.
 

Thursday, 11 July 2013

Manston Air show


Manston Air show was as controversial as it was brilliant.  The traffic was dire, thousands of cars heading for a narrow funnel into a huge grassed area on the side of the air field, caused nine mile tail backs.  We took four hours to cover three miles and missed half the show.
The Spitfire was there along with a Hurricane, both gave fantastic accounts of themselves, unfortunately we only saw the Hurricane flying over a distant air field whilst stuck in the traffic.

 What air show would be complete without the B 17?  This magnificent aircraft gave a great display as she majestically swept about the sky.  In this picture the 'old girl' was trailing smoke from her port outer engine.  In other shots the bomb bay doors were open, fantastic!



One of the static displays, a Tornado, note the huge tail section that distinguishes this aircraft.


One of my favourite aircraft is the Hawk.  The Red Arrows fly this brilliant little jet, they are also used by 19 Sqn as advanced trainers on Anglesey in Wales.  They are nimble as you will know from watching The Red Arrows, and are pretty simple as they are an old and trusted design fitted with analogue display systems and 'seat of the pants' technology.

Because we were delayed, we missed the star of the show.  A beautifully restored Vulcan Bomber took off from the runway and did a turn.  We certainly heard this beast of the sky but unfortunately were too far away to get a good view of the stunning flying.

Hopefully next time the organisation of this fantastic event will be much improved, or maybe we'll allow a few more hours to get there.  We live 20 minutes from Manston, but obviously 4.5 hours is not enough time on air show day!

Book Signing in September

Book Signing at The Beaney Institute Canterbury

Carol Creasey, author of Evil Woman, and I are book signing at the Beaney Library in Canterbury on Saturday 7th September.  We will be there in the morning from 10:00 - 12:00 then in the afternoon from 2:00 - 4:00.  The weekend is the year anniversary of the re-opening of the library after extensive refurbishment, so there will be other things going on over the weekend.
I will have copies of The Belgae Torc and The Witness for sale and Carol will have copies of her book Evil Woman. 
Hope to see you there, bring along your friends for a great day out in the ancient city of Canterbury.