The nearby woods
loomed distant through the mist, and early morning rabbits ran to
ground. In one corner of the field stood an indolent windsock, intently studying its toes.
Rural Bedfordshire, which had once echoed to the hunting horn and the yelps of hounds,
and later to the rotary chug of Gnomes and Le Rhones, was slowly awakening to the new
day. The gentle village of Old Holborn, oversleeping in the Sunday morning dew, was
blissfully unaware that upon the neighbouring airfield which shared its name there was to
be played out the climax of a tale of human endeavour and rivalry, which had its origins
three hundred miles away and over forty years ago.
For recently, while rummaging through the darker recesses of an obscure cupboard rich
with the dust of half a century of aeromodelling endeavour, one Hamish B.McGillicuddy
had unearthed a fragment of his distant past. Not a “eureka” type discovery, you understand,
more the type of relic that launches the finder into a reverie of musing, with a faraway look
upon his timeworn features.
The loyal Drambuie, his pet seagull and as timeless as his master, fluttered sulkily into a
distant corner of the workshop realising that it could now be many hours before the next
sardine tin would be opened. For between the talented fingers of the little man was held the
subject of his profoundest thoughts - a dusty, warped and cracked propellor blade. Just one.
And the memories came flooding back. Of a snow-flecked Scottish moorland half way to
Muckle Mire, a sizeable knot of appreciative club members (and at the back a few scornful
spies from the Teuckle Torrie crowd.) The youthful McGillicuddy - who was yet to earn
the pseudonym “Maestro” - felt within himself that strange mixture of pride and trepidation
as his revolutionary design made its initial unsteady hand glides. The first slabsider with
lifting section fuselage to be seen north of the Border. His Auchengargle clubmates said it
could not be done, the rubber tension would collapse the longerons, they said. But there it
was, spindly undercarriage, single blade folder and all. And it worked. By the end of that
historic afternoon the model was climbing loftily, the twisted skein of rubber shuddering
in its arched belly, before relaxing into a glide which, although barely adequate for
competitive use, would at least ensure the plane would not be lost. “It’s a marvel” said
Snooky Munroe with a shake of the head as he pointed his bicycle towards home: and thus
the novel design was given its unofficial title.
hen war had intervened and the rubber that had powered the club’s model planes became
virtually unobtainable. Other modelling essentials had to be scrounged by devious means (such
as McGillicuddy’s masterly acquisition of an alluring shade of nail varnish as a substitute for
dope) or were to be found by chance, such as the quantity of fine silk, courtesy of a foreign
visitor, one Herr Hess, upon which the Auchengargle lads managed to pounce to the dismay
and frustration of the ladies of the town.
Leaning back in his chair, the elderly Scotsman finally laid down the decaying fragment of
the past and then, with a gleam in his eye, reached for a fresh sheet of balsa and a knife.
Topic: The maestro Mc Guillicuddy . (Read 860 times)