The hall was a big room with several passages leading off it and a double door on the far side opening to the airfield itself. Round the walls hung framed charts, Air Ministry regulations, a large map of the surrounding area, do’s and don’ts[48] for visiting pilots, a thumb-tacked weather report and a list of people wanting to enter for a ping-pong tournament. There were several small wooden tables and hard chairs at one end, half occupied, and across the whole width of the other end stretched the reception-cum-operations-cum-everything else desk[49]. Yawning behind it and scratching between his shoulder blades stood a plump sleepy man of about my own age, sporting a thick sloppy sweater and a fair sized hangover. He held a cup of strong coffee and a cigarette in his free hand, and he was talking lethargically to a gay young spark who had turned up with a girl-friend he wanted to impress.

‘I’ve told you, old chap, you should have given us a ring. All the planes are booked today. I’m sorry, no can do. You can hang about if you like, in case someone doesn’t turn up…’

He turned towards me, casually.

‘Morning, Harry,’ he said. ‘How’s things?’

‘Very O.K.,’ I said. ‘And you?’

‘Ouch,’ he grinned, ‘don’t cut me. The gin would run out.’ He turned round and consulted the vast timetable charts covering most of the wall behind him. ‘You’ve got Kilo November today, it’s out by the petrol pumps, I think. Cross country again; is that right?’

‘Uh-huh,’ I nodded.

‘Nice day for it.’ He put a tick on his chart where it said H. Grey, solo cross.

‘Couldn’t be better.’

The girl said moodily, ‘How about this afternoon, then?’

‘No dice.[50] All booked. And it gets dark so early… there’ll be plenty of planes tomorrow.’

I strolled away, out of the door to the airfield and round to the petrol pumps.

There were six single-engined aircraft lined up there in two rows of three, with a tall man in white overalls filling one up through the opening on the upper surface of the port wing[51]. He waved when he saw me coming, and grinned.

‘Just doing yours next, Harry. The boys have tuned her up special[52]. They say you couldn’t have done it better yourself.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ I said smiling.

He screwed on the cap and jumped down.

‘Lovely day,’ he said, looking up. There were already two little planes in the air, and four more stood ready in front of the control tower. ‘Going far?’ he asked.

‘Scotland,’ I said.

‘That’s cheating.[53]’ He swung the hose away and began to drag it along to the next aircraft. ‘The navigation’s too easy. You only have to go west till you hit the A-1 and then fly up it.’

‘I’m going to Islay,’ I smiled. ‘No roads, I promise.’

‘Islay. That’s different.’

‘I’ll land there for lunch and bring you back a bit of heather.’

‘How far is it?’

‘Two seventy nautical miles, about.’

‘You’ll be coming back in the dark.’ It was a statement, not a question. He unscrewed the cap of Kilo November and topped up the tanks.

‘Most of the way, yes.’

I did the routine checks all round the aircraft, fetched my padded jacket and my charts from the car, filed my flight plan, checked with the control tower for taxy clearance, and within a short while was up in the sky and away.

Air is curious stuff. One tends to think that because it is in visible it isn’t there. What you can’t see don’t exist, sort of thing. But air is tough, elastic and resistant; and the harder you dig into it the more solid it becomes. Air has currents stronger than tides and turbulences which would make Charybdis look like bath water running away.

When I first went flying I rationalised the invisibility thing by thinking of an aircraft being like a submarine: in both one went up and down and sideways in a medium one couldn’t see but which was very palpably around. Then I considered that if human eyes had been constructed differently it might have been possible to see the mixture of nitrogen and oxygen we breathe as clearly as the hydrogen and oxygen we wash in. After that I took the air’s positive plastic existence for granted, and thought no more about it.

The day I went to Islay was pure pleasure. I had flown so much by then that the handling of the little aircraft was as normal as driving a car, and with the perfect weather and my route carefully worked out and handy on the empty passenger seat behind me, there was nothing to do but enjoy myself. And that I did, because I liked being alone. Specifically I liked being alone in a tiny noisy efficient little capsule at 25,000 revs[54] a minute, four thousand five hundred feet above sea level, speed over the ground one hundred and ten miles an hour, steady on a course 313 degrees, bound northwest towards the sea and a Scottish island.

I found Islay itself without trouble, and tuned my radio to the frequency – 118.5 – of Port Ellen airfield.

I said, ‘Port Ellen tower this is Golf Alpha Romeo[55] Kilo November, do you read[56]?’

A Scots accent crackled back, ‘Golf Kilo November, good-afternoon, go ahead.’

‘Kilo November is approaching from the south-east, range fifteen miles, request joining instructions, over[57].’

‘Kilo November is cleared to join right base for runway zero four, QFE 998 millibars. Surface wind zero six zero, ten knots, call field in sight.’

Following his instructions I flew in and round the little airfield on the circuit, cut the engine, turned into wind, glided in at eighty, touched down, and taxied across to the control tower to report.

After eating in a snack bar I went for a walk by the sea, breathing the soft Atlantic air, and forgot to look for some heather to take back with me. The island lay dozing in the sun, shut up close because it was Sunday. It was peaceful and distant and slowed the pulse; soul’s balm if you stayed three hours, devitalising if you stayed for life[58].

The gold had already gone from the day when I started back, and I flew contentedly along in the dusk and the dark, navigating by compass and checking my direction by the radio beacons over which I passed. I dropped down briefly at Carlisle to refuel, and uneventfully returned to Lincolnshire, landing gently and regretfully on the well-known field.

As usual on Sundays the club room next to the main hall was bursting with amateur pilots like myself all talking at once about stalls and spins and ratings and slide slips and allowances for deviations[59]. I edged round the crowd to the bar and acquired some whisky and water, which tasted dry and fine on my tongue and reminded me of where I had been.

Turning round I found myself directly beside the reception desk man and a red-haired boy he was talking to. Catching my eye he said to the boy, ‘Now here’s someone you ought to have a word with. Our Harry here, he’s dead quiet, but don’t let that fool you… He could fly the pants off most of that lot[60]’. He gestured round the room. ‘You ask Harry, now. He started just like you, knowing nothing at all, only three or four years ago.’

‘Four,’ I said.

‘There you are, then. Four years. Now he’s got a commercial licence and enough ratings to fill a book and he can strip an engine down[61] like a mechanic’.