Air bridge

When I was a kiddywink, this picture of a Jaguar being loaded on to an aeroplane fascinated me. The thought that you could load up a car on a plane and go on holiday somewhere overseas was just mind-blowing, especially when the memory of a Hillman Super Minx estate (it wasn't particularly 'super') constantly overheating on the way to Cornwall burned bright in your mind. I doubt the Aviation Traders ATL-98 Carvair with its piston engines would have spluttered its way much further than Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam - and Dad was NEVER going to take US to France* - but the thought of it was rather nice.

Inside the book the same aircraft shares its page with the Vulcan. Which is perfectly correct.

* The last  holiday he ever had was actually in Paris, Dad fans.

Radio, radio

I don't know if you recall but last August some damn fool gave me an hour to play some records that I'd bought from charity shops on the radio. Well that was an experience that I really enjoyed and what do you know, the radio station in question run training days for complete and utter wannabes like me to produce and broadcast an hour of a radio over a six hour course. So when the inevitable question came from family members at the back end of November "Whaddya want for Crimbo?" (well what does a man in his mid-late forties want? Socks? Hankies? No thanks) I asked if they could chip in for this training day so I knew that I was going to get something I really wanted.

After emails back and forth with the guy who runs the station, a date was decided for March 1st. The day came and I find myself in the Levenshulme area of Manchester ringing the doorbell of a former library which is home to the station. Inside I met Jason*, our trainer for the day, along with my fellow trainees Freya and Luisa. A tour of the studio while the station was playing a mid-morning automated playlist was followed by us recording our own voices and learning about operating a fader on a training laptop. Then came the production part of the day where we had to decide what kind of two hour show we wanted to produce. So we decided on each of us having our own thirty minutes followed by thirty minutes of what some would call, ugh, "chat 'n' choons". Luisa decided she wanted to make a show with music related to fashion as that was her bag. Freya, an Aussie, was there for radio experience because she had been working in TV and wanted to transition to the wireless so she decided to theme her show on Australian music that might be unknown to a UK audience. I decided that mine should feature music from Manchester, basically because I'd taken two hours' worth of music and was looking for a label to hang on it.
To cut a long story short, zero hour of 5pm arrived and we were on air. Only having one studio Nicky,

who was on air before us with her regular show, very kindly played a long final track to give us all time to get in the studio to set up and sort ourselves out. We decided to let Luisa and Freya go first as Luisa, in particular, was quite nervous, so she could get her solo segment out of the way.

6pm arrived and I was on. Well, I had a blast and you can hear the results in the link below. Stick around because after thirty minutes you can hear me pontificate on subjects ranging from fast fashion (of which I'm an expert...NOT! Ho-ho!), Australia's participation in Eurovision (I chose that topic) and, as it was a Friday night, is British pub culture on its knees? After only knowing each other for six hours or so beforehand there was much camaraderie and willing each other on because we all kind of clicked.
It's a bit of a cliche but the two hours flew by and we were saying our goodbyes and going home. I'd recommend it to anyone, it put a real spring in my step for the next couple of weeks and, if they were offering it to paying punters, I'd participate on All FM's thirty hour radio training course which goes more in depth into stuff like Ofcom regulations, legal stuff etc. If only I'd taken up the chance to do hospital radio when I was at school...oh well.

*Jason is also a regular presenter of Charity Shop Classics so it was nice to finally meet a voice I'd got used to hearing coming out of a radio. And he was brilliant.