Some years ago I used to fly an old DC3 Dakota transport plane. It was pre-World War Two and whilst the skin had been repaired, there was still some damage to bits of the airframe. Keeping oil pressure up in the starboard engine was always a problem and the large tyres, although always good for rough airstrips, tended to give bouncy landings. But then it would be tea-time and I had to go in. All the flights were solo and nearly all commercial and, I remember, involved long sections flying over the sea or jungle with my fingers crossed. But then, in Sir Francis Chichester’s book the Lonely Sea and the Sky I read his description of ‘aiming off’ to locate Pacific islands – and it worked! Every time! In late summer there were apples on the tree and the DC3 went away for maintenance. In the long holidays I was free to cross miles of gorse heathland and explore the woods. I followed the Roman Road and smelled the charcoal burners and talked (in my head) to The Amazons. The fallen tree bridging the river was the same one as I saw in the foothills of Our Everest Adventure by Sir John Hunt. But then the apples dropped and it was back to polar flying. Don’t all children do this? I was clearly very, very fortunate to have been so unrestricted and allowed to be a small boy playing what I now see as very gendered play. I wonder what it is actually like for the comparable generation nowadays? Even in 1937 Kurt Hahn described one of the Seven Sins of the modern age as the Decline in Memory and Imagination. It seems to me that the two greatest influences upon my imagination were stories and opportunities to wander. Freedom if you like
