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I might have stayed at home for all the good I was. But down at the yard there were things happening and people to talk to; I’ve never been one for sticking in the house by myself, much.

My car took about a month to repair; in that month my cousin Joan Stenning became Lady Stenning. Stenning received his knighthood within half an hour of his landing on the Thames, having sweated and cursed his way through his forty-thousand-mile flight alone round the world in the little Rawdon Dabchick flying-boat. He took nine months over the flight, which was more of a business trip than anything else, and he returned with orders for over a hundred Dabchicks, booked upon the way. He took a cinema camera with him and made films which were worth a considerable sum; his machine was literally plastered with the advertisements of the firms who had supplied him with equipment free. His flight showed a profit of six hundred per cent on the capital involved, an achievement only comparable with that of his progenitor, Sir Francis Drake.