Читать книгу Round the Bend онлайн

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I have been asked sometimes what led me to the Persian Gulf, what instinct told me that I could build up a business there. It's really perfectly simple. If you go to the hottest and most uncomfortable place on the map you'll find there's not a lot of competition; in my experience most British pilots would rather go bankrupt than get prickly heat. If you can find, as I did, a place where there's a lot of business for a modest charter operator, that's also hot and uncomfortable--well, it's money for jam. Only, of course, you can't afford to pay the wages of a European staff.

To start with, I had no staff at all. For the first two months I did everything myself, serviced the aircraft, washed it down, did the correspondence on my typewriter in the evening, kept the accounts, sent out the bills, and--easiest of all--flew the thing. Presently it got a bit too much, and I got in help for the washing down. I got an Arab boy about fifteen years old called Tarik and paid him twenty rupees a month, about thirty bob, at which he was highly delighted. I taught him to wash and clean the aircraft while I worked upon the engine, and when he wasn't doing that he was running errands for me to the souk--the market. He wasn't fully employed in those early days, of course, but it was useful to have somebody to help with the refuelling.