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"Well anyway," she said, "it's not as if you had to be out there for ever. Being in the air business, you do seem to be able to get home now and then."

She kept on trying, Ma did. I went out that day and fixed up my course at Air Service Training, and got them to start me off next day on account of the urgency. Two nights later I came back to tea about six, and there was a girl in to tea with Ma, Doris Waters, daughter of old Waters the plumber. She was a pretty kid and quite intelligent, about twenty-two or twenty-three years old; she taught in a school. If I'd been different to what I was, things might have been different, too. But I wasn't, and they weren't. I was sorry for Ma.

With all the examinations for the radio operator's licence and the "B" licence, and the renewal of my ground engineer's licences, I was busy in a maze of paper work for the next three weeks. I had to go three times to London, and then in the middle of it all the August Bank Holiday came and everything stopped dead for about four days. I finally got away from England in the Airtruck on August the 22nd having been in England nearly a month. Dad and Mum came out to see the machine, as they had done before with the Fox-Moth. But this was a bigger and a better aircraft altogether. I had about three hundredweight of spares and tools with me, and quite a bit of luggage, and it made a little heap in one corner of the big cabin that you'd hardly notice.