By Ted Crowley

Anticyclonic, high pressure and rising. Warm humid air over Newcastle. Visibility 300 metres. Wind speed zero. The sea, calm as spilt milk. A haze, bordering on fog, out beyond the red buoy, shrouds the horizon. Stifling, torpid, nothing flying; neither bird nor plane nor windsock.

Suddenly, out to sea, a wounded aero-engine, revving and spluttering, is heard. Out of the haze, a strange old craft, an ancient amphibian, single prop, facing backwards, emerges; ghostlike, choking and coughing. Clearing the railway line, it limps north, to port, and loosing height, it finds Newcastle’s long runway. Eric Hopkins hurries out of its path. It lands, gasps, feathers, and limps to the hanger. Two men are safely ashore.

En route from Belfast to Wales, the plane lost oil pressure and was forced to ditch into the sea off Newcastle. Dublin’s air traffic control alerted Hopkins, and the Wicklow inshore lifeboat. Downed but not out, the thirsty engine fired again. It taxied, and sucked itself from the sea. It staggered into the air. Without the aerodrome at Newcastle, that plane was doomed. Without the calm sea, without being amphibian, and without Hopkins’ aerodrome, it was doomed. 

I heard the story of that ancient craft. Away back, in the days of her youth and Hopkins’ youth, he had flown he. And then, when least expected, out of the sea, out of the mist, and out of harm’s way, suddenly, she returned to him, when she was unwell, like a lost, but never forgotten old flame. Now, two weeks later, she’s still there, as if she cannot drag herself away. 

How manly romantic is that?