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Epilogue.

After leaving the RAF and following a difficult discussion with my father, I joined the family engineering business, of which I was later to become a Director. My pay, initially, was less than a third of my RAF emolument. That hurt. I still suffered from ulcer problems and had to watch my diet carefully. I lived at home where we also ran a smallholding.
I became a Life Member of the Royal Air Forces Association, but otherwise had no contact with the Service for many years. I sought, and was granted, a further medical and was found fit, which, of course, I wasn't.
My interest in flying was still there so I joined the Shropshire Aero Group based at Sleap airfield near Shrewsbury. Having been found 'fit' at one medical, I sought another with a view to applying for a Private Pilot's Licence, and passed. At the Aero Group I took the necessary refresher lessons and flew the Auster which the Group owned, dual. The CFI was satisfied.1 I then flew it solo, once only. I found during that trip that my tall frame limited the full and free movement of controls in the small cockpit, to the extent that I could never have recovered from a spin had I ever got into one. I saw a red light. I never flew the aircraft again. Nor any other.
It was at that Aero Group that I first met my wife who was learning to fly. She never went solo, but was very close to it. It was because we had other things on our minds that she decided to conserve money and not take any more lessons so that we could afford to marry.
The migraine persisted. It came in waves of attacks. Some weeks I could only work for two or three days. I even volunteered for psychiatric analysis and became a voluntary patient, so desperate was I to find a cure. Nothing was found. The attacks continued until we had been married for 14 years and moved house. The attacks reduced, and then almost ceased. We came up with the theory that it might be a chocolate allergy, because no longer was there a sweet shop close to home from which to buy the chocolate that I loved. I mentioned this to our Doctor who said, scoffingly, that I should have known that chocolate can give people migraine. It was his last consultation with me. My new Doctor suggested that I also consider red wine and oranges as possibilities. He was right.
Looking back, at a Dining In Night, the menu would usually have on it a melon boat with a slice of orange for a sail (which I ate), a pudding with chocolate of some sort in, or on it and, of course, there was port wine for the Loyal Toast. What a mixture!
I had been poisoning myself and no Doctor, at any time, had told me.
I must add that my interest in flying machines led me to build, in my garage at home, a light hovercraft to my own design. I even took out a patent on hovercraft control which I later sold to the then Ministry of Technology at absolutely no profit. I also competed in the first ever European Light Hovercraft Rally and came second - or last - whichever way you want to look at it. I am, I believe, still the only person to travel from King's Gap, Hoylake, Wirral, to Hilbre Island (in the river Dee) and back, with the tide out and across the quicksands, in his own home-built hovercraft. Its maximum speed was about 40 mph. That was within 10 years of leaving the RAF.
So I really was a low level pilot!
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1 CFI = Chief Flying Instructor.
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