Aerodynamics. Flights of Fancy

The ANNuAl export of muttoN from New Zealand is 34,380 tons per annum, declared Miss Ootle.

- Harold Strachan

Miss Ootle was our teacher, see, this was Geography and somehow relevant to the patchwork education my friends Barkle and Torpid and I were engaged in. Our personal focus at the age of ten, however, was How Things Work. How indeed it had been for our earliest ancestors, hunter-gatherers, basic to survival itself, and presently our problem was one of aerodynamics: whether a fly lands on the ceiling by a half-loop or a half-roll. This may seem a petty thing to the earthbound, but it had been the obsession of aviators ever since 1908 when some daredevil first looped-the-loop without falling out of his flying machine or the wings coming off. We gave scarce a fig for New Zealand, the mutton or Miss Ootle.

Barkle and Torpid were twins. I found their names strange, to start with. I mean Barkle was unusual enough, though possible, but Torpid was just plain ridiculous, man! Turned out they were actually Michael and Norman and they both had adenoid problems. Wududwe sdigga big flar or subbig odda sbord plade foad egsberibed? said Torpid.