HUGH’S FIRST FLIGHT EVER

Some of my friends say that am a slow reader and a late developer. Maybe they are right, but I find that when I read something, I tend to remember it better than some of the high-speed readers of my acquaintance do, and when, a bit later in life than some of my contemporaries, I spot some new enthusiasm I tend to fall for it, big time.

- BUSH PILOT HUGH PRYOR

I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE lucky guys like Sky Masterson or Rick Drury, who were born with wings and tail feathers and had to wait until they could walk before they were allowed to use them. I didn’t learn to fly until I was 27 years old. In fact I nearly missed out on flying altogether.

I was not around for the Battle of Britain, but I was born before the end of the Second World War. My father was killed during the invasion of Normandy. So, when I was brought up, pilots were still considered to have saved Great Britain, and possibly the World, from the Nazi jackboot and Japanese domination. They were held in awe. A race of such legendary, heroic and chivalrous stature that they were not really considered to be ordinary human beings like you or I.

So, quite naturally, I never even thought about Hugh Pryor as a member of that elite. It never once occurred to me. For me to take up flying would have been rather like me waking up one morning and deciding, “Okay. It’s going to be Winston Churchill. That’s what I’m going to do with my life. I’ll be a Winston Churchill.”

No, I was forced into flying by the cousins with whom I was farming on the romantic slopes of Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania. My job was to build a dairy. One morning, after breakfast, Sue (now Lady Susan Wood, wife of the late Sir Michael Wood, Plastic Surgeon and protégée of Sir Archibald McIndoe who saved many horrendously burned pilots during the Second World War), the mother of the house, approached me and asked, “Hugh, are you intending to stay on with us here?”

I was alarmed by these words, because they sounded like a prelude to a suggestion that I should look for a future elsewhere.

“Yes, Sue. I would love to stay if that fits in with your plans.”