. . the steward from the front galley shot into the cockpit – shaking. “What’s happening?”

‘Should fly-by-wire products come with a Use Responsibly label?’

When the stationary air above a stationary runway is approached by a landing Concorde it gets squashed - squeezed like Polyfilla under an expensive filling knife.

‘He described the rather sedate and indeterminate way this modified aircraft tumbled about, and started to ask the CFI what to do next – but the CFI had gone, so he ejected, similarly.’

‘He stayed true to his hobby and was shot dead as he entered his apartment in the evening of March 22nd 1990. A professional job, for sure. The world of Le Carré had caught up with him.’

A Sideways Look into the possible future . . .

‘This Prima Donna has to be treated as another airliner. We’re now a grimly competitive bus company, not a bunch of formula one fairies.’ Nobody actually said this, but perhaps you get the idea.

Jeremy turned round and said ‘Jump in, you can fly the accel.’ . . . Wow! Is he serious? I’ve never been supersonic before, even as a passenger. Of course, his confidence belied the Concorde’s agreeable nature when doing the very thing it was designed for.

Was there really an aeroplane out there? Do the past and future exist? Perhaps the present is the only reality, suggesting that cat-shots are, for most of the time, creations of the fevered imagination. What a surreal way to take off. Fantastic.

“If I was going to land in the lion’s enclosure I would want four afterburning Olympus engines to get me out of there.”