It Happened To Me | John Graham-Hart

A Perfect Day

2nd Lieut. F. Graham-Hart

Technically, this perfect day began one pearl-hard, bright morning in January, 1918 at an RAF airfield just outside Alexandria and finally drifted to a close on the starlit battlements of a medieval castle in the south of France on 28th September, 1994. A long day, I’ll grant you but the best ones always are.

It began so long ago because that was the morning a young RAF officer by the name of Frederick W. Graham-Hart took off for his first solo flight in what passed, in those days, for an aircraft. It bumbled once around the airfield and bumped heavily back onto the sand. My uncle – for it was he – climbed out and a fellow officer snapped him in his moment of triumph.

Alas, a few months later his life ended where, for him, it had begun, amid the clouds. But that sepia grin survived to beckon me across the years and into that irresistible blue. From the day I saw that picture as a child, I knew I had to fly.

I finally chose to learn with European Fliers, which not only had a school at Blackbushe near London but others in La Rochelle and Carcassonne, not far from Perpignan in Languedoc-Roussillion. I opted for the latter.

I’d managed to get in a fair bit of flying at Blackbushe before my departure but nothing prepared me for the brilliant skies of the Aude. The first thing that strikes anyone used to flying in the cramped skies of Britain is the sheer space of the place. The skies are an endless azure and the air so clear and sharp you feel you can reach out and run your finger along the rim of the world.

The first day was spent with my instructor, drifting lazily over villages and vineyards and occasionally catching a glimpse, in the distance, of the glittering ribbon of the Mediterranean. But was the second day that will always be a crystal memory.

Early, we left our farmhouse on the edge of the airfield and walked to the aircraft, the grass giving off the scent of crushed herbs beneath our feet. We started her up and flew a few leisurely take-offs and landings. After the third circuit, my instructor climbed out and casually turned to me.

“Want to take her up on your own?”

When the time came to go solo, I had expected to be a little apprehensive to say the least but the South had already begun to work its magic. I found I was relaxed and confident and as the little aircraft hopped eagerly into the warm air, I felt nothing but elation. The single circuit was over almost before I realised I’d taken off. Suddenly I was on my final approach, slipping down over the honeyed medieval walls of Carcassonne and back onto the hot black tarmac.

I could fly.

The rest of the morning was spent repeating the exercise and lunch spent badgering my instructor into allowing me to make a short cross-country in the afternoon. He agreed to a round trip of about 60 miles – south to Limoux, west to a great horse-shoe lake of La Ganguise and then finally back to Carcassonne.

I took off into the late afternoon light, the low sun sparkling across the scratches in the perspex. Soon Limoux turned up on the nose just where and when it should and I celebrated with a wide, steep banking turn over the old town and its 12th century church of Saint-Martin. Ten minutes later, there was La Ganguise shining in the distance and the bright ribbon of the Canal de Midi which would lead me back to Carcassonne.

At last, I had slipped the surly bonds of Earth and that evening, we celebrated in some style in the old town. Later, alone on the battlements, I recalled the words of a young Spitfire pilot, John Magee, on the ecstasy of flight. He might have been speaking of the exhilaration of that perfect day:

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I topped the windswept heights with easy grace –
Where never lark, or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent, lifting mind I trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.