It's a long time since I've had a round-number birthday - a whole decade, in fact - so I wanted to do something a bit special. And what could be more special than a Saturday afternoon spent partying with many of my dearest friends at an aviation museum aboard G-AZMF?
The cabin of a disused BAC 1-11 is not the most comfortable function room, especially if you're over, ooh, five foot, but the novelty of it made us all hugely cheerful and excited. We mingled and talked and ate sausage rolls and sat in the cockpit and played with the lifejackets and stuck our heads out of the emergency exits and opened beer with my Swiss Army knife, and if everyone else had half as good a time as I did then it was a successful bash indeed.
One of the museum staff had told us that a Eurofighter Typhoon was scheduled to land at the airport at 5. At ten minutes to, it announced its presence overhead with an earsplitting roar and the airliner emptied in a matter of seconds as we scrambled towards the runway to watch the landing.
As the party was drawing to an end, the sound of a jet made us all rush to the windows in time to see the Typhoon depart in a vertical climb, rolling a couple of times as it diminished to a speck. My own birthday flypast!
A few more pics
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