In the beginning...

June 2006.
I'm bored. The wife knows I'm bored, so we converse briefly about how to alleviate my boredom.

"I'm bored", I say.
"You're bored."
That's helpful.
"Why don't you see about a flying at Barton?"
That's helpful.
"But surely it's too expensive.
"But you've always wanted to do it."
Have I? Really? I hadn't realised that I'd even mentioned it.

So I dig around the web a bit and telephone LAC. I like the look of LAC because they look from the web like they are Barton, and Barton has been at the back of my mind as somewhere interesting since I can remember.

Having been brought up in north Manchester as one of a platoon sized family entirely dependent on my father's wage, everywhere south of Oldham has carried an aura of impossible glamour, unattainable riches or impenetrable complexity. Barton Aerodrome always fell into all three categories, sitting just by what was the M63 - a motorway itself associated forever with the easy middle class of Sale, Altrincham and, somewhere way beyond, Cheshire. Next to the airfield, Barton Bridge rose above the Manchester Ship Canal like a colossus, a feat of engineering to parallel other famous big bridges, like Thelwall Viaduct. The airfield seemed to be hemmed in by motorways, sewage works and industrial estates, whilst a short distance away Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United, was a conspicuously massive football stadium for a middle ranking city, 58,000 standing fans seemingly marginalised to just outside the city boundaries and much further from Barton than the few miles between them.

It was precisely these circumstances which made Barton intriguing. For a start it didn't seem to have any runways. It had a control tower, some hangers and a bright orange windsock but that appeared to be it - though it's tricky to spot any kind of detail from the top of Barton Bridge because it's a motorway and people driving cars make it really difficult to stand there looking at the view.


LAC are reasonably helpful in a terse kind of way and I book myself in for a trial lesson on the 22nd June 2006. I have no idea who's on trial but I decide that if it's me, it's harsh.