Some years a Cessna took off from Edinburgh. The pilot was giving his girlfriend a joyride in the local area. Unfortunately the pilot left his radio on 'transmit' which made it impossible for air traffic control to contact anyone on that frequency for more than an hour, during which personal conversations and long periods of intimate silence were heard.

What astonishes me is not the application to join the Half-Mile-Club, but that he succeeded in intimate relations within the very cramped cockpit of a Cessna 150. The man is a sexual genius, albeit a little short of common sense and self restraint. He landed at Edinburgh without incident to discover that everyone on that radio frequency had overheard his club application.

Are such incidents common? Well, I do happen to know about an incident in America when the pilot of a twin engined aeroplane left it on autopilot and took his girl into the passenger cabin for... Well use your imagination. Didn't your parents tell you about the birds and the bees? In this case, the cockpit door swung shut as the plane flew through turbulent air and because of safety restrictions the pair couldn't access the controls. They had to take the door off its hinges with a nailfile, long after the aeroplane had passed its intended destination and almost out of fuel.

Now it seems an airliner overshot its destination by 150 miles in America just recently. Neither air traffic control nor other aircraft in the vicinity could raise any response from the crew, and eventually a stewardess managed to get a reaction and all ended happliy ever after, apart from the enquiry currently taking place. The crew claim they were in a heated discussion and didn't notice they had overshot their landing path. That's some discussion guys.

The authorities are a little more suspicious and believe the crew were asleep at the controls. What? All three of them? Given the track record for pilots behaviour in these circumstances, one can't help wondering if there wasn't some Three-In-A-Cockpit orgy going on.

Have You Seen Our Dog?

Yesterday I took advantage of a lull in the rainy weather and headed for the hills with a backpack. The mud was heavy going and I have to confess, I did stop at a country pub for a pint. Not illegal of course, but I imagimne there are plenty of people who want unemployed people to stop enjoyinmg themselves and darn well get a job. I am trying, but let's face it, after so many rejection letters wouldn't you resort to drink?

On the way home through Coate Water, or perhaps more accurately around Coate Water, I could hear the desperate calls of a dog owner. The gentleman was understandably concerned at the disappearance of his best friend. I hope he recovers the dog safe and well, because other than reporting its location there wasn't a lot I could have done.

Later I trudged across the grassy hillside of Lawns, in Old Town, a park that was once a the grounds of a manor house. An old woman asked me if I owned a lercher, one of those shag pile greyhound types that are commonly associated with gypsies. One of these days I really am going to have to improve my image. I told I didn't, and she explained that a lercher was wandering around by itself. She's clearly a kindly woman concerned with the welfare of stray dogs, but I can't really see what I stood to gain from running after a very swift dog with heavy pack on my pack. Lerchers are hunting dogs by instinct. I seriously don't think it's going to share a rabbit with me.