the cloud walker

You can leave me in the air age if you like

But I'd dearly love to go back to my own time....

Life in the air age, isn't all the brochures say...

Life in the air age, it's too dangerous to stay...

Life in the air age, airships crashing every day into the bay...

Life in the air age, it's all highways in the sky...

Life in the air age, all the oceans have run dry...

Life in the air age, it's grim enough to make a robot cry...

Of the many excursions our family went on in the 1960s in our various old bangers, the trip to Bedford always caused a frisson of excitement. We would be going there to walk by the River Ouse. We would be treated to an ice cream and we could paddle amongst the broken glass in the small paddling pools that were very much a part of life in most towns in those far-off days. We could feed the ducks and swans and I probably carried a copy of the Observer book of Birds or, at least an I-Spy book so I could try to identify some " little brown jobbie" (as Bill Oddie calls them) without the aid of any binoculars.

However, the journey was always travelled hopefully as in Robert Louis Stevenson's words as we would be passing through Cardington. This is a small village on the outskirts of Bedford where two vast buildings made of corrugated steel loomed over the flat landscape. They housed huge dirigibles and barrage balloons from WWII. If we were lucky enough the colossal doors would be open and we could see in to the darkness and maybe catch a glimpse of these elephantine objects. If we were really lucky, one would be out on the field or up in the air near the roadside (on the other side of the fence, obviously!). Such sightings would take my youthful breath away. 

The first of these vast hangars had been built in 1915 as a private venture by the Short brothers. It was designed to house 187 metre dirigibles that were supposed to be used in our air defence but they entered service too late. The company became known as Royal Airship Works and this first hangar - called No 1 Shed - was expanded to 250 metres long. A second hangar was taken down in Norfolk and re-erected next to the first one and called, No 2 Shed unsurprisingly enough. Here work began on the largest aircraft the world had ever seen. The R101 was designed to be a long-haul passenger transporter to the far-flung dusty corners of the British Empire. A second vessel was also constructed in tandem and the R100 later successfully crossed to the USA. However, on its voyage to India in October 1930, the R101 crashed in Picardy, France killing forty eight passengers and crew. Given that the First Class facilities had included a smoking room, it's a surprise that the millions of litres of hydrogen above these aerial smokers had got that far!

The R100 was broken down but the hangars survived as R,A.F. Cardington and were used for the next war. Thousands of tethered barrage balloons ("Blimps") were constructed there. These were the elephantine objects I used to look forward to seeing on our regular trips to Bedford. Eventually No 1 Shed housed weather balloons for the Met Office. More recently one of the hangars is used for filming and several blockbusters have been filmed partly there. One such blockbuster was Batman, The Dark Knight Rises where an ex-pupil of ours was an extra in a scene filmed in the hangar.

It's many years since I travelled that way but the images of those immense metal sheds came back to me yesterday. I don't know why. Near to the village of Cardington there was another village I would occasionally go to later in life. The village of Chellington had all-but disappeared due to the plague, I believe. In the early to mid-seventies the Diocese of St Albans had decided to use the disused church as a kind of youth club. In truth what this really meant was youths from all over Hertfordshire and presumably Bedfordshire were allowed to go there at weekends and help do the place up. I remember going there a few times with various scalliwags and reprobates under the auspices of one Rev. Rob Yeoman who seemed to work in the Stevenage area. It seemed mostly to be an excuse to go away for the weekend and drink and smoke far too much (No 6 and Embassy in case you're wondering) and eat a hearty breakfast on Sundays before taking part in a service. As a life-long agnostic I can safely say that I really was only there for the beer*. 

The only way for most of us to get to Chellington was to hitchhike which is a form of transport that has almost completely disappeared from Great Britain. However, like many in the early 1970s, it was the cheapest way to get around. The journey from Stevenage to Charlton and Harrold, the two existing villages closest to the church at what was Chellington, obviously took us past Cardington. Even as a teenager, passing those two hangars still created that familiar frisson of excitement.

Recently I picked up a book of short stories by Edmund Cooper, a science fiction writer popular in those days. One of my favourite books by him was called The Cloud Walker. It is set at a time after mankind has destroyed itself and a new religion has arisen, one based on the machine wrecker Ned Ludd's followers the Luddites. This means all forms of machine are banned. So, whilst the Church of the Sacred Hammer attempt to keep mankind on a safer path, the protagonist dreams of building a machine that one day will allow him to fly. The punishment for meddling with machines is the death penalty. All this, of course, is a familiar sci-fi trope and was one explored also in the original Planet Of The Apes film too.  I can't remember how it all ends but maybe I'll read it again if I find a copy in a second hand bookshop. I'll no doubt be disappointed but still, it's worth checking out again.

I'm sure that if I drive past the hangars again I'll get that familiar feeling of excitement I got as a young lad. I may drive by one day soon as Mrs Dave and I are about to start travelling around the country more in full Ghost Rider** fashion in our new motorhome. I'm hoping to stop off at various brown signs and back roads of the country to explore parts of forgotten Britain. 

Meanwhile, the images of the Cardington dirigibles, Edmund Cooper's dystopic vision of Britain, my pathetic attempts at being a young Christian and Bill Nelson's lyrics quoted above have all mixed themselves together into a strange map of an Old Weird Britain that didn't really exist outside of my mind.

* Ind Coope breweries used to advertise Double Diamond beer in a series of tv adverts in the early 1970s, each ending with that phrase. This also explains the use of the phrase in the lyrics of Hungarian Rhapsody by Fairport Convention on Rosie.

** A book I read about modern nomads in the USA.