Biggin Hill is looking lovely today. The weather has been warm in the past few days and there’s been so much work done here in recent months – there’s a new runway, air-raid shelters and even lots more trees, now in beautiful full green leaf, that have been planted to help try to camouflage the place a bit better. I’ve been doing some thinking, and thought that I’d write some of it down.

There’s no doubt that a lot of the other engine mechanics, or fitters, and ground crew here at Biggin Hill believe that I’m something of an oddity. Simply because I don’t smoke, I play the violin and only talk when I think I’ve got something to say that other people might actually want to hear. They find it strange that I make small clockwork toys in my spare time. But I also like to go down to the pub with them – the Old Jail House usually –and a few of the lads are very friendly with me; but even the friendly ones sometimes give me a bit of a strange look as if to say, ‘that Frank may know what he’s talking about when it comes to engines, but otherwise he may as well be Vincent Van Gogh with his ear cut off.’

I think that’s why I became a mechanic in the first place: engines make so much more sense to me than human beings do. Music too, I understand, but I most often find other people baffling. I don’t understand why this war started, or the last one. And I’m certain that the people that started them won’t be standing on the front line. I don’t have any quarrel with German people, but I’m happy to do my job, which is to make sure the plane I look after is the best not only in the squadron but on the entire aerodrome.

I realise that I’ve come a long way since the days when I was a car mechanic, just a couple of years ago – these Rolls Royce Merlin engines that I look after now are wonderful pieces of machinery and I’d rather be doing this than anything else.  It makes me laugh to think about those little car engines that I used to spend my days poring over in the garage in Solihull – the Austins, Morrisses, Sunbeams and Talbots, when I now spend all my time with a 1130 horse power Rolls Royce engine. Though there’s been many a pilot who’s come to me to ask if I could take a look at their sports car. And I generally oblige them, unless they’re particularly rude (which a number of pilots are to the likes of us).

I’ve been with this pilot called Sheridan for a few weeks now. He’s how I expect pilots to look – tall, broad-shouldered and athletic with that special sheen that seems to come with money and the flush of youth. The other pilots call him Sherry but I prefer plain old Mr Sheridan, though he insisted I call him George. He’s got another nickname too that the other single pilots pull his leg about – ‘newly married’ – as he just got married to his wife Jane this spring. I have to say that I like the chap. He’s not stand-offish like many of the other pilots. He treats me and the rest of the ground crew with respect. He even buys us beer! I’m only a few years older than him – 31 to his 23 – but already I find that I worry about him like I imagine I might feel if I had a son of my own.He seems so young (though he has a wife already, which is more than what I’ve got!) and eager, but I’ve already seen quite a few decent men like him not come back. I just hope that he won’t be next.