Life above the clouds..

When I joined Aer Lingus and started training to be an air hostess I had never been in an aircraft of any description before. Our training flight was my first flight and I wasn't the only one, it was first time flying for most of the others too. That day two girls were selected by our training officer to serve the rest of us snack trays, tea/coffee/sandwiches and we all sat back and enjoyed the ride. A quick trip around the Eastcoast of Ireland and then back home again to the airport. It was all great fun .But then that about described life as air hostesses -  or flight attendants - in those days.  The travel, the perks, the glamorous life flying in and out of cities, with stopovers now and then in Paris or Rome, more often in London and Birmingham when we visited the West End or the Bullring. Sometime we were based a whole week in Cork flying to and from London, but wherever our roster sent us from week to week we were always on the move, never on the ground for long - never a dull moment either!

But the most exciting experience for me  came when I trained for the Boeings and made my supernumerary flight to New York just before Christmas.  That drive from Kennedy to Manhattan, sweeping down into the city with the uneven jumble of towering skyscrapers showing up to our right and all lit up against the night sky, was an unforgettable and magical sight. Straightaway I loved America although to begin with it took some getting used to, the faster paced life, the abrasive-tongued assistants in the stores, the jostling New Yorkers on the baking summer streets .

When I wrote my first novel 'Up Up and Away' I really enjoyed revisiting in memory my time on the Atlantic. In fiction my heroine Kay Martin followed in my hesitant, naive footsteps, getting caught halfway across the busy New York street when the  'Walk' sign had already changed to 'Don't Walk', thrown into tongue-tied confusion when challenged by a big, red-faced
Irish cop on  rearing horseback who kindly held up traffic with a majestic hand to allow the embarrassed cailin scuttle shamefacedly on across to the other side. 'Ah, you're over from Ireland I can tell!.' he roared in a broad Kerry accent. 'Ah, Go on let yeh, and remember the  next time.'   Like myself, Kay was fooled by the pilots practical jokes and really believed the Captain, as they sat waiting in the hotel foyer for the arrival of the pickup taxis to take them to the airport, that the huge laundry baskets being carried out of the elevators were full of suicides.  That much at least was autobiographical but all the rest now - the romance with the dark-haired, devastatingly attractive married pilot, Captain Graham Pender...  Ah now,
on that subject my lips are sealed.  Go ahead and read it for yourself and draw  your own conclusions!  
Up Up and Away is available on Kindle