20 September 2001 love of aeroplanes


12:14 The first aeroplane I've seen over the part of London where I live since they ceased to be diverted after the suicide plane attack in the USA. A large jumbo with a red tail fin and white fuselage (containing perhaps 400 people?) As it entered a cloud I saw its own shadow on the cloud very close to it - no more than a wingspan away. The public shock and fear seems to be over. The beauty of flight and clouds and the perpetual sunshine beyond the clouds becomes evident again. And the beauty of it being possible for many to travel to any part of the world has not gone - though it is reduced as fear and cost reduce the number of flights by perhaps a fifth. That is a change of degree but not of kind. My first love was of aeroplanes.