My Flying Diary

An alternative or, hopefully, complementary lecture to my Talk on the MALDIVE ISLANDS deals with my eight years world-wide travel as an airline stewardess. I could well term the talk "Fasten your seat belts we are off round the world in forty minutes".

I start from the beginning - from those eight arduous weeks of Training School and the narration proceeds with many stopovers to my final Touch Down and marriage.

A good stewardess must be a combination of mother, cook, nurse, confidante, comforter and teacher. My miscellany is rich in recollections. The care of mothers and young children, unending babies bottles to mix up, the "Lollypop Specials" or unaccompanied children.

Horrors such as Robert Terrible, aged nine, with his live mouse and wild pillow fights in the middle of the night on the plane. The cranks. The "not understood by wife" business men. The bewildered grannies. The petrified first time flyers. The diplomats, film stars and foreign potentates. All colour and creeds. The food from cocktails to curries to kosher. The currencies. The languages, from Swahili to Spanish. And places, from Sydney to San Francisco, from Tokyo to Rio.

This is a real peep behind the scenes of what goes on. Inaugural flights to demonstrate new aircraft. A first round-the-world Pacific flight.

The freezing winter conditions of Canada. The almost unendurable heat of Africa. Luxury bunks. Bunched by bones. Silver service. Plastic plates. Bridge, backgammon, bedtime stories! Sick and elderly, hale and hearty. Young and old. And for stewardesses from five-star hotels to simple rest houses. Off duty frolics!

I was skiing high up in the Mountains,  it's me water skiing in the afternoon.

This large Hotel was where all the rich & glamorous came to during the UK winter.

A fund of stories and incidents, ending with the ultimate desire of all 'flying girls' A ROYAL FLIGHT.
This one with a slight difference! Call Me!

In AUSTRALIA, what a time!