BATTLE OF BRITAIN DAY

I haven't had an internet connection all day, BTs fault, so a trip to India got me the instructions how to put it right and a phone call to grandson James meant he came and got me connected again. No way am I standing on a bar stool to reach the hub on top of the cupboard!!

But today - it's the date on which the Battle of Britain is usually remembered, 15th September. I was a child during the battle and can remember watching the dogfights in this incredibly blue sky with contrails scribbled across it like random scrawls on a piece of paper.

Afterwards we children would go out into the street and collect the empty cartridge cases. For us, as youngsters, it was something that was 'normal' during our summer holiday from school but our parents must have felt very differently.

But there was no television, newspapers were monitored for information, radios were more generally owned but not in my house, we didn't have a radio all during the war...so it meant people were not as well informed as we are these days and authority wasn't questioned as it is today.

Once you've heard a Spitfire's Merlin engine you just can't mistake it. You can be sitting indoors one minute then falling over yourself with eagerness to get outside to watch the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight go over. This year I've only seen the Lancaster bomber, not the fighters. It's incredible, and moving, to see planes from more than half a century ago flying over your own house.