is the famous Red Arrows flying nine Hawk T.1As from their base at Scampton.

The MoD has recently admitted that it is reviewing funding of the team. The annual operating costs  having been quoted as being no more than £20 million.

That surely has to money well spent for both the team's recruiting value and international prestige. The Reds have done nearly 4,000 displays since May 1965 and have been acclaimed world-wide.

Disbanding them would be penny pinching and a national disgrace. Supporters can register their feelings to the Prime Minister on this E-Petition.

Sunday 15th at 5.40pm on Channel 4 TV sees the return of the wonderfully madcap Scrapheap Challenge.

The usual presenters Robert Llewellyn and Lisa Rogers are back with the ninth series of no less than 16 programmes.

The first one is Human Cannonball  with a trio of surfing dudes from Devon and a team of battle  re-enactment enthusiasts from Salisbury.

This will certainly keep me entertained at Sunday tea-time for the next few months. 

The past few days have seen glorious sunny weather here in London and I have enjoyed looking skyward  at aircraft trailing white brush strokes across the sky.

I found this poem, a tanka*, which typifies that completely.

Silver aeroplane - John Foster

Silver aeroplane

Speeds across the summer sky

Leaving in its wake

Trails of vapour: white scribblings

On a page of blue paper.

A tanka* is a Japanese poem based on the haiku (see below) but with two extra lines. So the syllable pattern is now 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. The poem tries to capture the essence of a moment, usually mentioning one of the seasons in some way.

A haiku is a Japanese form of poetry, three lines in total with a 5, 7, 5 syllable structure. 17 syllables in all often writing with an illustration and usually about the seasons. The poem tries to capture a word-picture, a verbal snapshot that echos a moment of beauty.

Sometime early in the new year I did an entry here where I said that I would try to do proper regular, weekly or thereabouts, entries.

Clearly that has not been the case and I offer no excuses for not doing so. This blog has always been the poor relation with regard to entries but I've been reluctant to call it a day.

I may not have done as many entries as I would have liked but I have always read, and often commented on, my friends blogs. Blog friends here, as elsewhere, are important to me and I keep them relatively few deliberately so that I can maintain that contact.

It looks as though entries here will continue to be irregular. My other three active blogs, Flighty, BookBuffs and FlightBuff, are listed as links over on the right under the heading Flight crew should you want to vist them, and perhaps even comment.

Four blogs could be considered excessive but I don't want to stop any of them, or do repeat postings except on rare occasions. It's not generally a case of not having anything to blog about or even not wanting to but more a case of making the time to do so.

My thanks to everyone who does stop by to read this blog, and especially to all of you who comment on the entries. It is very much appreciated.