Last week I wrote about a story that developed from a single tweet I had read and acted upon. This week further emphasised the power of social media for me because it was me doing the tweeting.
On Saturday I was a guest of friends at an event at Stowe School. This year marks the school’s 90th anniversary and the weekend saw Stowe’s Speech Day blessed with some fabulous weather. I didn’t know the school that well, having been there only a couple of times some years ago while covering the charity ball which used to take place before the British Grand Prix next door at Silverstone. The young students who were being honoured for their academic, sporting or social achievements received their prizes from Prince Michael of Kent and had clearly been drilled in correct etiquette concerning dress, and behaviour. The bows and curtseys might have been a little self-conscious and hurried but there was no mistaking the pride of the students in each other or of their families as each prize was handed out.
After the ceremony and some inspirational speechmaking – including one by HRH himself – the formality of the day gave way to something far more relaxed. Picnic lunches broke cover for the hundreds of families attending and an ice cream van which had set up for business under trees nearby began to service an apparently endless line of teenage (and adult) customers. At this point the highlight of the day’s events, for some, took place. Roaring out of the sun and across a brilliantly blue sky, the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight gave everyone watching a superb display of some exceptionally rare machinery. Three times the Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster warbirds flew overhead, circled and returned, accompanied by rapturous applause and cheering from the ground. Then, after just a few minutes of display they were gone, echoed by the sound of the Dambusters March, performed by the Virtuosi GUS Brass Band from the top of the steps of the Portico on the back of the main building. The march was used as the theme music for the 1955 film “The Dambusters” – now it is synonymous with 617 Squadron’s audacious and pivotal bouncing bomb mission from 70 years ago.
I’m not sure precisely what it was about these machines from a previous era, but to see all three together in formation overhead stirred in me what can only be described as something basic. With the tragic and senseless event in Woolwich from just a few days previously dominating the media, here was a display of something that aroused all manner of patriotic pride – and unadulterated, raw emotion. The simple truth that many of the crews who took part in Operation Chastise were barely older than the children I’d just seen receiving their prizes wasn’t lost on me either as the Memorial Flight swept overhead. Or that Drummer Lee Rigby was less than a decade out of school when he was brutally murdered outside his barracks. On our streets.
Most of us these days have a camera with us, thanks to the plethora of gadgets festooning the average smartphone. With mine I was able to snap the flight, edit the picture (there’s an app for that) and post the result on Twitter almost as the aircraft disappeared from view. To date that picture has been retweeted almost 50 times – including once by the pilot of the Spitfire and also by the Flight itself (@RAFBBMF). A great picture? Or heartfelt solidarity for our services personnel on land, sea and in the air, wherever they are?
The latter, I hope.