Mustang Maiden Melee

Sunday 20th September: Bright strong sunshine today. I got the washing on the line and the boys and I went off to church. Today was the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Waimate Girls' Brigade so the church was full of families we don't usually see there. We had some lunch and then headed out to the new house to join Steve (who had been flying his aeroplane in the morning).
We spent the afternoon working hard in the garden. Steve lit a bonfire in the veggie garden and I found plenty of twigs and sticks in the undergrowth that could go on there. I also moved 6 cabbage plants from the garden in town to the newly prepared patch in Whitneys Road. Hopefully they won't mind the move.
Our friends Guy and Kathryn and daughter Sarah dropped in with a box of scones so we enjoyed a tea break with them in the sunshine.
Guy wanted to give his Mustang its maiden flight. We were at his birthday party in June where he was given the plane (see blog for June 20th) , and he hasn't found the courage to fly it yet. We arranged to meet him in one of his paddocks, only 5 minutes from the house. While we were waiting for him, Steve found time to fly his plane, doing loop-the-loops and other tricks over our head.
Guy was obviously nervous going through the pre-flight checks. The first attempt made it a short distance across the paddock before it ploughed itself nose-down into the ground. Guy, Ralph and Steve rushed to its aid and got it ready for the next attempt. This one took off well but then zoomed round to the left (there's probably some technical term for this), clipped the fence and crashed. The air was pretty blue for a while but everyone helped pick up the pieces, literally. It was nearly 6pm by now so I left with the boys to go and cook tea. The boys and I agreed that a chicken can fly for longer than Guy can keep his planes in the air. He had exactly the same accident with an earlier plane except that that one swept round and ploughed into the back of his own car!! Steve reckons a few tubes of glue might be able to recover the mess.
Home for tea, then the boys were off to bed. Steve and I watched a film described in the listings book as "compelling". Presumably that relates to the fact that the characters switched from Hebrew to German (both with subtitles) with occasional English with a strong accent, so it certainly required a ot of concentration to keep up with it.