Limitless: The Autobiography by Peake Tim

Author:Peake, Tim [Peake, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473580992
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2020-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Larkhill rising, effects of controls, and the helicopter in the garden

So it was back to work at Middle Wallop – but not to live this time. All the married quarters there were full, so Rebecca and I were offered a place 13 miles up the road in the Royal Artillery barracks at Larkhill. This, though inconvenient in some ways, had its advantages. For one thing, those barracks are in a very nice spot, right on the edge of Salisbury Plain. All that open space suited both of us, and also Foss our rescue dog, who had returned with us from America. My morning runs with Foss took me up the approach to the monument at Stonehenge, then out onto the plain and back – a decent backdrop, we seemed to agree.

For another thing, Larkhill gave us a generous detached three-bedroom Army house in a quiet and green cul-de-sac. What Army houses may be said to lack in style they more than make up for in robustness of construction, as I discovered when I went into town to buy a drill in order to put up some pictures. The guy behind the counter in the hardware shop eyed the bog-standard tool I had chosen and asked me where I was living.

‘Larkhill,’ I told him.

‘Hmm,’ he replied. ‘I know those quarters. Built with double-baked bricks. You’ll never get that through those walls.’

He advised me to upgrade to something more on the scale of an AK-47 machine gun. Which I did, and then left, wondering if I’d just been had. Not at all. A machine gun was exactly what it took. If I’d used the tool I first chose, I’d still be drilling holes for those pictures now.

As I pointed out to Rebecca, there was another reason to be glad we were in Larkhill. It was well placed for Boscombe Down, the home of the Empire Test Pilots’ School and a big military aviation test site – and that might be handy eventually. This was looking ahead a fair while, I knew, but my heart was already set. All that detailed work on Apache in America had entirely persuaded me that what I wanted to become was a test pilot. Flying aircraft every day, seeking to understand what they could do, pushing them to their limits, helping to adapt them and improve them … It was the dream job as far as I was concerned.

In the Army, of course, you mostly do what you’re told, but there are moments also when you can make your preferences clear, and I let it be known what mine were as soon as we got back from the States. To my delight, the intimation from on high was that it could be made to happen. I would be needed for a couple of years of instructing on Apache first, but after that I would be able to go for test pilot selection.

Rebecca started working as a fundraiser for the charity Hope and Homes for Children, which works to get children out of institutionalised care and into families.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.