Special thanks to Charlotte Sluter and Laura Clouting at the Imperial War Museum & Tim Granshaw, Matt Jones, Andy Annabel and Gerry Jones at Goodwood Aerodrome & John Nichol, RAF Consultant.
This is the tale of a boy called Jack and his grandfather.
Once upon a time Grandpa was a Royal Air Force pilot.
During World War II he flew a Spitfire fighter plane.
Our story is set in 1983. This was a time before the internet and mobile telephones and computer games that could be played for weeks on end. In 1983 Grandpa was already an old man but his grandson Jack was just twelve years old.
This is Jack’s mum and dad. Mum, Barbara, works at the cheese counter in the local supermarket. Dad, Barry, is an accountant.
Raj is the local newsagent.
Miss Verity is the history teacher at Jack’s school.
Detectives Beef and Bone are a crime-fighting duo.
This is the town’s vicar, Reverend Hogg.
This security guard works at the Imperial War Museum in London.
Miss Swine is the matron of the local old folk’s home, Twilight Towers.
Some of the elderly residents there include Mrs Trifle, the Major and the Rear Admiral.
These are some of the nurses who work at Twilight Towers – Nurse Rose, Nurse Daisy and Nurse Blossom.
This is Twilight Towers.
This is a map of the town.
Prologue
O ne day Grandpa began to forget things. It was little things at first. The old man would make himself a cup of tea and forget to drink it. Before long he would have lined up a dozen cups of cold tea on his kitchen table. Or he would run a bath and forget to turn off the taps, flooding his neighbour’s flat downstairs. Or he would leave the house with the express purpose of buying a stamp, but return home with seventeen boxes of cornflakes. Grandpa didn’t even like cornflakes.
Over time, Grandpa started to forget bigger things. What year it was. Whether his long-deceased wife Peggy was alive or not. One day he even stopped recognising his own son.
Most startling of all was that Grandpa completely forgot he was an old age pensioner. The old man had always told his little grandson Jack stories of his adventures in the Royal Air Force all those years ago in World War II. Now these stories became more and more real to him. In fact, instead of just telling these stories, he began living them out. The present faded into scratchy black and white as the past burst into glorious colour. It didn’t matter where Grandpa was, or what he was doing, or whom he was with. In his mind he was a dashing young pilot behind the controls of his Spitfire fighter plane.
All the people in Grandpa’s life found this very difficult to understand.
Except one person.
His grandson Jack.
Like all children the boy loved to play, and it seemed to him that his grandpa was playing.
Jack realised all you had to do was play too.
1
Spam à la Custard
Jack was a child who was happiest alone in his bedroom. A naturally shy boy, he didn’t have many friends. Instead of spending his days playing football in the park with all the other kids from school, he would stay inside assembling his prized collection of model aeroplanes. His favourites were from World War II – the Lancaster bomber, the Hurricane and of course his grandfather’s old plane, the now legendary Spitfire. On the Nazi side, he had models of the Dornier bomber, the Junkers and the Spitfire’s deadly nemesis, the Messerschmitt.
With great care Jack would paint his model planes, then fix them to the ceiling with fishing wire. Suspended in the air, they looked like they were in the middle of a dramatic dogfight. At night, he would stare up at them from his bunk bed and drift off to sleep dreaming he was an RAF flying ace, just like his grandfather once was. The boy kept a picture of Grandpa by his bed. He was a young man in the old black and white photograph. It was taken sometime in 1940 at the height of the Battle of Britain. Grandpa was standing proudly in his RAF uniform.
In