P/O. Prune replies

Sir,

Being no end of a motoring sport myself I was tickled to read about myself in a review of a book by an author type—Terence C. Willett, and about you saying that he said that I was like distinguished racing drivers or something to that effect and how my war-time flying influenced a lot of pilots. Actually I’m still a little tender about the cracks which people make about my flying days, after all you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs and I’d still like to know who the w.c. was who sent me that Iron Cross “for having destroyed so many Allied aircraft,” however, as I say, I was rather cheered to read that someone thought I was like a racing driver and here’s an odd coincidence. I was reading all this on my way back in the train from Surrey County Court and it cheered me up no end because the old beak there had had the crust to say that I was a menace to other road users, this was simply because just after Christmas, and immediately before I went into hospital, I’d been on my way to a party and some thoughtless type with a car-load of kids was dawdling down the A3 and I saw my chance when he slowed down for a bend but as I was actually passing him over a bit of a hump in the road some other idiot had to be coming in the opposite direction and I hit him. This was a hell of a pity because I heard afterwards that it was a very good party, but the point is this—in the ambulance a young Surrey copper said: “Who do you think you are—Stirling Moss?” Well actually I’ve rather more hair than old S.M. but you can see what the copper meant, he obviously admired the way I’d taken that bend, although it’s a fact that Stirling and his oppos. have the edge on us road-using keen types and haven’t a lot of idle bods hogging the road in front of them at some odd gait as, say, sixty. Your mention of my driving gave me a kick because the beak at Court had been much more tetchy than the ones in Hereford, Essex, Cambridge, Berks, and Hampshire, although it was through them that I lost a lot of driving hours in past years. Oddly enough, I’ve had more beak-trouble on what could be called my own stamping ground—Sussex, although l’m tired of telling the beaks here that we Prunes have lived here for centuries and I’m simply not taking any sort of chance when I give my motor full boost round a bend because I know the roads so well and there’s hardly ever anything coming round the corner in the opposite direction, well hardly ever.

Anyway thanks for the mention Ed. and forgive the old signature being on the shaky side, the old starboard wing is only just out of the sling; some clot in a lorry in Tunbridge Wells hit my offside door and broke the arm when I was getting out for a pre-prandial pot the other week.

Prune Parva, Sussex. – Percy Prune, (R.A.F. de-mobbed).