When I was a boy at infant school, paper airplanes meant pages ripped from an exercise book and folded into a crude dart. Often we’d write some words on the paper before folding, hoping anyone we hit with the plane would read them. Usually these would be phrases using the rudest words we knew (‘bogey’ was popular). The plane would be aimed at other boys: our greatest enemy or best friend. The distinction between enemy and friend was often blurred in those days — your worst enemy would often be your best friend by the following morning — and in any case the navigation on these paper darts wasn’t exactly predictable… and that could prove embarrassing on those occasions where the message in the dart was aimed at a girl you liked.
P51 Mustang … sort of
At breakfast time this week I’ve been helping my son make paper airplanes, which are a craze at his school right now. I’m glad to hear that writing messages inside is still popular, but kids these days expect something more than darts. I blame special effects on the telly.
When I was my son’s age, Doctor Who faced off against actors in rubber suits. The teleport special effect for the excellent Blake’s 7 involved hitting a cymbal and drawing an outline around the teleportees. Now special effects have to look convincing, apparently, and that applies to planes too.
Here are the paper planes we made this morning a DC-9, P-51 Mustang, and an A4 Skyhawk done up in RAAF colours. I had a quick nerdy look on the net and I think A4s were only used by the Royal Australian Navy, not the RAAF. Does anyone into their Australian military want to tell me my plane’s wrong?
DC-9 and A4 Skyhawk
In more writerly news, the editor for The Reality War Book2 (his name’s James Kelker… Hi, James!) is writing up his notes, so not long now before that will be published.
And finally, here’s a gratuitous shot of some Lego we made last weekend. If there appears to be cracks between the bricks, that’s because the castle was besieged and its walls breached many times 
Fantastic.