Dear Spike,

I am not sure you will read this. This is me, Ben. We grew up together. Your mum does not think you will remember anything. You cannot forget this and I have to tell you. You need to know everything.

We were just little boys when we met. You held onto your Mums leg and hid your face in her purple skirt while she talked to Z. We played ‘Bionic Man’ mostly arguing about who got to be Steve Austin before running through the long wet grass imagining. Our shoes soaked through with numb feet we would climb the sycamore tree. It had to be done in slow motion to the accompaniment of our own sound effects. As we got higher the branches got thinner. The chill salt wind numbed our fingers and toes. The branches pulling back and forth. Do you remember looking through the thinning autumn leaves towards Culdrose, the air base?

Culdrose was always seething with machines. Constantly buzzing, thrumming or screaming through the sky. At any time of the day we only had to look up and we would always find a machine in our sky. It was so exciting when one of the biggest machines would hover a stones throw away. The wind from the rotors blasting the hair back from my face. Always over the sea or amongst the hard granite cliffs along the coast. The winchman would squat by the open door and watch his charge drop down the line to the land or sea below.