In 1972 I was an undergraduate working in a library re-shelving books and there came into my hands a book with a picture of an elegant glider on the dust jacket. I had no knowledge of flying beyond some modeling that I had done as a boy but I took the book home to read. I recall thinking that the idea of flying gliders cross country, on invisible fountains of rising air, was as close to magic as one could get in life and that I just had to learn to do this. The book was Understanding Gliding by Derek Piggott.

Many years and gliding kilometers later I met him at Lasham and I told him that story over a lunch arranged by a mutual friend. He laughed and remarked that there were few copies of that old book left. I told him that the sense of magic still hadn't left me. He said, "It never does".

He was a gentleman. And a life well lived.

Roy