Another Day Like Yesterday
By Guy Clapshaw
Catch Phrase Media
Reviewed by Jim Sullivan
Another Day Like Yesterday is a lively memoir of 45 years of flying by aeroplane pilot Guy Clapshaw.
Now in his 80s, Clapshaw started his career with the RAF after the war and then flew with the fledgling Air New Zealand from the 1960s until retirement.
During all this time he noted down details about the characters he met and worked with, always with the idea they might come together as a “good book one day”.
Indeed, they have.
With swags of well-remembered conversations and loads of technical details, Another Day Like Yesterday provides an insider’s take on the sometimes glamorous but often frustrating life of an airline pilot.
Rather than a strictly chronological account, the book provides topic-based chapters and each has a fascinating tale to tell.
Ever wondered how pilots seem so relaxed about flying in and out of the notoriously windy Wellington airport?
“Wellington — to hell and back” is the chapter which explains the “reverse flare landing technique” adopted when DC-8 planes replaced the Electras.
Clapshaw’s descriptive powers enliven the narrative, as with his account of his instructor’s early attempt at demonstrating the technique: “The nose wheel hit first, followed by the main wheels, followed by noises of breaking crockery, exclamations from the front gallery, and a smell of burning rubber from below the floor.”
There are stories of shenanigans at layovers at hot spots like Kings Cross in Sydney and over-enthusiastic Ministry of Agriculture staff saturating the cockpit with insecticide spray and how the pilots got their revenge.
The sheer routine of flying has its brighter moments and Clapshaw captures them, as with the tale of calling Charleville in Queensland for a weather report.
After a long delay the earphones crackled, “Gidday, Kiwi, sorry, I was in the dunny when yer called, quite a pleasant day here, just a light wind mainly from the south.”
While dozens of similar anecdotes keep Another Day Like Yesterday sparkling, the overall narrative is a first-rate pilot’s eye view of aviation history in our part of the world during the decades when plane travel boomed and passengers began to wonder about the lifestyle of these confident characters flying the machine.
Thanks to Guy Clapshaw’s assiduous note taking and anecdotal flair, they can now read all about it with great pleasure and know a great deal more about what’s actually happening at the sharp end next time they fly.
Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.