Airships

"The transport of the future"

When working at Cosmopolitan magazine in the heart of Soho on Carnaby Street (not what it used to be), I would often look out over the throbbing heart of the British Empire to be greeted by the most magnificent of sights. A silver airship, catching the last rays of afternoon sunshine, high above the West End. The office would all stop throwing tantrums, teasing their hair and bullying the postroom boy to look up at the magnificent vessel gliding through the stratosphere.

It truly looked like something from another age, not the past but very much the future. They came from a time when everything was possible, the world was opening up to a bright, bold, highly infammable horizon!

It was pointed out to me that they were actually being used more for advertising than any practical means of transport. If so, they succeeded because I was sold, sold on the idea that I have seen the future and the future is airships (albeit with GoodYear printed on the side). That being said it is now some 20 years on and I'm still waiting to board my own personal airship to take me to work.

Stop! Wait! I've got it. Perhaps everyone in England is travelling by Airship and it's just that Australia is even further behind Blighty than I thought.

Now there's a thought that somehow just won't go away!