CURLY:
We called her 'Tiny',
And we loved her like anything.
We waltzed her about
For a couple of years,
Showing her paces
And bending the ears of the bigwigs.
"Not much future on the military side,
But we could run a hell of an airline..."
I was Third Officer now,
A qualified pilot with a larger size in hats,
Twenty-five, twenty-six odd,
And finding the world an excellent place...

There now, I've not introduced myself...
McLeod, George McLeod...
Flight Lieutenant, Royal Air Force,
Late of the Imperial Airship Service...
But everyone calls me 'Curly'...
And Curly likes to fly.

I wanna fly...
I wanna fly...
I wanna fly...
I wanna fly...
I wanna fly...
I wanna fly...

Up towards the clouds
Of a cold, grey autumn,
'Til we're bumping our heads
On their dull blue bellies.
Then we're suddenly lost
In a featureless, white fog,
No sense of motion.
Upwards 'till the light turns gold
And the veils of mist rip back,
And she leaps like a breaching whale
Into a perfect dome of brilliant blue
Full of dazzling light...

Up, 'till the clouds below us
Are a level plain of radiant white
With a hundred mile horizon...

And I'm flying a cloud;
No cakewalk, I can tell you.
Damn tricky work,
But I'm lighter than air,
And I'm part of the sky...

And we're slow enough
To watch the birth of a cloud,
Budding and swelling
From a tiny shred of vapour
'Til it billows and boils up,
Towering high above us:
A glowing mountain in our path...

As hard-edged, clean and solid
As a slice of the Alps,
Its blinding white snow-peaks
Picked out in rose-pink,
Chasms and precipices
Shaded in luminous pearl.
The ship now dwarfed
By a vast and pure perfection,
And only as we ram the cliff
Does the dream dissolve
In a grubby, white fog...
How shall I put this?
Clouds are rather good...

You can't compare this
With the thrusting rush
Of the hard little 'plane.
Only stays up there by sheer brute force,
Aggressive little beast.
No time to look around;
No way to stretch your legs;
Can't call that flying.
You just point it and go...

Not like us.
We fly by the favour of every cold front
And each ridge of high pressure.
We need the indulgence
Of each anti-cyclone;
Our ships are too fragile
To bully the weather.
Each voyage is an intimate dialogue
With the wind and the sun,
A delicate negotiation.
Can't quite say why this should be
A better arrangement,
But, twisting my arm,
I would say it's a matter of grace.
A dirigible is a graceful idea
And a graceful thing,
And it flies by the grace of the sky...

And, when we put her back in her box,
I'd feel heavy,
As if I was chained down to the grass:
Two dimensional,
Like a photo, flat on a table.
And everything looked square
And angular.
After Tiny, everything seemed antique;
Cars and buildings
All looked like period stuff.
Yes, in that Year of Grace 1921,
She looked like something
From another planet...