WHAT has happened to all the low-flying that used to agitate Tynedale folk so deeply not so very long ago, particularly those of us fortunate enough to live in the North Tyne?

Not a week would go by without the sky being filled with screaming jets of all nations, skimming the rooftops with deadly intent, setting off burglar alarms and occasionally spraying the washing of irate housewives with surplus Avigas.

They sometimes flew so low you could look into the cockpit, seeing helmeted heads and glowing dials before they flashed away, followed a micro-second later by another camouflaged killing machine.

It was always interesting to see aircraft from America, for you just knew the pilots would be throwbacks to the days of the gunfighters of the old west, where a man had to do what a man had to do…

There was an infamous occasion when the occupants of an American aircraft on exercise at Otterburn Ranges lost their bearings and unleashed their dummy bomb load on Swinburne Quarry, where workers were surprised to find the fins of two dummy bombs protruding from the gravel heap.

There were also incidences of British aircraft getting too close for comfort, notably in January 1990, when a Tornado and a Jaguar from the RAF touched over Riding Mill, showering traffic on Styford Bridge on the A68 with debris.

Despite the dramas, and the frequent complaints to the authorities about the disturbance caused by the airborne assassins, the Ministry of Defence was always adamant that low flying was necessary to train pilots for battle readiness, and that the wide, open spaces of Tynedale were the best place to put them through their paces.

But over the years, the skies have grown ominously quiet, with the only roaring engines coming from the packs of motor cycles hurtling their way up to Kielder, followed by the clatter of the air ambulance picking up the pieces.

I have always been fascinated by aeroplanes, ever since the days my father worked for Avro, making Vulcan bombers on the outskirts of Manchester.

We were often allowed to visit the factory to see the most beautiful aircraft ever take to the skies, all in shimmering white rather than the more usual camouflage.

The stunning howl of those Rolls Royce Olympus engines turned the brain to jelly and made you deaf for up to half an hour afterwards, but I wouldn’t have missed it for a gold clock.

My father was something of an industrial magpie, his bait bag fuller on the way out that when he went in with smuggled metal, rivets, glue and plastic sleeving for all purposes.

When we acquired a hamster, he refused to buy a cage, but made one out of Vulcan offcuts.

It worked well for several weeks, but one morning, the hamster somehow managed to muscle the door open and make a bold bid for freedom.

Unfortunately, the hamster cage was located directly above the fish tank and the poor little creature spent the night swimming around frantically, as the resident catfish tugged hungrily at its wildly pumping legs. The catfish were the eventual winners of that little duel, and the hamster cage became a storage unit for pipes and tobacco.

The aircraft fascination of my youth also extended to models, not just the balsa wood gliders that came free with the Beezer, but also the incredibly detailed plastic models produced by toy makers Airfix.

My brother and I had an enormous collection, and learned more about the war from them than we ever did from school books.

As well as Spitfires and Hurricanes, Messerschmitt 109s and Stukas, and even the Mitsubishi Zero, we had lesser- known craft, such as the Bristol Beaufighter, the Boulton Paul Defiant and a whole squadron of flying boats, such as the Short Sunderland, the Fairey Swordish and the Supermarine Walrus.

They were painstakingly built and painted, not always to Airfix specifications, and came with a quantity of glue in a transparent plastic pod, which I remain convinced was specially made to stick only to fingers and clothing.

We played with our little toy planes until well into our teens, when they made capital targets for our air rifles!