Ian Tillotson

Paradise Mislaid Ian Tillotson

Ian Tillotson pursued and embraced his period of National Service in the Royal Air Force between June 1958 and June 1960. He made the most of it. This account is a ramble through those two years, and an attempt to restore to life and memory some of the moments, the occasions, the situations and the events that contributed much to the awakening of a timid youth from rural Yorkshire. Each chapter describes an individual aspect of life in that distant place and time. It tells of the early terrors of initiation and introduction, and of their gradual metamorphosis into the more subtle aptitudes of avoidance. It describes the all-weather delights of life on a large and unruly campsite, and of the many and diverse contrivances that could be employed by the more resourceful to make daily life a little less uncomfortable.