I knew Ferryman very well, long before my flying days. He was an old acquaintance of my father. He once had a crane hire business where they were lifting the John Player launch into the Trent at Gunthorpe and they dropped it from height onto the bank! We had our wedding reception at his pub, the Springfield, on the Epperstone bypass, just after he had converted his house into a pub. He used to fly a helicopter from his back field using petrol from beer barrels he filled at the nearby garage. He was the instructor who sent me on my first night solo with the reassuring words ‘I’m too f*****g sca