So, this morning as I was sitting in a staff meeting at work, I looked over at a bookshelf in the room and found a giant book called “The Blue Book” from 1976. Basically this was one of those “Who’s Who” books that they used to publish every year (and still are, I suppose, though why is beyond me.)
I opened it up to see just what kind of content it actually had in it, and the page that I happened to open it up to just happened to be the one with Sir Edward Chilton’s biography in it. This was kind of surprising to me, or at least serendipitous, because I have read an awful lot of history concerning the Battle of Britain. I remember Chilton’s name popping up in at least one or two books that I read as a kid (either it was in The Dam Busters or Reach for the Sky by Paul Brickhill.)
Just wanted to relate that little moment to the world.
Actually, there was another moment during the same meeting where someone spoke the word invalid, which got me thinking about a story my mom told me of when she went on vacation in Ireland. Apparently she had to to go the bathroom, and when she went inside, there was a stall with a sign on it stating “invalid”. She puzzled over this, wondering what was wrong with the stall, and used a different one. Only after she had left the bathroom did she realize the other meaning (and pronunciation) of the word “invalid“.