CURLY:-
Just at this point, Wall Street
Ran out of gas and crashed,
And the Roaring Twenties
Slumped to the ground
For the Depression.
Now there'd be precious little cash
To spare for Aviation,
And the cost of one airship
Buys a squadron of planes. [bad word] turned into
war to the knife,
But we managed to get into the air first,
In an orchestrated frenzy of publicity...

Within a month a million trippers
Came to Cardington to see her,
As she floated at the head of a mast
As tall as Nelson's Column.
The charabancs stacked up, three deep,
Along the Bedford Road,
To watch us joy-riding
The Great and the Good.
They didn't care about
The other ship in Yorkshire;
She didn't get her picture in the papers.
Yes, the R. 100 was a mystery...

And our ship was so beautiful,
creature of grace,
An iridescent giant fish
Gliding, calm and solid,
Above us small things in the mud,
Unimaginably huge in the sky,
Reflecting the winter light
And booming gently at us...
The choir of engines
Resonating, from hot throats,
The big chord...

Suzie had shown me paintings
By some new mad artists
Who painted their dreams.
This airship looked like that:
Something impossible,
Surrealistic vision...
What's that, old boy?..
Me, romantic?
Every time, with [bad word] on!..

Behind the plate-glass windows
Of his promenade deck
Lord Thomson, the Air Minister,
Looked calmly down.
He was riding high;
The papers were full of him,
Him and his magic airship.
An army Brigadier
And an old crony of the P.M.,
Who wanted to have him in the Government,
But the voters wouldn't touch him.