The Illusion..

We had a different instructor taking the place of the absent Squadron Leader; let's call him The Illusionist; a (relatively) young, chipper, ex-RAF pilot with a southern eastern accent. He appeared a lot more energetic than the other instructors; probably owing to his age.

He did a few straw pole tests to gauge the thoughts of the class; asking whether we found the work overwhelming and whether we were beginning to feel inundated by it.

The Illusionist
- "Right, well at least now you know that you are all in the shit together! Whereas before you thought it was just you in the shit"

This was somewhat reassuring; however what he said next was one of his more salient points were.

The Illusionist
- "Guys, well don't worry about it. Right now you feel like it is all really difficult, but give it a few weeks and it will pass. You will get into the rhythm and you will start to feel fine about it. A new bunch will join and you will see them and think 'Shit, another bunch of lambs to the slaughter'..!"

He then shared with us his philosophy of "The Illusion of Being a Pilot"..

The Illusionist
- "You come here and you will learn 14,000 useless facts over the course of your time here. You will work bloody hard and you will get to the end. Then, when you have a job as a pilot, that's the illusion. Why do you want to be pilots..? Let's cut the chase; it's so that you can have a fat wallet, a nice house and the first pick of the airhostesses..!"

"So, The Illusion; when you walk through the airport, you walk as slow as you want, the plane isn't going anywhere without you..! You walk like this [Then he strides across the classroom with a cocky sauntered gait]. Children, mothers and everyone else will see you walk past and think 'Wow, that man is really clever, he's a pilot'."

"You never see a pilot with cheap sunglasses, they always have the expensive ones; the Oakleys, the Raybans or the Serengetis. You would never see a pilot with cheap £1.50 sunglasses from Boots. It just doesn't fit the image"

"What we do isn't difficult, the difficult part is here. After that is the fun"..