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Private Notes
A cigarette holder dropped by Queen Mary when she came to tea, a fragment of wallpaper that may have killed Napoleon, a pet chameleon, a book bound in a murderer's skin.... Lucinda Lambton conjures up curiosities from the dark corners of museums and collections throughout the land. With her irrepressible sense of fun, she tells the story of the eccentrics who gathered these treasures.
Riding the Iron Horse - a roaring, full-throated Harley Davidson - across the open prairie is an American dream. Fifty thousand leather-clad bikers make romance come true as they converge, from all over the States and beyond, on Sturgis, a sleepy farming town in South Dakota.
The 48th annual Black Hills Motorcycle Rally brings together weekenders on little Japanese bikes and hard-core, all-American Wild Ones. It's a raucous summer week of racing, drinking, partying and generally raising hell.
'The Sons of Silence' is one of the many bikers' chapters here. The Sons believe in America, freedom, white power, and loyalty to each other. They've got their own chaplain; women are not members, but 'property'. Rebels against convention, they live by their own strict code - 'We are the Sons of Silence until death'.
The public image is glamorous - warm smiles and crisp uniforms, good looks and faraway places. No wonder thousands of hopefuls apply each year to become air stewardesses or stewards.
What happens to the few who succeed?
Helen MacLeod , from Dunfermline, and Neil Dover , from Durham, both aged 21, are two of the latest batch of 15 trainees to join British Airways. They've hardly ever travelled before. Now there's a demanding six-week course and a lot to learn - how to put out fires and push people down
chutes, how to deal with difficult passengers and flirtatious ones. What if there's a hijack - or a heart attack? How much are the duty frees in
Japanese yen?
If they pass their tests, Helen and Neil can look forward to a nerve-racking fledgling flight on a 747. After that - the excitement, insecurity and hard physical work of being 'waiters in the sky'.
