Slings And Arrows...

The picture above is a detail from a picture I took last night from my terrace. It depicts Lincolnshire's own Red Arrows flying over New York Harbor. I got a much less detailed view than I'd have liked, meaning that what you see looks somewhat like a prop from Blow Up.

I probably should have made more of an effort to get down to South Beach, Staten Island, which was apparently the best place to watch it, though my opinions of that Borough's beaches are well known.

I could even, at least, have tried to watch it from the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, which probably offered a pretty spiffy view. But alas I was on the phone to my mother in Lincolnshire, the homeland of the Red Arrows, and did not get home until five minutes after their 6.28pm start. My grandparents lived in the next-door village to the on-off headquarters of the Red Arrows, and I used to be a huge plane geek, though never quite a fully-fledged plane spotter.

There's something gloriously old-school about aerial acrobatics, especially in the 19-year-old Hawks flown by the Arrows. In an age when death is meant to arrive silently from the air, and most planes are painted black, there's this air of levity about the Arrows' ostentatious calisthetics that's somewhat jarring.

Shorter Fitch: Looks like MBIA and Ambac are now so screwed that there's little we can achieve by way of revenge. Oh, and heh.