Girls Like That (NHB Modern Plays)

Let me give you some advice. Don’t drink tea before ya fly. I tell ya I couldn’t live without me mornin’ tea, but nothing worse than bein’ seven thousand feet in the air, clouds everywhere, no navigation equipment or radio aids and thinkin’ I don’t know how much longer ’fore I go in me knickers.
I try to tell this to the man who I’ve been assigned for the day drinkin’ a steamin’ hot cup. It’s February 1945. Just another mornin’ like any other at the Airport Transport Auxillary – only today it’s a Hudson I gotta deliver for maintenance, which means there’s gotta be two of us. Me and this lad. And I’m tryin t’ tell him, give ’em some advice so I don’t gotta be worried about him needin’ to wee up in the air, but he’s havin’ none of it. Don’t want t’ hear it. Don’t want t’ hear none of it.
Don’t even want t’ be flyin with me. He’s not takin’ orders from a lass.
Starts mumblin’ ’bout what’s the world coming to. World at war, Britain bein’ bombed, and t’ top it all off we got some lass flyin’ planes. As though I’m the only one. As though of the six hundred ’n’ fifty ATA pilots, a hundred ’n’ sixty-four aren’t women.
But he’s insistin’ he take charge. He’s insistin’ otherwise this plane’s goin’ nowhere. And I can see he’s a stubborn so and so, so sometimes you gotta take the higher ground, sometimes you gotta sit back and say okay, you got a willy – you know best. Sometimes when he’s inspectin’ the plane you gotta slip a laxative into his tea.
It’s about an hour later, I’m ready to go, but he’s not feelin’ so good, so they get some other pilot – and let’s say he’s much more amenable. As we’re getting’ into the plane I see the lad again, face ashen. So I tell him: ‘Shoulda listened to my advice. Told you not to drink before ya fly.’