Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

When I was a youngster, I dreamed of having a ‘radio-control’ model aeroplane.  At every chance, I would pore over well-thumbed magazine articles about how you could build your own ‘single-channel’ radio control transmitter, which, in conjunction with impossibly complex on-board gadgetry, including a well-wound rubber band to power the mechanism that changed the rudder setting, would allow you the merest smidgen of control of that wild, petrol-driven insect in the sky; impossibly at the mercy of the wind.

I did build one eventually. It crashed on its maiden flight – into a stone wall. By the time I could afford another one, the passion had worn off and other interests beckoned.

I was reminded of this simple but painful memory earlier this week by the flight of what I have come to think of as the orange aero-thingy.  This device is the answer to fully exercising a collie dog…