He was looking full-on at me. An overgrown nosebeard, brown hairs overlapping onto his white chinstrap.

What on Earth could be next, the Chinese red guard-style maltreatment of language learners and yodelers?

A shuffling from the pit is drowned by the tumult of the top gallery, where the crowd whoops and whistles and stamps like a cloudful of angels on a spree.

Another difficulty has been that autopilots are designed for ordinary flying. They can't wring out a plane, being limited to about 45° in bank and pitch. Aerobatics are an impossibility.