Some sights never lose their thrill however many times you have seen them, and the Red Arrows are top of that list. On 4 June, during the TT festival, they carved their vapour trails over the bay, all precision and noise and impossible geometry, and everyone below stopped what they were doing to watch, exactly as they should.
The Island went one better on staging. The display unfolded against the backdrop of an astonishing rainbow arcing over the bay, red, white, and blue smoke against the full spectrum, as if the Manx weather had decided that if it must rain during TT, it would at least apologise in style. Photographs were taken. None of them did it justice. They never do.
This season the team was flying seven jets rather than the traditional nine, a concession to the age of their beloved Hawk T1s as the aircraft approach retirement, which lent the display a slightly elegiac note if you knew to look for it. Not that you would guess anything was missing. Seven aircraft, feet apart, at hundreds of miles an hour, and not a wobble among them, framed by the Manx coastline with the Island already at its liveliest for race fortnight.
Charlton Krentz 