Thunder and Lightnings Quotes

“Shortly after his family moves to the Norfolk countryside, Andrew is befriended by a local boy with a passion for airplanes.”

“We meet the bright middle-class Andrew whose father’s job takes his laid-back family to a more rural location, and Victor who, playing up to a reputation for being academically backward at school, is patently dyslexic and would probably be diagnosed today as on the autism spectrum. ”

‘I wonder if that was the last Lightning of all,’ said Andrew. ‘Well, if that wasn’t, that ought to have been. What a way to go out, eh?’.”

“it was a field of furry barley. Andrew, having lived all his life in towns, had never seen barley except in a photograph. He was rather pleased to see it alive and growing in a Norfolk field.”

“The change comes about when it becomes clear that the objects of Victor’s passion, the magnificent arrowhead jets that roar across the Norfolk landscape from a nearby RAF airfield, may be withdrawn from service. ”

“He laid it out on the living room floor and Ginger stepped down from the settee and sat in the middle of it like a castaway on a raft. Andrew moved his tail which was lying along the coast and concealing a strip of country, two miles wide.”

“Two schoolboys in 1980s Norfolk are thrown together with nothing to suggest they have anything in common except being outsiders in their school, Andrew whose family are incomers and Victor who would be possibly be identified now as having learning difficulties.”

“Being close neighbours in the village means that, when the summer holidays arrive, they spend time together, and Thunder and Lightnings is mostly an account of those few weeks when a friendship is established, only to be threatened by an immanent change.”

“Their regular bike rides to observe take-offs and landings are now threatened, and also the familiarity they have built up involving a younger brother, shopping trips, and hamsters.”

“And yet there is more to either than appears on the surface, and they will have more in common than their social backgrounds and familiar aspirations would suggest.”