On a Wing and a Prayer

Learning to fly

It is a beautiful morning, so fresh after the storms.  The early morning sun slices across the Norfolk landscape like a silver knife through a pat of warm butter.  It is cool, and the wind tugs at the long grass, shaking the bushes by the path.  The tide is out, and the waves splutter harmlessly some way away.  Above me a copper blue sky, which tinges down to a daub of stilton smeared across the horizon where there is a bank of clouds above the wind farm.

I stagger backwards up the beach, locked tight to Karl by the straps and carabiners in my harness, then, as the updraft fills the elliptical wing above us we charge left, my legs all over the place, and we leave the ground, silently rising close to the chalk cliffs of Old Hunstanton, then we are aloft - the beach, the sea, the grassy slopes falling rapidly away.

I thought I might be scared. In my youth I would get vertigo on a thick pile carpet, and, though nowadays I can steel myself to the top of tall buildings, looking down from the the Mole Antonelliana in Turin (at 167.5 metres still the world's tallest unreinforced brick building) and standing on the glass floor of the 170 metre Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, I tremble half way up a ladder to clean my gutters.

But no.  There is no fear.  I suppose there's not much point. Karl is sitting on a reserve parachute, but we aren't high enough for it to open if we needed it, even though I guess we must be thirty of more metres above the ground by now.

How am I here, vying with the gulls in the chill air?  Well, I held a launch party for my new book (see below), and Karl should have been in Saudi Arabia flying for some sheik, but that was cancelled at the last minute, so he turned up at my house, and, after a few drinks, he suggested I might like a tandem flight at eight the next morning (as a contribution to charity).

I probably should not have drunk so much....  not because I wouldn't have accepted the generous offer, but because early in the morning I could actually have felt better.  Anyway, after a hurried breakfast of two cups of tea, two ginger biscuits and a pair of paracetamol, I stumble to the car park at Hunstanton cliffs, where several hardy types are already careering across the sky.  It's a brilliant morning, and they all seem to know each other, so there's immediately a tangible camaraderie.  One lends me gloves (I needed them!) others help us launch. 

Up above Hunstanton there are rights of way, as we sail along on the rising wind, passing by, or over, or under individuals who swing and veer through the air flaring on their Moustaches.

Below us pink people take part in a park run, walkers wave, and tiny people walk tiny dogs on the beach, our shadow sweeping after them across the sand.

It is calm.  Karl manoeuvres by pulling down the control line on one side and easing up on the other, so one side of the wing slows and we turn.  It all seems easy, but then he's been doing it for twenty-five years, all over the world.  I feel quite safe. It is thrilling, riding the rolling level.... striding high.... rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing.....

But then it is time to think about landing....

And the land is far below us.... And landing means the meeting of two bodies and all our gear attracted by the gravitational pull of the earth, with a forward speed of, say, ten miles an hour, all at the mercy of a gusting wind and the pull of a few strings..... As we approach the beach Karl calls to two of his mates for them to act as brakes (?) and we are suddenly in contact with the solid part of the planet. Ideally we should have hit the ground running. the trailing edge of the wing flopping behind us and the brakes (?) holding us by the risers and the carabiners (?) Unfortunately, on this particular occasion, the wind tips the leading edge of the wing over us and we collapse face forward at some speed, strapped tightly together, scrambling crablike across the uneven sand. Fortunately, no harm is done. My camera is shaken, not shattered, and it is only my dignity that is damaged.

Wow!  

Thank you, Karl!

Brothers in arms!

**********

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-

dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

The Windhover

Gerard Manley Hopkins

**********

And, in case you didn't know, my new book:

is now available to buy (all proceeds to charity).  It is almost as good as sliced bread, and if you don't believe me, read what others say about it:

Simply the finest book I have read about Norfolk this week.

Sir John Betjeman

Bloodsports Weekly

Your man Gibbs has a fine way with plagiarism - and the daguerreotypes are great!

George Bernard Shaw

The London Review of Books

I have nothing to declare but my genius - Oh?  You wanted something about that book?  Well, it's very nice.....

Oscar Wilde

Time Out

I say, Jeeves, what a spiffing book!

Bertie Wooster

Indeed, Sir?

Jeeves

I want the film rights.....

Sam Peckinpah

Just email me at richardpgibbs@aol.com