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I wasn’t quite sure which way to take it, but when I reached my half century recently, my wife bought me a flying lesson from the flying club at RAF Wickenby. No problem there; I’ve flown many times courtesy of British Airways and always marvelled at the miracle of flight, so why not travel as a front seat passenger for a change?
Bill, my instructor, was brimming with confidence. Just like driving a car he said - only better. I looked round the airfield but could not see our plane anywhere, until I realised we were standing next to it – a terrifyingly small single-engine craft parked on the grass. After various pre-flight checks, which I pretended to understand, we clambered aboard and suddenly my pulse rate doubled. In front of me, obscuring most of my forward view was a dashboard like no other- complete with joystick. Was I really going to fly this thing?
The cosy cup of coffee and pre-flight bravado in the clubhouse a few minutes earlier seemed far away as we hurtled down the runway. Taking off and landing were the only tricky bits, I was relieved to hear. A pair of pheasants scuttled out of our way as we crossed their flight path. They looked worried – and they weren’t the only ones. The noise of the engine drowned out all conversation and blocked rational thought. I could only communicate with Bill via a headset, which made his instructions uncomfortably remote. The scenery sped past at an alarming rate, but I was not looking out of any the windows, just blindly forwards at the instruments.
“Remember to move the controls gently – she’s very responsive,” warned Bill.
Panic hit the pit of my stomach. There was nothing safe to hang on to. I decided to spend some time trying out those relaxation exercises which advise long slow breathing movements - and then we took off.
Leaving behind Mother Earth, we ascended steeply in our tiny cockpit and banked sharply to our left to catch a nostalgic glimpse of the clubhouse. It was like a fairground ride, which had gone seriously wrong - exhilarating but rather frightening. The patchwork of fields below reminded me how safe the beautiful Lincolnshire landscape can be when viewed from any angle except this one.
“How are you feeling? ” asked Bill, seeing the tension in my face muscles.
If an ejector seat had been available it would have seemed a reasonable option, such was the helplessness of this novice pilot. Explaining the emergency procedures before take off had been obligatory, but if we plummeted earthwards now, knowledge of the brace position and door mechanism was academic. There was only one solution - learn to fly the thing.
Taking the controls in what can only be described as a death grip, I learned how to control the pitch, roll and yaw of the plane, secure in the knowledge that Bill’s dual controls could over-ride my jerky manoeuvres. “Don’t worry, from this height it will take three minutes before we hit the ground. That’s plenty of time to sort you out.” This was comforting news.
I handed back the controls, and began to relax a little, looking for some recognisable landmarks beneath. I am no photographer, but I wished it were possible to capture the whole scene in a 3-D panorama of sound and vision for future reference.
No wonder the pilots in the clubhouse were so enthusiastic about their flying.
The deep shift in perspective needed to absorb the flying experience gives you a fresh view of the real world, away from the daily chores, the emails and the traffic.
As my anxiety gave way to amazement, I felt strangely privileged to fly above the earth in this aerial habitat, and wondered how those early pioneers of flight felt as they left the ground for the first time.
Man first defied gravity, on a voluntary basis, using a hot air balloon. In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers evidently had doubts regarding their new technology. They volunteered a cockerel, a duck and a sheep for the initial flight and upon their safe return, tried it for themselves.
Flying a distance of five miles above their native Paris must have been wonderfully quiet. In 1852, George Cayley from Scarborough persuaded his coachman to pilot the first launch of his prototype glider. On landing safely, the terrified coachman resigned. I don’t blame him. Another unwilling pioneer was Laika, the dog launched into space by the Russians in 1957. She did not survive, but I fully intended to, as I carefully turned my craft back towards the airfield.
Using the pilot’s equivalent of a Routemaster map, Bill located the necessary landmarks, which looked horribly indistinct through my varifocals. As we dropped speed and height, I felt a massive sense of relief as the tiny airfield became visible. The runway offered us an opportunity to re-enter our natural habitat and the clubhouse contained normal home comforts like food, hot coffee - and a toilet.
The landing was deceptively easy, but I suspect the whole manoeuvre was executed by proxy. “Beginner’s luck!” declared Bill as we gently hit the tarmac and taxied onto the grass. This beats parking the car I thought, as I walked away from the aircraft and entered the clubhouse with renewed confidence.
Allan enjoys sharing his interest in things scientific, whether they crawl, glow in the dark or explode. He is a Registered Nutritionist with the Association for Nutrition and loves everything connected with food and drink, despite having a Body Mass Index of only 22.5. He started writing 5 years ago, when the Yorkshire Post published my first Lifestyle piece describing the gentle art of giving driving lessons to his eldest son. Since then, he has had more than 20 articles published with this newspaper. Other articles have focussed on the hazards of being a very mature athlete (Running Fitness), sensible nutrition for serious walkers (Trail magazine) and a tasty piece on the pleasures of chocolate, published in the Nutrition Society Gazette. When he's not staring at this screen, he enjoys cutting up dead plants and animals in the kitchen, playing the guitar and keeping horribly fit , but not all at the same time. If you would like to learn more about Allan, then see his profile at http://www.suite101.com/writer_articles.cfm/allanjohnson