Sitting in the Travelodge in Croydon, which is a vision of the future, as planners envisage it. When RMH turned up last night, allegedly 2 minutes walk from the railway station, he had been wandering the streets for 20 minutes until finally returning to the station and ordering a taxi. He immediately sank 3 beers, as I did on arriving here.
I know that’s going to be how I will feel in the coming evenings.
I am not in the best state of mind to fly a blind man 2,400 miles to Cyprus. Miles has had four hours experience using experimental technology which will enable him to fly a flexwing microlight.. He can, and I have to test this theory, only fly because the aircraft itself, though physical to fly, is also benign. But apparently he doesn’t know if his wings are straight and level. I am told it would help to play this down in public, and of course, I will, but we are not going into the Alps, which has killed a lot of pilots, with Miles in the front seat.
I cannot help but get into a raging fury over Storm Smith, and the dilemma he has left this benign sponsor - though one with good and noble illusions, worthy ones - and Miles himself, a good and driven man.
Miles has had this dream of flying a microlight to Australia for 4 years. I failed to find him a sponsor, and Storm got him one. But what do you call a man - who wrote me a letter objecting to being cold-shouldered - who brings such a project to within 12 hours of it happening, and then backs out?
Any answer is unprintable.
I went to bed and immediately to sleep at 11pm last night, and woke at 2am, my mind full of rage still, and questions about my own competence. I have not prepared for this flight. We got a radio but I have not put in the first 15 radio frequencies I need. I have arbitrarily chosen a route, avoiding the high Alps, even though that’s the quickest - but coldest, and I have no heated waistcoat - way to Italy. I hope to make it as far as the bottom of the Rhone Valley - Carpentras - that Keith Reynolds and I stayed in on our first test flight - but that would leave us a clear run east along the Med coast to get to eastern Italy.
I told Miles last night he had to polish his skills in the air. We are going to get almost twice the flight time today that Storm Smith gave him in all the months of preparation. I will trust him with the controls when he has convinced me that he can, indeed, fly. Storm left me a note which, aside from playing hurt at my attitude, told me not to drag Miles anywhere, and that he knew how to fly. Whatever judgement Storm once had, it isn’t worth anything now.
Can I make this happen?
Can I get Miles to Cyprus safely, in 6 days, even if I push it?
What physical weaknesses will come out in me after I push hard for a few days, with no recent training, no preparation, having to ignore half the high-powered modern kit and put on my own more simple 10-year-old GPS’s?
Will RMH have a sense of urgency then and greet me, or will I be forced to fly on into Syria and the Saudi Desert?
How will the Syrians react?
And how will I react to being threatened?
I had a text message that woke me at 2 am from Senga Bradie, a pilot who has experience of flying microlights in Zimbabwe, protecting rhinos on their last stages of life from local poachers. In her insightful way, she has let her imagination go to where I am actually going, discovered the same fears within herself, and texted me about them. I wish I knew how to turn off the noises the mobile phone makes, so it just shivers or vibrates or whatever it does, silently.
Bring back the 19th century, I say, and runners with cleft sticks.
I have brought with me, as the mandatory book to read on down-time days - which I hope never happen - ‘The Lunatic Express’ by Charles Miller, a brilliant account - I am 50 pages in - of the building of the East African railway from Mombasa to Kampala. He is, or was, I don’t know if he is still alive, a man who thought, as I do, that the British Empire was broadly a force for good, and what is replacing it in Africa - why should the Chinese care? - is barbarism. The Chinese will ruthlessly take all the mineral wealth of Africa and leave just small traders in return, the new Lebanese.
I know that somewhere on this journey there will be nothing to do but retreat into myself and join another world, as I did on my big flights. It may be a function of age. When I was a young man, I don’t remember reading the Philosophy of Nietsche, which is the book I brought with me on the Austin 7 journey across Africa.
Just had breakfast delivered. I told Miles not to drink too much, and I have already drunk two coffees and I am now drinking the orange juice. Never mind. We can pee our hearts out in Le Touquet, because then we will be on the road, and there will be no going back for Miles. It’s either success, or an accident, and even then I hope he finds the strength to continue. I just don’t want the accident to be on my watch, though it’s unlikely on the massively competent RMH’s watch.
I need to find a way to pack the gear that works, and that means I get on the road without bits trailing along behind me. It’s just 90 minutes until the hangar doors open and my fellow reptiles turn up as we bustle around trying to go. I wonder if any of them will actually realise what has happened?
Copyright: Brian Milton |
