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Bored out of my mind one day, I had a flash of inspiration. I would celebrate my 80th birthday with a parachute jump. Straight away, I phoned my little local airfield, and “Wow”!-- all I would need would be clearance from my GP and, so far, there was no EU law banning it. However, this was to be no instant gratification, since my first day was spent sitting in the canteen, waiting to see if the low cloud would clear. Although everyone knew that this would never happen, the rule is that you have to hang about, just in case!
My big chance came a week later with a brilliant, sunny day of blue sky and not too much wind. Ten or twelve of us packed into a rather tatty little aircraft for the long, tedious climb into the sky. That was the scariest part of the whole thing, with only a scrap of canvas to stop us all falling out. Eventually you reach 12000 feet – and then you just leap into oblivion.
It takes less than a minute to get down to 5,000 feet, when the parachute opens with a considerable jolt. The next few minutes were pure magic. I felt as though my mind had left my body and soared away on its own. There was London, spread out to the north, and there France, across the Channel to the south. Then, of course, we came back to earth – with a bump (literally and metaphorically)! The trouble with an adrenaline rush like this is that it could so easily become addictive. What to do next, before boredom sets in again? I really don’t know the answer.