Jump Jump Jump! And Other phrases you never want to hear...

 "If I say Jump Jump Jump! What do you do?" the flight instructor asks me.  I am in my Chocs-away green Squadron Flight Suit feeling rather dashing and daring (courageous and caring - just like a Gummy Bear) up until this point. 

"Er....open the canopy and jump out?" I ask. 

"Hang on a minute," says dad, who has only just cottoned on here.  "Do we need a parachute?"

The like-able but necessarily serious member of the crew looks at dad with a sneaky grin on his face. 

"It's usually recommended if you are jumping out of the plane..." 

In this case.  It is definitely not our intention to jettison ourselves out of any plane.  Especially not the one we are about to go up in. 

We are at Blackpool Airport.  Usually, if we were at Blackpool in the past.  It would be some ungodly hour of the morning and me and dad would have been well used to suctioning ourselves into a bright yellow rubber wet-suit, strapping a life vest and a small air tank to ourselves and cramming ourselves into a tiny ickle little helicopter with a dozen or so equally bedecked depressed and grizzled looking riggers.  Cosy is an understatement. Basically, a bunch of ageing fat Michelin men in a sardine tin with blades. 

But today. It's a Sunday. And we are standing next to an incredibly old one-of-a-kind Spitfire.  One of a kind - because - A).  It's still able to fly (which is a key criteria of any flight) and B).  Because it has a place at the front for an actual Pilot and a space in the cockpit behind for a perky civvy with delusions of recreating hair-raising dog fights and C) because Billy Butlin used to fly this plane when he was a bit younger and more importantly, alive. 

"So what do you do if I say Jump Jump Jump?" he asks again.   I cannot help but sing the Eddie Van Halen song in my head.  Which is a major safety distraction during an emergency bail-out safety brief.  In my mind, if we start spiraling to the earth from 5000 feet up, my main plan is to heroically battle with the controls and gently glide the fighter to a peaceful halt in some yokel farmers field, where I shall be welcomed by a young farm hand carrying a pint of scrumpy.  

I tune back in to reality. 

"Er...so I pull the red knob, release the cockpit canopy and get ejected?" 

"No. There is no ejector seat."  This puts me at ease.  I have seen Top Gun and it does not end well for Goose with that piece of supposedly helpful technology. 

"First - release your harness."  This is good advice.  It's difficult to abandon a plane in a death spiral if you are still attached to it. 

"Then eject the canopy!" I say.  It sounds soooo easy when you are stood on terra firma. 

"Then if you could just stand up into your seat in the cockpit...and the best way to say this is....just to lean over and basically fall out," he says.

"Just stand up in a nose-diving ageing Spitfire and just kind of fall out?"

"Yes - you've got it!"

"And the parachute will open?" I ask with trepidation.

"Yes - it should do."

Well this is reassuring.  I assume that the parachute is also not vintage and head towards the aircraft.  Sarah and the kids are all next to us.  Excited but probably wondering if this is the last time they will see dad.  They suggest that the family can follow behind in a little support plane but Fintan was out til about 4am, is severely sleep deprived and looks like he may actually vomit on the air crew if he goes in a small light aircraft. So we politely decline. 

Glenn Miller is blasting from the speakers and surrounded by all the old world war 2 memorabilia - it does feel quite nostalgic.  For some reason, which I put down to stupidity and not having been involved in the risk assessment, I am really looking forward to the adventure.  I did however check that my life insurance with work was updated to point to Sarah in case of my accidental death.  Apart from that - all good.

I go first.  I'm guided to the Spitfire and clamber up the small mobile steps and gingerly cram myself into the cockpit.  I feel rather like a fat spacemen as an array of crew appear out of nowhere and start strapping me into my 4 point harness and then my parachute.  This is like a well choreographed ballet (for them) but like trying to attach a leotard and ballet pumps to a hippo - in a lift.  But eventually we get there. 

The engine thrums into life.  A magnificent growl. We spin on a six pence and (from checking the video later) - our wheels slightly lift up on one side as we do.  And then we are off.  

The cheerful pilot (John) asks me through the helmet comms to look out for any passing aircraft on the runway.  I am not sure if this is a joke, but judging by the near blind forward-facing view, perhaps it is not.  I listen to the jabber of the airport tower giving us the all clear, and we are off.  

Before I know it, we are over the sand dunes and slowly banking east and in land. (I say East - as if I am a total navigational pro - but my geographical homing instinct is notoriously shit - I once got lost in the New Forest for an entire day with Jez and only realised we had come full circle when we spotted a tomato I had dropped from sandwich a day earlier, resting half eaten on the ground). 

Spitfire fighter ace John takes me under his wing and performs a few banks left and right and some up and downs.  I am loving it. 

"I am handing the plane over to you now - you now have control..." he says over the mike.  On the ground I kinda thought he was just messin'.  I mean, you wouldn't really give me control of an antique fighter plane if you'd met me before.  But here we are. 

"I have control of the plane..." I tell him.  Though in reality, I feel like I have absolutely no control of the plane. 

"Just try a little nudge of the controls up...and then down..." and then wooooooahhhh....we moved up and down.  In many ways - the controls were so simple - it reminded me a little of the car Fred drove in the Flintstones.  There was definitely not much between my feet and clean air. 

"Now a bank left, again but harder over..." and whoooooosh....we arced hard left.  Such a buzz.  Fun for me - but imagine being a young kid up here with bullets whizzing past your head and no one in the world but your own skill to keep you alive.  

"You fancy a barrel roll?" John asked. 

"Bring it on!" I said and gave a massive thumbs up for the mirror through which we had vague eye contact. 

And then up up up we soared through the clouds before looping the loop and rolling over.  

I hear myself roaring..."I saw the shot....there was no danger..." as if I am actually a poor man's fat version of Maverick.  But I don't care.  This is fantastic. 

"Again?" 

"Damn right!" I bellow and away we go again as we barrel roll past Blackpool Tower and roar down the promenade and back home.  

One of the most exhilarating joyful experiences of my life (up there with Gazza scoring THAT goal at Wembley and being in the stands with dad to see it; the kids being born; that time an elephant charged us when we were kids in South Africa and the winter of 86 when we sledged down Corkscrew Hill and somehow didn't die when we hit the railings). 

We land.  I hug the kids and then off dad goes. A total blast. 

An hour later we are devouring Fish and Chips by the Tower and marvelling at the day we just had. 

This is all in aid of celebrating my 50th year on planet earth (only vaguely tethered to it mentally - but I do try). 

In this year I have had the deep joy of seeing all my friends and family together at various points. This mainly involved dressing up in 1970s fancy dress, walking the moors north of Manchester and sinking the odd bottle of IPA and bubbly.  In between - I have managed to stalk Dwight from the Office with Caitlin at Liverpool Comic Con and watch a bloke in a Deadpool Princess Leia hybrid costume gyrate provocatively on stage (think Jabba the Hutt era costume); we have marveled at ancient neolithic temples in Malta - clearly built by some very clever neolithic goatherds; leapt about like a madman to Wunderhorse on a number of occasions, been to the most amazing out of this world wedding of my Niece in Dublin; travelled to hockey matches far and wide; carried amps and guitars back and forth for the boys as chief roadie; sat in on the first recordings in the studio for their first single and E.P  and crashed a speedboat repeatedly.  The latter event may require more context.

"So - we should practice braking..." I suggest.  We are on a pristine lake near Ojai.  It provides drinking water to the good citizens of Los Angeles and does not allow humans to swim in it.  However, you can drive your petrol guzzling speedboat all over it.  That's ok.  

Dec is more of a dab hand at gunning the boat than either me or my sister.  My sister Sarah is like, a crazed speed merchant who leaves the jetty at a million miles and hour and then performs the equivalent of a handbrake turn at top speed.  

We cut the engine.  The whole point of this was to go on the lake and pay a tribute to Lianne. My friend. An amazing, inspiring, wonderful friend.  I have picked a flower.  A really beautiful pink flower.  

"Tell me something funny and amazing about Lianne..." my sister asks. So I recount endless stories of how much we laughed together and all the stupid silly pranks we got into in and out of work.  Me, Jon and Lianne.  A super silly gang of three. 

And then I lift up her flower. And release it onto the wind. It catches the breeze, wafts away and then gently lands in the clear beautiful Lake Casitas. It really is a powerful moment for me.  One I will never forget. But - I expect Lianne would find the next bit funny as hell...none of us actually know how to restart the engine.

So here we are...floating graciously but slowly towards an uninhabited island in the middle of the lake. 

Sis and Declan are way too embarrassed but I have no fear of embarrassment.  After about ten attempts to reboot the engine (technical term), we google it and watch a you tube video.  This helps a bit.  But in the end I call the guys on the beach and they come out...just as I finally catch the engine and we are good to go. 

Declan takes over the driving and we cruise about the lake. Lost in our thoughts. 

"I'll take over for the landing bit..." I suggest to Dec.  But secretly I am bricking it.  I am no good at driving with four wheels let alone with a rudder. 

The test brake goes well.  We slow to a gentle halt.  This buoys me with a false sense of my own abilities. 

I speed up and aim for the jetty. 

"Dad slow down...dad SLOW DOWN!" Declan warns me. 

"Shit..." Sis yelps. 

"I got this..." I say and promptly smash the boat at top speed into the jetty. But we are in.  It is technically "parked". 

The young hick on the jetty then breaks the bad news. 

"This ain't your jetty. You need to reverse and dock over there," he points a few docking bays down. 

"Do you want to park it mate?" I ask.  He looks at me with total disgust for this pathetic British Landlubber.

Taking this as a firm "no" I attempt to reverse out.  At this point,  I had forgotten that in reverse - it - unsurprisingly means you have to move the tiller in the opposite direction. 

So instead, I slam us at full speed into the jetty again and maybe again just for good measure. 

Sis and Dec are now wishing they could dig their way through the hull of the ship and slowly sink to the bottom. To reside forever  with Davey Jones, contemplating their public humiliation. 

On I blunder, reversing back out and over to the new spot.  The deck hand isn't looking so cock-sure this time round.  And nor should he be, for I gun the engine by mistake and charge at the jetty like Donald Campbell on Bluebird.  THIS IS MY CONISTON WATER MOMENT. 

The impact dents both the boat and my pride.  "Oh God!" wail my sister and Declan.  Mortified beyond any more words. 

We gingerly disembark from the boat and decide to not look back.  Just keep on walking. 

I like to think this gave Lianne a good little giggle looking down on it all. 💖

Rabid Coke Monkeys, Killer Wasps and Train Dangling - Summer 2024

 

We are standing at the foot of Lion Rock - Sigiriya.  An ancient rock fortress in the heart of Sri Lanka.  It's hot and sticky.  Which is fine in some situations - like in a Sauna in a five star spa.  But not this one.  The rock that looms above us seems a bit too big to walk up.  It's more of a cliff face. 

"Are we really climbing that?" I ask Gihan - our tour guide.  Gihan is in jeans and t shirt and does not seem phased at all by the climb ahead of us.  

"Are you not hot?" I ask him. 

"No - this is not hot," he smiles. 

I am pumping sweat and I've only walked a few hundred yards. It is nearly 90 degrees out there. 

We buy some drinks before the trek.  I hand them out. Monkeys begin to circle us. Hundreds of 'em. 

"Get off me!" Caitlin screams as she drops her coke bottle and runs towards us.  A monkey has just run up her legs and tried to make off with her coke.

Gihan steps in and takes the bottle.  "The monkeys like coca cola". 

Caitlin is not impressed.  I immediately think of worst case scenarios.  If a monkey bites you in the middle of nowhere - it's gonna take a while to find a place to get a Rabies shot.  But if the monkeys were rabid.  Surely they would be creating havoc.  Eating each other, eating random human fingers and exposed limbs.  BUT...it would explain their thirst.  Their craving for coke.  Then again - coked-up monkeys could get pretty aggressive without being rabid.  So many thoughts...so many fears...

I have a friend Henrik who also got bitten by a monkey.  When he told the story - it did make me chuckle.  Just saying "I got bitten by a monkey" usually makes people laugh.  But the long drawn out palava of getting a rabies shot reminds me that we want to avoid this.  I also met a girl who got bitten by a gorilla once.  But that's a different story. 

We begin the climb, slightly apprehensive.  This is only made more problematic when Caitlin and the boys spot the "Deadly Killer Wasp" signage everywhere.  Along with a polite request to whisper. Maybe these wasps have really sensitive massive big ears?  Do wasps even have ears?  

Caitlin goes into a very devout silent mode.  But there are lots of tourists trekking the same route who seem happy to shout out to each other and point out the views.

"Shut up!" I think.  Death by killer wasp is not on my list of Darwin Award deaths I would like to experience. 

"So Gihan - how many wasp stings before they would kill you?" I ask.  My breathing ragged as we wander past thousand year old cave art. 

I am assuming a hundred - maybe more. But no.

"Probably nine or ten..." he says straight off the bat. 

Shit - that's not many stings really.  Not many at all. I think. I also adopt stealth mode as we continue upwards.  

Half way up - we meet a school party of about 200 kids. How the hell do you do the risk assessment on walking a bunch of primary school kids up a sheer cliff surrounded by Coked up Monkeys and killer wasps?  And school kids make way too much noise.  The kind of noise that makes killer wasps angry.  There's nothing worse than a bunch of killer wasps.  Except - really pissed off angry killer wasps that were having a nice little kip before a bunch of wild schoolkids rocked up. 

This means we must then walk incredibly slowly up a set of tiny metal steps that have been hammered into the rockface in about 1892.  I decide not to think too carefully about the inspection routines or levels or rust on the stairs, or to look down the sheer drop to certain death.  We are so high up that I can tell Sarah's legs have turned to jelly.  We are nearly at catatonic phase - when Sarah will just stay anchored to the same spot as the vertigo kicks in. 

The monkeys take this opportunity - as we are stuck on a queue that feels similar to the queue right at the top of Everest - to make another strike for the backup coke bottle I briefly took out.   The monkey leaps at us - the bottle gets ditched and the monkey is happy.  The monkey has won.  Bastard.  I wanted that. 

The views at the top are breath-taking - literally.  Apparently - the Sri Lankan King lived up here and every day he walked down to the palace swimming pools and gardens that he had built down there.  He would then pick one of his many hundred harem wives for some jiggy jiggy and then walk back up to the safety of his palace.  

Now this seems like an awful lot of effort each day.  Surely he would have been better inventing some sort of lift system or the telescope. Or possibly the phone. This would have made the daily commute much easier.  But I guess it kept him fit.  

A few days later we catch a train.  It's one of the most spectacular train journey's in the world.  Up at about 8000 feet in the tea plantations and then down towards the coast.  We are crushed up on the train along with a million locals and tourists. 

My Niece Jessica is randomly also in Sri Lanka at the minute.  She is on the same train (again -we did not plan our itinerary - so this is all quite uncanny).  She squeezes past the throng of passengers and into our carriage.  

"Hi Jess!  How's it going?" I ask.  

"Yeah - good." she says.

"Hi - how's it going. Did you get on the train ok?" I ask the girl with her.

The girl looks at me like I have at least three heads.

"Er Tom - I don't know her..." she roars with laughter. 

We watch as a vast Swathe of tourists (mainly from Japan) lean out the door of the train whilst their friends take pictures of them narrowly avoiding certain death.  

Some bring their own selfie sticks.  Others bring friends to capture the Insta-tunity. 

This is madness in my opinion.  But grimly fascinating. What will humans do for a good picture. 

Well - apparently - most things. 

There are a few near misses as we rattle past tunnels and over bridges with sheer plunging drops.  But no-one dies.  Not on our journey. 

A couple of months later there is headline news in the international papers as an aspiring selfie taker becomes the latest victim, loses her grip and falls to her death. 

We trek through some jungle the next day and walk to the famous nine arched train bridge near Ella. It is quite liberating walking along the train tracks.  No-one stops you.  There are hundreds of us milling about walking into the train tunnel - walking along the bridge.

I secretly re-enact that scene from Stand by Me and imagine myself pegging it across the bridge just in time before the train smacks into me.  There is a couple in their twenties sitting on the ledge of the bridge.  Legs dangling over the 200 metre drop.  The boyfriend then gets out a drone, attaches a camera to it and then flies it over the bridge and starts papping her.  

This is way too stressful for me. One wrong move and she is a goner.  I don't know where this risk averseness came from.  I used to be equally gung-ho and wreckless.  I imagine it was once the kids came along and you realise that you have someone else to look after. 

When we get home from the holiday.  The boys have a gig at Devafest.  I am greatly excited.  And me and Uncle Glenn practice our very best..."We're with the band" sound bites.  

I wave my special "back stage-ish" wrist bands aloft and try to play it cool.  But I'm just a lowly chief Roadie.  Its the lads who have the hard work to do.   The gig is in the biggest circus tent.  It goes well.  And then we can relax.  Watching Ocean Colour Scene, Toyah, Sleeper (how I loved Sleeper in my youth!) and a couple of stand up comedians. 

One of them picks on me.  

"Where are you going?" he yells as I sneak out of the tent.

"I want to see Toyah..." I say sheepishly. 

"That's not good enough.  Sit down."

"But - honestly - you seem quite funny - but I really do want to see Toyah..." I say.  Her husband, after all, played guitar with rock legends like Bowie. 

"Where you from?"

"Chester."

"Where abouts?"

"Near the cricket club.."

"Is that near the Chinese?" he asks. 

"Sun do?! Yes!"

"I love that - best Chinese in Chester!" I agree! We have a chat about the menu for a bit and then he realises this is not great stand-up.

I sit down for a short while. He is quite funny.  He swears alot but has brought his four year old along who keeps interrupting. 

He then proceeds to do a Darren Brown on a bloke in front of me.  

"Your name is John isn't it? You're best mates with Danny, Baz and Ryan.  Your girlfriend is called Lisa..." 

This is mindblowing magic from a comedian in a mid afternoon set. 

The guy is starting to get a bit worried here.  How does he know so much about his life.  His friends are roaring with laughter. 

Eventually he asks. "How do you know so much about me?"

"I played in the same footie team as you for 3 years you bellend..."

And on that note...I slip away with the boys.  Into the glorious Summer Sunshine...

A summer that involves seeing Liam Gallagher at Leeds play Definitely Maybe in it's entirety...despite half of Leeds getting blown away the night before in a storm so fierce it blew the second stage into space.  So much so that the security guard at the gates tells me it was like "Vietnam" last night... like some grizzled American war vet. A festival that makes me feel like old man dinosaur surrounded by so many young people.  But what a great gig to share with the lads.  

A year that involved riding camels in the Moroccan desert. Of Fintan managing to ride a camel up-side down at one point.  Of magical sunsets and elephant clouds in the sky.  Of Paul McCartney bringing the year to a close with the most sublime acoustic rendition of Blackbird and the Euphoria of Hey Jude. Does it get much better than that? Probably not.