The week has passed with the willingness and speed of a drugged sloth, dragging itself to its conclusion only because it would have been harder not to.
On Thursday I got into a box and allowed my son to terrify me for five minutes. As a result, I feel my parenting duties are now fulfilled for the next century or so.
As we queued to get into said box, I flashed back to the last time I’d walked past it, some years ago – one of those repressed memories that surge into your head from time to time, released by sensory stimulus. The sight of the box, squat, grey, as threatening to me as a blender is to a banana, catapulted my own words back at me.
‘You’ll never catch me getting into one of those.’
Huh.
A sidebar on sensory stimulus: while I was working in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago our rehearsal hall was filled with what I found a strangely comforting smell. It was associated with some work being done outside the hall, and wafted up the stairs to enliven our rehearsal sessions. It took me a couple of days to place it – it was somehow chemical but not chemical – and when my brain finally connected with my nostrils and identified it, I realised why it had engendered such feelings of wellbeing. It was linseed oil.
The association, once made, was overpowering. I was nine years old, the July sun was shining its eternal shine, and I was sitting in the garden, lovingly giving my Slazenger cricket bat a tenth and entirely unnecessary coating of linseed oil. I would apply it far too thickly, then wipe away the excess with a rag that I was sure wouldn’t be needed for any higher purpose but turned out to be my mother’s favourite tea towel. I was that kind of child, always taking great care not to fall into the heffalump trap, but as a result walking straight into a lamp post.
But I digress. Where was I? Sunny childhood summers, cricket bats, linseed oil, Edinburgh, sensory stimulus. Ah yes, the dread box.
It was a flight simulator, this box, a thing called ‘Fly360˚’. The name should have given me a clue to the horrors that awaited.
I’ve always been a reluctant flyer, liable to throw up at the first hint of a safety demonstration. My preferred methods of travel: foot, bike, train, car, scooter, wheelbarrow, hiding under the duvet and refusing to leave the house. Anything but flying.
But what, you ask, of the wonder of flight? What of the sense of awe at Earth’s majesty as you look down from a great height on its many wonders? What of the humbling feelings engendered by contemplation of entire mountain ranges and coastlines, glimpses of the enormity of your own insignificance in the face of a universe far greater than can be encompassed by your imagination?
To which I say, yeah, what of them? They’re all, I’m afraid, massively overshadowed by the whole AAGGHH WE’RE IN THE AIR IN A METAL TUBE WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE AIR IN A METAL TUBE GET ME OFF BEFORE IT GOES SPLAT thing.
And yes, I KNOW it’s much safer than clipping your toenails or buying a Toffee Crisp from a vending machine. Just allow me this one irrational phobia, ok? Oh, and spiders.
I’m a bit rubbish with fairground rides, too. The memory of a waltzer at Putney Common fair in 1985, and the evil grin on the face of the attendant as he spun my car round just to see how far I could vomit, haunts me still.
So even though this was just a simulator, and I therefore knew there was no actual danger attached, getting into ‘Fly360˚’ carried with it all the perils of my own vivid imagination. Remember that scene in Rain Man?
Me, just before getting into ‘Fly360’˚.
Our turn came. As we were strapped in, the attendant pointed out a reassuring red button which I could press if it all became a bit much.
All I could think of was this.
Reader, I needn’t have worried. Oliver had control. I keep forgetting he’s twelve years old, not twelve months. His expertise on flight simulator games meant that he was able to calibrate the levels of torture for my relaxation and comfort. If I’d had the joystick (‘joy’ – hah!) the capsule would have careered out of control as I overcompensated for every false move, finally being flung off its hydraulic arm and into outer space like Willy Wonka’s great glass elevator.
Prone to overdramatising everyday situations? Me?
Perhaps my fear of flying is in part why I’m so fascinated by birds. If we are to fly, I feel it should be like that: insouciant, virtuosic, as natural as breathing.
Swifts don’t fear flying. Quite the opposite. They fear landing, basically spending their entire lives on the wing in order to avoid traumatising themselves. Ours are well on their way to Africa by now. The sky feels empty without them. And we don’t have swallows or house martins in our part of town to compensate for their absence.
But that’s what holidays are for. The Isle of Wight is full of swallows, swooping and gliding, darting and fluttering in a way that looks tremendous fun, even though science tells us that’s not why they do it. Damn you, science.
The sight of them is almost overpoweringly nostalgic – they, not swifts, were the swoopers of my childhood, nesting near the house, and lining up on the telephone wires some time in late August before their equally astonishing transglobal journey.
I can almost smell the linseed oil.
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