Paracuuuuuuuuuuuute!

Whoo-hooooo! Done it! Completed the tandem skydive at 12.000 feet this morning. Rather oddly I was dressed as a cow. My super-professional instructor Micky seems to favour a distinctive white and black jumpsuit whose pattern can only really be described as bovine.  I realised I was expected to don one just like it. Sartorial alternatives not offered. Excellent.  Two men dressed as cows strapped together hurtling through the ice cream air of a incredibly clear day over deepest Wiltshire, on what was one of the most beautiful and sunny mornings of the year. 

"How heavy are you" Micky asked as we chewed the fat before take off.

"Fifteen stone" I replied. ('Fifteen stone and half a pound last night' I thought ruefully)

"A ha" he said, not with quite the ring of confidence I was counting on.

Eeeeek.

"It will be fast drop then" he said.

"That's about as heavy as I'm allowed on a Tandem".

Oh. Great.

There were 10 or so of us huddled into  the plane, and Micky and myself were the last to go (simply by virtue of being at the back of the queue, not by choice). It IS an odd experience when they rattle open the hatch and wind and noise fill the plane. Being a smallish plane we were all sat down on the floor packed like sardines (first shock) and had to shuffle forward on our bottoms to the hatch (second shock). No dignified salute, exchange of meaningful looks, quick handshake, stirring trumpet fanfare like in the movies. Just shuffling towards the hatch sat down, legs akimbo, tied to another man also dressed like a cow. Watching everyone else drop like stones out of the hatch makes it all suddenly rather real. I sort of came to at that moment and started beginning to realise that what had seemed like a good idea at the time from the comfort of my desk, from the admiration of my friends in the pub was unrelentingly, terrifying about to happen in the next three seconds. And I was dressed like a cow.

We reached the hatch. The colossal plain of Wiltshire stretched 12,000 feet below us as far as the eye could see, houses like minature toys on the ground. The wind shreiked in my face. My heart pumped wildly, I felt the terror rising in my chest. A sudden epiphany, much, much too late. That extra half a pound would surely kill us both.

"Could I just er..." I was about to say... and we jumped.

Micky's advice (whilst on the gound) had been to yell as soon as, to make sure you breath. Frankly I couldn't do much else. I didn't even manage to swear. The wind was SO noisy and so powerfully in my face, I simply can't hear anything. I yelled. How I yelled. I think, appropriately, I may have even mooed. It was simply, a euphoria like nothing else I've ever experienced.  That intense somatic sensation that screams "we're alive! gloriously alive! Hhowever temporarily".

 We somersaulted initially and my view was simply  a rapid alternation of blue (sky) green (earth) blue green blue green. I briefly glimpsed the plane above us hurtling away from sight to a dot at a terrifying speed.  Then we righted, belly to the ground, and I formed the figure I was told to: head back, arms out at right angles, ankles crossed and bent back. 'Like a banana' Micky had said. A cow banana in fact, like those chairs that are really popular po-mo things that for some reason Liverpudlians currently have inexplicably dotted around their city as statues/objet d'art/ climbing frames for kids (European city of culture thing I'm guessing, but I haven't got to the bottom of the relevance of the Cow-Banana-Liverpool semiotic nexus). 

All notions of bovine indignity forgotten, we whistled towards the ground at 120mph. Dave the cheerful and sanguine camera man, there to film my progress, briefly sped into view alongside us, his camera in my face.  I think I waved. In my head I was trying to do the 'pretend-to-smoke- and-very-cooly-say "jazz"', but I probably screamed like a chimpanzee. A banana chimp cow. This is getting weird. I looked down.  The tiny toy houses below grew larger. Very quickly.  And then...

A flap of canvas, a short jolt, and the canopy opened. And happily we slowed. It actually nearly felt like I was standing still suspended high over the Wiltshire plain on a glorious late summer morning. And Micky, ever the esrtwhile professional started the parchute-fall-industry-schpiel.

"On your left is a saxon burial ground. On your right is the army base...."

A ha. Interesting. 

I was half expecting muzac to start when he handed me the grips to steer, almost shaking me out of my contemplative muse.

"Arms up" he said.

For some very odd reason I pulled my arms down. Perhaps its that deeply embedded  boat-steering instinct instilled in me since child hood where you move the tiller left to go right. 

"No... no... Up"

I pulled down even harder. Perverse.

"WHAT THE F@#$ ARE YOU DOING ANDY" he screamed in my ear.

I came to again. 'Up' means 'up' in the parachuting vernacular. Gotcha.

Ah, okay. Up.

And we started circling, the ground coming ever nearer. 

"Tuck your legs in". 

It felt terrifically fast. I thought for a couple of seconds it was much, much too fast and I would break both legs. At what felt like the last microsecond, we slowed dramatically, and landed comfortably in freshly mowed Wiltshire field, the smell of cut grass filling my nostrils. 

We'd done it. We'd survived. Pride filling my chest, the sense of triumph began to warmly glow inside me. I stood up  and the most beautiful morning of the year had somehow become even more stunning than before. 

Who'd have thought it? A late summer epiphany.

Two men tied to each other. Hurtling through the sky. Dressed as cows. Magic.