Slow Life

30 May 2009

Taking flight

This time, the quad bike was parked outside the back door and I was tearing up the farm track at 60 in no time, overtaking the whippet at the top of the hill. The dog would have beaten me to the strip, but a group of rabbits scattered and he disappeared in a hedge. Low over the campsite the aircraft came, a taildragger in landing configuration, flaps down, flying alongside me at head height then climbing away, suddenly very quiet again as I drew to a standstill. I could hear the whippet panting. In the middle distance the aircraft described half a figure of eight and came rushing back towards me at full speed. For a moment I thought he would hit me. Then he was gone, waggling his wings, the signal for ‘cheerio’.

Then I was alone in a sea of a million buttercups and countless perfect dandelion clocks with startled rooks circling over the woods. What had looked like an unremarkable grey sky five minutes earlier was a hundred shades of silver. The movement and glamour of a flying machine, the freedom and possibilities it suggested had cast a huge spell for miles around. It was quiet again, and overcast, but nothing like before.