Saturday 18th November
“I’ve just killed myself.”
This exchange between my instructor and me was surpassed only by a later comment by a second instructor on Saturday afternoon that I had “killed everyone”. Who’d have thought skydiving could be so lethal?
Jun and I stayed with Kung in her house in March, east of Peterborough, on Friday night and then Kung got up at 7.15 in the morning to drive us down to what is called the “North London Parachute Centre”. The name is missing an “of” (by about 80 miles, no?). I registered and was in the classroom, replete with white board and decades old TV, by 9. Phil, a fireman for his day job, was the instructor for the group of 11 white men (aged 27-37), of whom I was the only one doing the jump for charity. That was a hell of a lot of potential good-will cash squandered.
The drills consisted of remembering things, in threes at first. The canopy should be “big”, “rectangular”, [structurally] “sound”. The ‘nuisances’ were: “twisted ropes”, “high slider”, “non-fully inflated end-cells”. The malfunctions could be a broken rope, an overlay, or a load of other things. How to respond to a malfunction? “Look”, “locate” [the handles] “cut”, “away”, “reserve” and “arch”. OK, I am boring myself. It was my inability to get this last lot correct once that proved fatal. Later, it was my decision to use it at a supremely inappropriate time that created multi-fatalities.
Still, I didn’t do too bad. A guy called Jonathan was hauled off a simulator for a one-to-one refresh. Looks were exchanged between us “students” but he got through it in the end. Training finished about 4.30 and John, an ex-hunt sab living in Luton, went out of his way to give Jonathan, who was heading back for his place off Baker Street, and I a lift to March. Kung was heading to London too but had made Jun and I some Thai food for dinner that we ate after she left. I looked up the football on the net and read that Boothroyd had some comments about the referee as Watford went down 2-1 to a last minute dodgy penalty, after having a shout of our own ignored. It’s all about survival.
Sunday 19th November
Jun and I got a taxi to the centre and I handed in my card at about 8.45. There were already loads of people there and most of my classmates, who’d stayed at the centre, had been waiting since 8. Some were doing their retraining. I cursed my decision not to get up earlier, though I hadn’t slept very well. The wait began. It was a clear, cold day. The wind over the fens was not as strong as yesterday, when a guy I’d met who was waiting to do a tandem jump for Children in Need told me that his group had to return on Dec 3rd because it was over 15 knots. The first flight took off just after nine and they managed thirteen in the day.
John turned up about 9.30 with his wife Sandra and their boy and girl as a support team but neither of us heard anything until after midday, when we were called in for our retraining. An instructor called Ian, who’d been doing half the jumps I’d seen, normally with a camera on his head, began to take us back over what we’d learnt when Jonathan turned up. I knew there was a bus replacement for the train between Peterborough and March but knew it couldn’t account for this lateness. I just assumed he’d decided not to come back. In fact, there’d been another bus from Kings Cross to Stevenage and he’d had a five and a half hour journey. I thanked Kung again in my mind.
Retraining, interrupted when Ian was called to do another jump, was no problem, though Jonathan was still a touch stressed. Then it was waiting time again. You don’t ask about the weather: not because of some Macbeth superstition but because it’s just annoying to be asked hundreds of times, apparently. The other guys from yesterday all did their jumps and three of them were considering another. Grrrr. The call came before three and six of us lined up to get our parachutes, mine was purple and I was number 6 out. Jonathan, whose face was a slightly paler shade of green than our fluorescent plastic helmets, was second and John was fifth, in the same flyover as me. I challenged him to get closer to the arrow showing landing direction than I could.
With the door open as we took off and rose, and Jonathan sitting facing the hole (I was closer to the front, facing backward) my pulled faces were better for the cameraman than his expression. On his turn, though, he got to the door and (fell more than pushed himself) out, bumping the parachute on the way. Two more, then John, then me. The few seconds that you are in the wind are slowed by the canopy opening on the static line hooked inside the plane and then I was in control of a bloody big, rectangular and sound piece of material. 
I banked and turned against the wind, which meant that I didn’t go so fast but that I stayed up longer. It wasn’t really a thought-out decision. In the training, this bit had been described as the “enjoy yourself” section before preparing for landing. Nobody had told me how to have big fun: looking around was interesting, but with hindsight I should have tried to see if I could do big swooping 360 degree turns (or something).
I landed about 10 metres from the arrow, slightly beating John, who was two fields away. He owes me a beer but his enthusiastic declarations for the experience may imply I missed out. Perhaps it is an adrenaline thing. I was never scared of doing it and my body never got worked up. Perhaps for Jonathan, who landed in the right field but just missed a ditch, the experience was much closer to exhilarating. After all, he made it clear that defeating his fear was part of the reason for jumping out of a plane three and a half thousand feet up. Who is braver, the man who has no fear or the man who consciously seeks to overcome the fear he has? Jonathan, I take my red hat off to you.
Would I do it again? I’d like to freefall from twelve or thirteen thousand feet and if I can eventually do so through a route I have begun, I’ll try to ensure I do another static-line jump within 3 months in order to (a) avoid redoing the whole training course and (b) be allowed to jump at £35 a time. I have resolved to find out because the options were not made clear though there is a different and very expensive course available to go straight into it. John has expressed an interest in the same ultimate goal and Jonathan seems up for more static-line jumps at least. My mum, who insisted I let her know as soon as/if I survived the jump, might have to feel a bit sick again.
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