» When were you last really scared?

Plummet of doom

A few years ago I got into parachuting. Scary enough you might think, but this story is about my last ever jump.
If you've ever seen a war movie and seen soldiers jumping from a plane, you'll see that they are attached to a line.
When they jump out, the line pulls the parachute out of the bag and "boof"! Parachute opens. Floaty, floaty. Nice.

It's the same when you start skydiving as a civilian. You get attached to a line and jump out of a little plane.
As you get better and more confident, you start doing what's called a "dummy pull". You jump out, reach round and pull a fake handle which mimics the one on a real parachute.
The jump master watches and makes sure you're in a stable body position and counting "1000, 2000" etc, and not just flapping your arms and screaming for mother.

And so it was with me. After 6 jumps I had stopped screaming and was (apparently) ready to move on to the next step.
This involves ditching the line. You are basically jumping into oblivion and are responsible for opening your
own parachute. Before you can do this, you have to sign up to be a member of the British Parachute Association and
give them several tenners. I think they've got wind that for many people, this is going to be their last jump so they'd better cash in now.

So up we go in the little plane. "In the door", "Get ready", "Go" !
I jump out. But without the pull of the line to slow you down, believe me, you drop like a fucking stone.

So I manage to pull the cord. Just as I do so, I'm flipped onto my back. Now this is not a good place to be when a parachute is opening. This is
how people get tangled up in parachutes and come down, to use a bit of skydiving parlance, "like a bag of washing".

Now everything slows down to a crawl and I start to feel utter terror welling up within me as 3 things come before my eyes; the sun, my feet and lots of parachute lines.
"This is how I'm going to die" flashed into my brain and I took in the deep breath that would be my final, blood curdling scream.

Then "boof"!
(Fri 23rd Feb 2007, 16:59, More)

» The Worst Journey in the World

Coach to Amsterdam
1993. Traveling by coach with a couple of mates to Amsterdam to celebrate New Year. Our saner friends decided to fly, but lured by the prospect of a cheap fare we rocked up at Victoria in London at about 9 at night to get this thing.

Cue 12 hours of hell, caused mainly by the fact that some twat decided to try and flush their half eaten doner kebab down the chemical toilet as we were pulling out of the terminal, putting it out of order for the entire journey.

We're already half cut and we've got booze, but the price of a slate of stella on the ferry was just too good to resist (think it was under a tenner), so we get one each. We then pool resources with another group on the bus (we're all getting on famously by now), who for some reason have just bought a load of baileys and fancy a lager.

It all gets very messy and we arrive in Amsterdam at about 9am surrounded by piss filled cans of wife beater and a mate who's unconscious with the booze. He then has to be forcefully removed from the bus because he steadfastly refuses to believe that we’re in Amsterdam because he doesn't recognize the car park we were in (and could see no canals, clogs or prostitutes I suppose). Oh, I forgot to mention we'd nowhere to stay…..

Coming back was no better. For some reason we go a different way and the ferry goes from Ostend. Don't know if you ever experienced the delights of an early 90’s Sally Ferry, but think of a big rusting tug boat containing a large DSS waiting room and you won't be far wrong.

A member of the crew manages to wrap a cable around the propeller (I kid you not), so we're stuck there for 4 hours whilst they sort that one out. The boat's taking everyone home after new year, so the place is fit to burst. There's nowhere to sit and people are lying in the corridors. It's like the evacuation of Dunkirk.

A gang of scousers get lippy with the crew so the captain shuts the bar and threatens all of us there with arrest. This does not help my paranoia, as I've just swallowed nearly an eighth of Amsterdam’s finest because I know I can't bring it home and I'm too pretty to go to prison. The only place I can find to get some sleep is with my head next to a video game, which woke me up every 3 minutes when it announced the high scores.

I have to be practically carried onto the coach for the last leg of the journey.

We get home and I announce to my mates that I'm just going to have “a bit of a lie down”.

I'm asleep for 23 hours.
(Tue 12th Sep 2006, 16:51, More)