Wednesday 1 November 2017

Worried Man Blues

Taking in the sweep of dark coastline that cradled an expansive bay of ink dark water, and a sky that was studded with stars between puffy groups of cumulus, I considered the magnitude of my folly. There was hardly a light to be seen. I turned back into the hotel/store/tavern and spoke to the proprietor, a stocky guy in perhaps his late 60's with a bushy grey moustache.

Where am I? I asked. Australia?

You're just near Christchurch, he replied, with a distinctly antipodean twang

New Zealand?

That's right.

He turned away to serve a customer. I went through the contents of my pockets. It didn't take long. I had perhaps £70 plus a bit of loose change. No plastic. No passport. No balloon. And although I was off today, I had work to do tomorrow.

I've been in a balloon before of course, but somehow, earlier that day, I'd ended up flying one myself. This was an extremely stupid thing to do as I was very tired. I suspected that I might have had a couple of drinks too.

Once, years before I drove home to Wirral from Milton Keynes, but because of a head on collision meaning the police had closed the road, I ended up having to take a very different route that added hours onto my journey. Getting very drunk and having almost no sleep the night before didn't help either, but despite drinking a huge cup of ice cold coke at the previous services, I found myself drifting off into a dangerous torpor, and I knew I had to just get off the road as soon as I could. There were perhaps 15 or 20 minutes when it took all my will to keep my eyes open, but I got into the next service station, parked up out of everyone's way, and slept for about 3 hours before completing my drive home.

And that's how I was feeling now. As I piloted the balloon low over some parkland, I felt that same drifting detachment and I should have found somewhere to land. Instead, I found myself waking up from a doze and realising that without the occasional input of hot air from the burners, I was going to hit the ground anyway. I must have only been asleep for a minute or so because I was still drifting over what now looked like a golf course. I opened up the burners but the balloon responded, not by drifting serenely upward, but by rocking violently forwards and backwards. Almost to the point where the basket was horizontal. Still, it steadied, and as it drifted onward, I drifted back into oblivion.

Only to wake. This time, I'd obviously been asleep for much longer, and I was drifting very low over some built up suburban stuff. I quickly turned on the burners, sending a blast of flame up into the canopy above. This time the balloon reacted even more violently, rocking backwards and forwards with so much force that it almost threw me out of the basket, as it somehow turned through 360 degrees. Only centrifugal force kept me in place.

Shee-it! I said, but I was still very low down, so I applied another blast of heat, and the balloon, again responded by rocking wildly. This time it threw me out of the basket and left me clinging on to its edge as it fell, completely out of control, and hit a road.

I picked myself up and looked around. The basket was on its side. Around me were it's contents. The balloon itself had burst violently as we hit the ground. There were bits of fabric strewn about and I could see the neck of the balloon, bizarrely knotted like the neck of a party balloon.

My wife was not going to be happy. I don't think she even knew I'd gone up in a balloon, and it was an expensive thing to wreck. Plus I had no idea where I was and it was getting towards evening.

And now it was night, and I'd somehow ended up in the lobby of this place that overlooked the sweeping bay with almost no lights to be seen and a sky full of clouds and stars.

And then I woke up again, and after a bit of confusion, I realised I was tucked up in my bed. Boy was I glad to be home!

I don't know about you, dear reader, but when my sleep is particularly badly disturbed, I get some incredibly vivid dreams. Last night I had perhaps 3 hours of sleep, so having done my early morning driving test lesson, I came home, and with a break of a few hours, I decided to get some more kip. And at some point, I ended up flying a balloon to New Zealand.


driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

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