Onward and Upward

Chapter 29

  My inert body was quickly transported to the nearby Royal Brompton hospital, and quickly they conducted every known test ever devised by the medical profession - that related to the heart and kidneys. No faults found, so it was back into the ambulance (apparently I was renting it by the hour) and over to the Royal Marsden, where they quickly confirmed that I was not riddled with Cancer, so it was back into my home from home/ambulance, and I was half way to the Lister Hospital before some eagle eyed paramedic noticed that I was not a female, so their world famous gynaecology department was probably not going to pronounce me pregnant, and then the driver had a brain-wave, perhaps it was all in my mind, ‘let’s take him to the loony bin, sorry the Bethlem Royal hospital’, where I lay in a catatonic stupor for a week, until tests proved conclusively that I was ‘intrinsic’, in other words they didn’t know what had caused my fuse to blow, but did I give a jot – no, in fact I didn’t know what a jot was – or a give – or a but – or anything else for that matter. Wherever the part of me that distinguished me from a cabbage was situated, it had completely shut down, and even if someone had miraculously gotten through to it, they would have found that there was nothing available to translate it into usable information, they had a better chance of getting a response from a brick wall if they shouted at in fluent gobbledy-gook.

  After that profound pronouncement, all and sundry in the field of psychiatry then descended on my inert frame, and it was open season for every wild theory and half-baked test ever dreamt up, with some even muttering incantations under their breath as they carried them out, although Robin and Alice did draw the line at cattle prods, and finally they unanimously decided on a case conference, and for over eight hours the great and good in the profession theorised and debated every aspect of my ‘problem’, and then finally, just before the restaurant closed its doors for the evening, they reached a unanimous decision – I was living proof that man was descended from cabbages – not apes.

  With that Robin and Alice had me transferred to the peace and tranquillity of a world famous sanatorium high in the Swiss Alps, although it might as well have been a B&B at the end of Gatwick airports main runway, I couldn’t hear a thing, and certainly didn’t know what a peace, or a tranquillity was. After six weeks they then came to the conclusion that what this world famous sanatorium was famous for was its pricing structure, anywhere else in the free World its Board of Directors would have been arrested and put in front of a firing squad years ago, so finally I was taken home to El Campo, and what do I remember of my flight of fancy, absolutely nothing, unless you consider a big black void – something (what’s a black? What’s a void?) and from then on I apparently had round-the-clock care from every ‘ist in the book, Nutritionists, Cardiologists, and Therapists of every persuasion. I had Endocrinologists, Dental Hygienists, Histologists, in fact the only one that I didn’t partake of their services were the Pathologists. As my body was now becoming a shadow of its former self I was now also regularly being beaten, thumped, squeezed and twisted by a gang of masochists, which were collectively known as Physiotherapists, but as you can guess I never felt a thing, in fact a Dentist did two fillings without any anaesthetic, and I never flinched a muscle (normally when they said ‘this won’t hurt’ I would threaten to grab hold of their ‘spherical’s’ and say ‘you and me both’).

  It was three months after my shut-down when Alice found the right ‘ist, he had a small practice in the now ‘slowly coming back to life Pueblo’, and she saw the writing on the wall, Holistic Therapist. You either believe that they are charlatans, only skilled in the practice of parting you from your hard earned cash, or they can work medical miracles without the need to slice you open or fill you full of toxic substances. Fortunately Alice was one of the latter and pushed Kia through the door.

  Francisco, ‘please call me Paco’, welcomed her in fluent Spanish, but that wasn’t too much of a problem, she was well into the final few discs of Rosetta Stone, and because business was ‘slack’ he was able to give her a ‘seeing to’ straight away, if that was alright. Paco’s wife, Alba, took Kia off to play and he led her into his treatment room. Everything was subdued, the soothing aroma of joss sticks filled her nostrils, and a relaxation CD started to calm her down. Alice had always considered herself calm (she did – I didn’t), but after an hour and a half she felt like a new woman (please, no references to Burt), but what had really worked the magic for her were his fingers. At the end of the massage and reflexology he had placed them, in a set sequence, first on her feet, then her hands and finally on her head, just spreading his fingers over certain pulse points and holding them gently in a light grip, and this is where the sceptics think they are being ripped off, as he quietly sat there, eyes closed for a few minute, and Alice could feel first her muscles and tendons relax, and then her brain became one with all the other energies within her being, and she was totally at peace with her inner self, and the rest of the world (for the sceptics among you – she had just had a quick nap). Once she returned to reality and slowly put on her blouse and jeans (thank god she was wearing clean undies – she thought), first she thought of Kia, but reassuring laughter came from down the corridor, then she thought ‘how much’. If this had been Switzerland then it would now be a quick trip to the bank to arrange for an overdraft, but no this was Spain, ‘Oh no, nothing, it was time for my comida (lunch) anyway, let’s say that it was a complimentary first treatment, and led her towards the room from whence her infants giggles had so recently emanated, but now only the ominous sound of utter silence emerged. As they entered Paco and Alba’s private rooms, Alice found out the reason for her sons unaccustomed silence, Alba was shovelling spoon-full after spoon-full of lentejas (lentil soup) down his mouth. To say that he was a fussy eater was like saying that Michelangelo was a bit of a painter and decorator, but he never even paused to acknowledge her arrival. Another bowl was set down and she was sat in front of it. First her eyes surveyed the creation, and her lip started to curl, but then a delicate aroma reached her nostrils, so she thought ‘if Kia likes it, perhaps a soupcon, and after that one spoonful she knew that she had just met Marcel’s equal, and then halfway through her second bowl she remembered Kurt, he was waiting outside for her, in an un-seasonal downpour.

  After his encounter with the wrong end of the shotgun Kurt recovered well from his injuries, only to fall foul of the hospital. He contracted MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus for short, and the Doctors were soon advising him that his foot should come off, but Kurt was having none of it – it was from just below the knee, or nothing, he would have much better prospects of future employment with a trans-tibial prosthetic leg (often referred to as a "BK" or below the knee prosthesis in the prosthetic industry - yawn) than with a block of wood for a foot (not quite an accurate description, but he believed it was close enough), but after the amputation, recovery, convalescence and fitting of a ‘top of the range’ jobby (not a technical expression), on full pay, he was not sacked – so he didn’t have to look for a new job, what a waste of a perfectly healthy lower leg, and as the bionic man (as he was now called by all and sundry – but usually out of ear shot), he quickly regained his former dexterity. First he started back at the bottom again, guarding the laundry, past the pets’ pooper scoopers, and finally back to body guarding ‘family’, hence he now found himself standing outside some quacks ‘clinic’, in the pouring rain, after Mrs Carter had disappeared inside (and he had verified that it was the only entrance) almost two miserable hours ago. Suddenly he was dragged inside, covered in fleecy white towels, and plonked down beside the ’family’, and instructed to consume a bowl of ‘soup, with bits in it’ (a full English breakfast usually stretched his culinary expertise) by the quacks ‘broad’. Perhaps Paco and Alba weren’t that bad after all.

  Fifteen minutes later, as they all tucked into home-made Paella, Alice, between mouthfuls, asked Paco what he thought about her father’s condition, and Kurt was mortified, ‘confidential information?
??, but as his mouth was full of yellow rice, snails, squid, and some unpronounceable things, he politely refrained from speaking, after all, in reality it was the main topic of conversation in every bar and café in the pueblo, so the top secret ‘secret’ was fairly common knowledge to everyone, and Paco’s solution – ‘let me get my hands on him’. In fact twice he had presented himself at the gates of El Campo, but had almost been shot both times (Carlos was a sceptic as well), but an hour later the five of them entered El Campo main gates, and not a single shot rang out. After handing a very contented, and sound asleep Kia over to Inma, she led her new friends into her fathers’ room. The staff gymnasiums changing room had been situated next to the medical centre, and had now been converted into my new sleeping quarters, or rather my catatonic stupor, open bracket – intrinsic – close bracket, quarters, but did I give a jot, of course not, and neither did I know what a jot was, or – etc, etc.

  Despite Freyja’s protestations (she was now on ‘permanent loan’ from the hotel/hospital, along with a gaggle of other nurses, as ‘supervising enfemera (nurse)’, and was another sceptic) Alba placed her joss sticks around the room and a relaxation CD was soon sending out its subliminal message, and Paco quietly administered his ministrations, but in the end he felt none of the energy flows that always came through his fingertips, it had never happened to him before, although as he dejectedly left the room he felt a slight tingling in one of his fingers when he touched it with his thumb, so he paused, touched it again, but nothing – ‘must be a touch of cramp’. Inside my black void, as he applied his gentle pressure, for just a few seconds a slight dark blue hue appeared at one edge, but as I didn’t know what an edge was, or a blue, or a second, or even a just, it didn’t bother me one little jot (what’s a jot?).

  Paco wasn’t a quitter, so he said that he would come back mańana and try again, and good as his word he did, and the tingling was slightly stronger, and my dark blue edge lasted for a few more seconds (what’s a more?), and as he persevered, over the weeks that followed the sensations increased, and my dark blue edge remained a little longer, until finally, well into his third week he touched my head and found the connection from his last visit still there, and my body gave an almost imperceptible shudder, and relaxed ever so slightly, and if Freyja had not been watching me like a hawk (which she did almost every time Paco appeared) it would have gone unnoticed by everyone but Paco (and who would have ever believed that charlatan), and inside my black void the blue edge ever so slightly eased the black to one side, allowing a scrabble tile with the letter Q on it to slide in the gap. Of course I didn’t recognise it as it was back to front and upside down, but it was a start, and although I didn’t know what a Q was, or a scrabble, from little acorns do great oak trees grow. From then on Paco visited me twice, sometimes even three times a day, and not only during the day, when he couldn’t sleep, then in the early hours of the morning as well, most of the time just sitting there cradling my head in his fingertips, and Freyja, along with most other people could see my relaxation improving, and then the inevitable happened, ‘a family crisis’ and Paco had to go away for three days, so Freyja, that great disbeliever, asked if she could help by standing in for him. Paco was sceptical, ‘it wasn’t like applying for a job, you cannot have on the job training, you had to have a ‘calling’ for it’, but he gave her a quick ‘test drive’ anyway. Freyja sat as she had seen him sit at least a hundred times before, and went to place her fingers around my head – but found that they had a will of their own, and suddenly she felt a surge of energy come up from her fingertips, through her whole being, and out of her now open mouth, leaving a vile taste behind, and for ten minutes she sat transfixed at the head of my bed, then she heaved, and was violently sick over my pillow, but her fingers never faltered, and inside my head the dark blue hue slowly changed to pink, and started to push the black void even faster to one side, and yet more scrabble tiles started to tumble in, it was starting to get very crowded in there, what is a crowd? – but I did like the colour pink.

  Paco realised that Freyja was his sole partner, what he lacked - she had, and by the time he returned early from the family crisis (after all it was only his mothers’ funeral, it wasn’t as if she was in a position to miss him), I was moving my fingers and toes slightly. Message understood, and from then on one or the other, or even both of them were on one of my extremities, and inside by head, foot, finger, or wherever my sole, or being, or sub conscious level was, and things started to slowly sort themselves out. Paco reckoned that deep down, the most embarrassing thing happening to me was that I became incontinent, and so my first significant improvement was – I had bladder control, maybe not a significant event for most people, but to those around me it was a gigantic leap, (what’s a leap?, oh yes a big jump, but what’s a jump?) And then Paco went against the mainstream specialists and declared my room ‘a noisy area’. Up until now everyone crept around me, talking in hushed whispers and generally treating me as though I could hear something, he wanted me to hear something – anything - so my room became Central Station, everyone and anyone could clatter in, chatter away, and if they knocked something over, even better, and then Mr Smith from Canada (AKA Charlie) had an idea, out came my old wheelchair, and after dusting it down and fitting a Heath Robinson device to stop my head bouncing around I was out into the big wide world, and once they placed reflective sun glasses on me, hiding my glazed eyes, everyone wanted to stop the procession and have a one way chat with me, then finally, just before he disappeared off in his business jet (with no visible markings on it) he took me for a swim, although not very far, as the tubes and cables weren’t waterproof, but that was soon sorted. I didn’t know what water was, but if felt very nice all the same.

  On the whole I continued to ‘ever so slightly’ improve, but occasionally the inside of my head would go into absolute turmoil, and quite a number of ‘ists were getting concurned, so I was wired into yet more devices which pumped small doses of sedative into me when I started to get agitated, which could be at absolutely anytime. It might be when I was in bed, when someone walked into my room, or whilst I was being wheeled down a corridor, something, somewhere seemed to trigger a reaction, and according to them it wasn’t very nice, but all that I knew was that I was back in that black void, what is a …… (Oh forget it, you get the idea).

  Almost five months after going into my stupor, Paco and Freyja’s hard graft started to pay off big time, and even the worst of sceptics thought that there might just be a glimmer of light at the end of my tunnel, and this verily worried them, the ‘attacks’ for want of a better word, were increasing, and the general consensus of opinion was now that if I suddenly regained full consciousness, and all my memories flooded back at once, it would either put me back into my catatonic stupor permanently, or even worse (for whom) my heart would give out, and they doubted that my new machines could cope, so like the President of the good old US of A, I now had a follower, but unlike the Presidents follower, who had all the nuclear holocaust codes in his briefcase, mine was a nurse who had a syringe full of gunge, that would put me back in my black hole temporarily, and hopefully stop my brain from frying itself, and finally it was put to the test.

  Freyja was doing her thing with her hands (after of course warming them first) on my head, Alice was sat at the foot of my bed stroking my leg, and now ‘not so little’ Mark, who was visiting with Robin and his mummy, found a switch on a redundant bit of machinery, and he clicked it on, and he clicked it off, and he clicked it on, and he clicked it off, and continued doing it until he had happily converted everyone within earshot into potential homicidal maniacs, and Alice was the first to crack. ‘Will you….’ she started to say, but the grunt and glare from Freyja stopped her mid-sentence, with each click Freyja had felt something different coming through her fingertips, and at the same time I gave a twitch. She signalled Alice to encourage Mark to continue, but now that he had Aunties approval it wasn’t such fun, in fact it was no fun at all, but on
e look at her face and he was flicking away like a Trojan, she had felt the twitches in my leg; and the next one to crack was me. I went rigid, my eyes flew open, and if it had been a scene from a horror movie, demons and goollies would be seen pouring from Freyja’s wide open mouth, and then her hands were physically thrown from my head and she was flung back against the wall behind her by an invisible force, and I then turned my head, looked Mark in the eyes and shouted ‘Will somebody stop that obnoxious little brat from making that racket’. Please don’t get me wrong, I usually love children, especially with roast potatoes and broccoli, and from the foot of my bed I heard Alice say ‘That little brat is your grand-son’, I noticed that she didn’t deny his status as I turned my head to face her, but before I could say another word blood erupted from her blouse, and her head started to explode, and then I was safely back in my black void, Freyja had rebounded off the wall and into the sterile kidney dish, with the pre-loaded syringe in it, and even in her dazed state her training took over and she expertly rammed the needle into my cannula, just in the nick of time.

  Now that I was safely under their control, experts rushed in from all over the globe, and took over my consciousness level, and over the next week or so, first manually, then automatically, as more sophisticated machines were drafted it, they first bought me to a semi-conscious state and talked me through my ‘problems’, and then as things ‘sorted themselves out inside’ I was able to remain awake for quite a period of time, until my one big demon dragged me back again, and nothing that they could say or do could coax it out into the open, and this is when I hit the headlines around the world again, not once but twice. It was Doctor Morag McHaimish’s turn to chat me up, and, as with the rest of the clan, she had to ask me a trigger question during some irrelevant chit chat, to observe my response, and she slipped in ‘it’s a pity about Pierre’s vocal cords’, and waited.

  Pierre had survived, due in no small part to Miss A’s quick actions, although he would never speak again, and would always breath through a tube in what was left of his throat, and absentmindedly I said ‘yes, but at least he is happily married now, although it’s a pity it rained on their grand occasion’, and that got her attention, it was still early days and she knew that no-one had mentioned anything about his wedding, and even she didn’t know about the rain.

  ‘How do you know that it rained’ she asked, sensing that something had changed inside my head.

  ‘Maria told me when she and Carlos returned from his wedding (to Francesca) at the stud farm’

  ‘When’, she asked.

  ‘Let me see, normally she calls in for a chat mid-morning to bring me up to speed on what is going on around the place, and then to say good-night about eight in the evening, but as their Air Lingus flight from JFK was late she popped in about eleven o’clock to tell me all about the wedding, so that must be seventy-five days ago’.

  To say that she was gob-smacked was an understatement and quickly she asked Maria to come in, and to bring her diary with her.

  Maria confirmed the one way conversation with me, as I had lain in my catatonic stupor, but on checking her diary I was one day out – but never mind, I was close enough, then Maria re-checked her diary entry, ‘no, Andrew is right, I made the note of our return the following day’.

  As more things began to drop into place inside ‘wherever it was’, they realised that not only was there a little box inside me keeping me breathing, there was also a very large battery powered tape recorder whirring away 24/7, and around the world relatives and friends had renewed hope for their loved ones that were in a coma, and then a week later Morag blushed – world-wide. Her knickers got in a twist, literally, and as she squirmed to get them sorted out, very ‘lady likely’, I asked her if they were the same ones that had given her trouble two days before all the specialists had gone their separate ways, and left me in the care of Paco, ‘the blue ones, with a little red rosebud in the waist band’.

  Morag was mortified, it was a Tuesday so she was indeed wearing the terrible blue ones (but they were very expensive so she wasn’t going to give up on them quite yet), and then she almost fainted, she had gone back to Scotland on a Thursday, flights were usually cheaper on a Thursday, but indeed two days before, they had been up to their usual tricks, and trying to disappear up where the sun don’t shine, and as there was no-one about (except for Andrew laying un-moving, head pointing to the ceiling), she had quickly ducked behind a machine, hiked up her Harris Tweed and sorted them out. Even if Andrew had been awake there was no way that he could have seen her miscreant underwear, and then after rather embarrassingly informing her peers they delved deeper, but not into Morag’s undergarments, and realised that my battery powered tape recorder had a camcorder attachment, which had the ability to travel ‘out of body’ and float around, which again cheered up all the loved ones around the world, but it terrified my two blonde nurses, but their secrets were safe, neither were ‘natural’ blondes. It also saved everyone having to update me on the happenings around the homestead, as within a week I could recall everything ever told to me, warts and all.

  Finally, two weeks later, and innumerable case conferences, before, during and after dinner, they were starting to nod their heads when it was whispered ‘perhaps this is as good as it gets, at least he has a bit of a life now’, but I wanted all my life back, I wanted to fly the Lady S again, but not with an ambulance under one wing – just in case.

  As I became more and more conscious of my surroundings I quickly remembered Paco’s instrumental part in my recovery, but he had now been effectively side-lined by the experts with fancy letters behind their names, but eventually, when all these eminent figures finally ‘all but gave up’, it was Paco that I turned to.

  One of the first things that Paco did, once he started on me, was ask Alice if he could borrow Rosetta Stone, but she was the wrong way round, English to Spanish, so Alice treated him to an early birthday present, and his mind was like a sponge, it soaked up the DVD’s, and by the time he, Alice, Robin, Freyja and I sat down for our very own case conference he was ‘cooking on gas’, and finally we prised out of him his ‘final solution’. He reckoned that my black void had been forced further and further into a corner, as more and more gremlins were pulled out, and was now making a ‘last ditch stand’, with ‘the’ one major thing that had finally pushed me over the top. The experts had covered all my known traumas, and successfully exorcized them, the deaths of Sheila, Breena and James, the accident, George and Millie’s tragic demise, my coming into all that dosh (apparently it can be a traumatic experience to some people), my kidnap attempt, the mid Atlantic rescue, the drug dealers and all the other ‘little’ incidents in my new life, but none of them could shake free my one last demon, so Paco devised a plan – he would hypnotise me.

  ‘That was the plan’ I thought, I had been hypnotised by the best, but no, he wanted to hypnotise me into hypnotising myself, spooky.

  He knew it was a desperate attempt, and it could undo all the excellent work that the Proff’s had done, but I was adamant – I WANTED A PROPER LIFE, so I had long talks with Robin and Alice. Re-wrote my will and gave it to Vicente, and after saying my good-byes (just in case) I lay back in my favourite recliner and prepared myself for the worst – and hoped for the best, and I knew at that moment how a convict felt at execution time. First Paco wanted to try and get me to find the camcorder and use it to tell him, through me, what it saw, and that part was easy. I was out like a light and was quickly relaying to Paco what it saw, and finally we spotted the void, and as I approached it, it was as though I was gazing into Hades itself. I reached out to touch it but it was as if it was protected by an electric fence, wired directly into the National Grid, and I cried out in pain, but as I probed its defences, under the guidance of a very worried Paco, I finally managed to get a finger inside, then two, and finally my hand, but the whole experience was taking its toll on me ‘in real time’. I was shaking violently, screaming, and sweat was pouring off me as R
obin, Alice and Freyja held me down, but even before we started the hypnosis we all knew that this was going to be a ‘one off’ attempt, and it might very well end badly, so we all hung on, them on the outside – literally – me on the inside metaphorically. Finally, just as I was about to give up, my fingers touched something, and it fought back, but I held on and yanked it out of the void, and again I switched off, but not all the way, and for a week my sole, being, or whatever, fought with that box, and finally I managed to prise it open and looked inside, and that is when I was placed on a life support machine in the real world. Another week passed but finally the machines told everyone that I was slowly winning, and starting to come to terms with my demon, and my systems started to function again, until finally I just opened my eyes and smiled at Robin. It was his ‘shift’, and it was two o’clock in the morning, and very scientifically he asked ‘Well, do you know what it was?’

  As I lay there, I closed my eyes again, and watched my video camera re-wind and then leave my body and circle round me, I was on the bridge of the Lady S, dressed in a flak jacket and Kevlar helmet, and watched as David turned to me with a quizzical look on his face, and I nodded, and he quietly said ‘engage’, and through that single, innocuous gesture ten men/ boys, and three women died. All they were doing was trying to feed their families the only way that they knew how, and in all probability no-one on the yachts would have gotten seriously hurt if I hadn’t intervened, but in the mayhem that followed I did not have the luxury of coming to terms with it, and as time passed, and I was fêted as a hero by all and sundry, it got pushed further and further to the back of my mind, but sub-sub-sub-consciously it was never forgotten – until that day in the gallery when my mind was pushed just a step too far.

  The experts quickly put the label of PTSD or ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’, for long, on my ‘problem’ and left it in the hands of their minions to sort out, and went too far distant lands to recover from their ‘stress’ at having to deal with me, which in almost all cases involved sandy beaches and/or luxury cruise liners, although one, Morag, only paid a quick visit to her local M&S and purchased a set of matching blue undies, she didn’t want to spoil her tried and tested routine - but then the label fell off and my brain started to fry.

  Freyja went way above her pay grade and gave me an arm full of the gunge, and waited for them all to return. What happened was that I had started to have conversations with people, not normally a problem, but within a couple of days my room was crowded, and I was holding individual conversations with each person, all at the same time. It was when I was describing the look on my father’s face to Freyja, when he had almost dropped me when he had tried to lift me out of my cot in the nursing home for the first time, and then started to get a blinding headache that she acted, something was obviously not quite right.

  Finally they all reached a decision again, their first one was of course right, but after that last block had been dislodged my brain purged itself, just like when you de-frag a computer hard drive, only different. As everybody gets older, there is only so much room in a brain so it ‘compresses’ unwanted, or un-necessary information and dumps it in blocked up, redundant alley’s (AKA- we forget it). My new problem was that my pills, potions, traumas, or whatever, had caused my brain to re-boot – and then start to recover everything, from every blind alley, and it was starting to overload. If something wasn’t done, and soon, it would go critical and quite literally fry itself.

  Following more case conferences, conducted in every corner of the world by conference calls, a pill was conceived that would drop a charging Rhino in its tracks, but would only slow my brain down to a crawl, in other words I would be almost normal, perhaps only holding two or three conversations at a time, but with every up – there is a down, and the down to these pills was that they would start eating my insides in a very short while, so a cunning plan was hatched.

  First Freyja calmly drew off four large phials of my blood, almost an arm full, and placed them in a box, The box, which was in reality a shock proof, vibration proof, temperature controlled transportation receptacle specially designed for its one and only journey, was carefully handed to my fleetest of foot employee, who took off like a whippet. Down the empty corridors and through the open doors he sped, not even pausing as he hurdled the miniature railway track (which was specially devoided of railways) and launched himself into Twinkle, and Aaron had her airborne before the winged messenger had landed on the Wilton carpet. Not that he was airborne for long, Aaron set her down, none too gently beside Dingbat, with Natasha sat in the cockpit, and the throttle half way up the quadrant. Dingbat lived up to her name; she was a good ten knots faster than any other Hunter that I had. Although all my Hunters were identical, they were all different!!! Each one having an idiosyncrasy all of its own, and their pilots learned to love (or hate) their own particular aircrafts ‘gift’.

  Topsy took the box from the ‘fleet of foot’ that leapt from the back of Twinkle whilst it was still airborne, and slotted it into the specially converted drop-tank, clipped the door shut and nodded to Natasha, who released the brakes and finished pushing the throttle forward, and Dingbat leapt forward, the wing neatly catching Topsy behind the ear, ‘that will teach him to pick Fred over me’ she thought, ‘I’m half the size of that tank’ (meowwww). Dingbat roared down the runway and was airborne almost before she realised it, so quickly cleaning up the aircraft she let it strut its stuff, not bothering to waste time climbing for altitude, seconds counted. She had chosen this particular runway as it almost to the inch lined up with her destination one, the only slight problem being, was that it was quite a long way away, and between El Campo and Andrews favourite free lunch were quite a few houses, schools, high voltage cables and other normal considerations, but this wasn’t a normal consideration. She had done two practice runs, one slowly in Twinkle and the other in her own aircraft Arabella, but now it was for real, and as she skimmed over schools (with all the children outside in the play-ground, waving at her), houses and farms (with their owners waving at her) and under the high voltage cable that spanned a motorway, the top of her fin a metre below the bright orange balls that made the lines visible to VFR aircraft (light aircraft navigating by the AA Book of the Road). Did the traffic mind her blasting the dust off the tops of the trucks with her jet wash, nope, there drivers were standing by the Guardia Civil Officers that had stopped the traffic for her, frantically waving her on. As she approached the Airbase and crossed the threshold of the runway she didn’t even bother to put her undercarriage down, it was a really, really long runway. It had been constructed at the height of the cold war to take American B52 Bombers (it was rumoured that B52’s needed assistance from the curvature of the Earth just to get airborne), and about half way down (give or take a foot or two) she lowered the undercarriage, set Dingbat firmly down, and slid to a halt beside Fred. She had been ever so slightly tempted to ‘misjudge’ it and squash her, but she wasn’t absolutely certain that Dingbat would survive the clash of the Titans. Fred raced in (well ran very fast), unclipped the door, removed the box and leapt (well ran very fast again) over to a man in a space suit, who wasn’t there, who took it from her and disappeared into the bowels of an aircraft that didn’t exist. The last SR-71 flew in 1999, before being ‘de-activated’, but unless she was mistaken this looked to be a very active one, and there wasn’t a spec of rust on its titanium. A refuelling tanker was valiantly trying to keep ahead of the consumption curve of the two P&W J58-P4 engines that were ‘ticking over’, as the little Hunter skidded to a halt, smoke billowing from its brakes, and as the box was transferred into the hands of a RSO (Reconnaissance Systems Officer) that never was, it was the signal for the fuel delivery operative to disconnect his hose, replace the fuel cap, close the panel and vacate the area, but he had only completed the first three items on his check list when the two huge engines above him went into afterburner and he and Fred were blown unceremoniously off the runway, quickly followed by a flaying refuellin
g hose. Natasha thought this was all very amusing, until her aircraft was caught in the maelstrom, and Dingbat weather cocked around 180% and almost became airborne in the jet-wash, and the Avon wasn’t even switched on. Her story from then on was that she had ‘flown’ the Hunter back onto the ground, using its manual controls, ‘cwiky’ she thought ‘this is almost as exciting as the ride to the Space Station’.

  The SR-71 (that wasn’t) stayed in afterburner until it met up with a tanker ‘somewhere in the northern hemisphere’ then continued on until it came to a land mass that everyone lovingly called America, so the pilot slowed it down. He had learned over his radio that when the President finally signed the cheque for all the broken glass in the government owned greenhouses in Portugal, the Country would be debt free (he had remembered Spain but forgot all about Portugal), and a message direct from his Commander –in- Chief made it clear that any more broken glass and the repairs would be financed out of his pay cheques.

  The invisible SR-71 came to a standstill in a very visible public civilian airport, alongside a Marine Corp McDonnell Douglas TAV-8B two seat Harrier, and the RSO, who had somehow managed to climb out of his space suit, and into his ‘day job’ flight suit vacated the aircraft and was up the ladder and into the front seat of the ‘jump jet’ in a flash, clutching the box as if his own life depended on it (and according to his Commanding Officer – it did). The Crew Chief was close behind him, and yanked out the seat safety pins, and then fell off the ladder as the pilot, Major ‘Dick’ Head in the back seat got a tad ‘over eager’. As they powered away the RSO made the aptly nicknamed pilot aware of two things, first, he wasn’t strapped into his armed ejection seat, and second, the ladder was still on the side of the aircraft.

  ‘Suppose we can’t close the hood then, let’s hope it doesn’t rain’, came the laconic reply, as he retracted his birds undercarriage, he didn’t bother to comment on the first problem, he was safely strapped into his ejection seat.

  As they approached the car park of the destination hospital two things out of the norm happened after he lowered the undercarriage, first the ladder gave up its struggle to hang on, and the top attachment broke loose, but the lower one held momentarily, fortunately stopping it from being swallowed up by the vector thrust engine (and converting it into an airborne scrap-heap), but it did cause the ladder to pivot out, and then under the belly of the aircraft, from whence came a thud, a strange vibration, and finally the undercarriage light turned red – oops.

  He was only seconds from the very hard surface of the car park, so he made a quick decision (he was famous for these, hence his nickname); and selected the now useless undercarriage ‘up’ again, and looked for something softer to land on. Just in front of the world famous research hospitals grandiose main entrance he spotted a rose garden on a roundabout, perfect, and slid to halt ‘maybe just a little too high’ he thought (his front seater ‘knew’ that it was a lot too high) and shut down the engine. Three things then happened, one – gravity took charge of the aircraft and it belly flopped into the centre of the flower bed, two - whilst descending, the remnants of the engines jet-wash blasted the roses below, up, up, and away, along with the recently applied ‘natural’ fertilizer, and then three - gravity again took charge and deposited most of the ‘fertilizer’ back into the open cockpit. It was then that ‘Dick’ knew that he really was in the ‘brown and sticky’, and it smelt terrible.

  Security Guard Jesse Owens had been named by his father ‘Jesse Owens the second’ even though his own name was Walter Owens. He was a fan of that famous American athlete and dearly wanted his new son to follow in his namesakes footsteps. He should have realised that it was wishful thinking when Jesse Mk2 took four days to crawl into the World, and his mother never even noticed. Jesse had been practicing holding this particular door open for two days, and finally he had mastered the technique of accomplishing the task, without blocking the opening only an hour earlier, so he was left holding it open, just in case ‘. He had been taken on by the hospital more for his ‘mobile road blocking ability’, rather than his mental or physical dexterity, but for the first time in his life he was ‘ahead of the curve’. As the Harrier arrived (no one could really call it a landing) in front of him he knew it was ‘his moment in time’, ‘his fifteen minutes of fame’, and as everyone else either froze or dove for cover, he surged forward, only to be pulled up short, so he turned, and saw that his hand was still attached to the half wrenched off door handle. Letting go of it he surged forward again and charged down the steps, he had never actually used the steps before, not that he wasn’t allowed to, they were just too complicated to use, he always used the wheelchair ramp, but as he reached the road that separated him from his destiny he started to flag, but fortunately his other piston deep within him fired up. The last time that this had happened was when Dim Daisy’s father had found them in her room trying to play strip snap. Although they were both still fully clothed after an hour, he took off ‘just in case’. He finally crossed the road, after first looking left, then right, then left again (or was it the other way round, so he did it both ways - just in case) and leapt onto the concrete bird bath that the pilot had kindly landed beside (‘what bird bath’ Captain Head was later heard to say). Only weeks before, his colleagues had persuaded him to enter a ‘cross dressing’ charity competition, but he’d had a nose bleed when he put on the high heeled shoes (fortunately for him, as in reality it was a formal affair), but he felt fearless as the ton of concrete wobbled under his unconventional arrival. Peering down into the front cockpit he nodded benignly at the occupant, but he was having a catatonic stupor (extrinsic) all of his own - it was extrinsic because the experts would immediately find out that it had been bought on by that idiot sat behind him, so Jesse glanced around the cockpit and spotted the only thing that wasn’t bolted to the airframe (excluding the occupant), and grabbed it and gave it a firm yank, but it didn’t move an inch, Again he tried, and this time the occupant was actually lifted bodily out of his seat a good six inches (America hasn’t been metrificated yet), but still it was attached firmly to the occupant, so balling his fist he thumped it down on the top on his bone dome, and the poor RSO’s head almost disappeared inside his body, but experts later declared that Jesse had ‘snapped him out of his Catatonic Stupor (extrinsic)’ (after he had recovered from his concussion), and Jesse wrenched the box from the unconscious man’s frozen grasp (experts also declared that his arms would have in all probability been wrenched out of their sockets if he hadn’t been poleaxed in the nick of time), and Jesse leapt fearlessly into the cow-dung. Pausing only to look both ways, like a demented windscreen wiper, and to pick up a few rose petals (his mother’s favourite flower) he was off again, and blow the ramp, he took the steps two at a time, unfortunately there were an odd number of steps and he nearly came a cropper at the top, but there in front of him were two panes of glass, the one on the left enclosed in a door frame, complete with a half wrenched off handle, and now being held open by an untrained person, ‘it must be for someone very important’ he though, so fearlessly he charged through the other one. In front of him now was a lift, with its door held open, and a flight of stairs to the side of it, he knew his destination was two levels up so he charge up the stairs, he hated lifts – multiple choice buttons confused him, but after six steps he started to flag, but his ‘second wind’ kicked in, and it was onward and upward, and time to fulfil his destiny. As he reached the final step of the marble stair-case his twenty-fifth wind tried to wheeze its way inside him, but through two open doors he saw his final destination, the reason for his very existence, the reason he drew breath every day – Nurse Bentley, her chassis handed down from on high, and she was standing there looking at HIM, with her arms open wide, well wide enough to receive the box, (she, along with everyone else in the Hospital had studiously refrained from making eye contact with him ever since he had first arrived there, apart from the ones that hadn’t seen him at all, and then checked the bottom of their shoes af
ter he had passed) and that was all the encouragement he needed. As he reached unheard of speeds (excluding the time that his coat had got caught in the door of a bus) he charged through the doors, unfortunately there was no glass at their sides so he hoped that he wouldn’t upsetting anybody important, and past people that were actually cheering him on, and whistling, and whooping and he veritable flew, until everything went silent. They, and finally he realised that ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’ or in this case – stopping distance, the greater his speed, the longer the stopping distance, and usually he had no problem with stopping distances, even in a ‘rush’ it never took him more than six inches to come to a halt, but as he watched Nurse Bentley’s face go ashen, and she frantically tried to remember the lines to the ‘Hail Mary’, it hit him, he was going to hit her, and despite her natural beauty, the aftermath wasn’t going to be a pretty sight, so he locked his legs - and fortunately the janitor had got the floor polish watered down to just the right consistency, too slippery and he would have slid through Nurse Bentley, through the laboratory and through the outside wall, and not slippery enough, he would have completed the same journey, only head first. He slid to a standstill in front of Nurse Bentley, whose face was now whiter than her uniform, and thrust the box into her still outstretched arms. She automatically clutched the proffered box, realized that she wasn’t going to die, and in the absolute silence of the occasion, she broke wind. Turning bright crimson she turned and fled into the Haematology Department, where night and day fused into one.

  Experts (ex – a has been, spert – a drip under pressure) from all around the globe fell into three neat categories, the first group (the pessimists) said it would take three months, the second group (the optimists) said it would take one month, and the third group (those who regularly talked to the fairies at the bottom of their gardens) said it would take two weeks, but six days after Jesse had collapsed in the doorway half dead, the doors were flung open and Nurse Bentley, still in the same uniform, but hopefully with a change of underwear, ceremonially handed a small pot of pills to Jesse, who still looked half dead – but this had more to do with the nine nurses who on hearing that their new local hero was a virgin, had tried to help him overcome his malady, (of course I am a virgin, I was born on the tenth of September) and the other twenty that heard that he was spectacularly good at one thing in his life. Jesse blushed at number seven, sorry Nurse Bentley, turned, and thrust it into the hands of the originally designated ‘fleet of foot’, who had really had his nose put out of joint by ‘that lumbering Ox’. Jesse had heard what he’d had to say and now the ‘fleet of foot’ not only had his nose to worry about, he now had three cracked ribs to contend with as well.

  For the pot of pills it was a similar journey to my armful of blood, only Lieutenant Head (whose father was possibly the only friend that the President had left – and whose rank was falling in direct proportion to the President’s popularity rating) had had his horoscope read to him by his new Crew Chief, punctuated at regular intervals by a punch on the nose, and was now sedately sat in the driver’s seat of the replacement TAV-8B (with a plaster over his nose). The RSO, now a General, having skipped a rank or two sat quivering in the front seat, (where threats of court martials and firing squads had failed, open bribery had succeeded), waiting to receive the pills from the ‘not so fleet of foot’. The hospitals gardener had threatened to do something very nasty to the Hospital Administrator with his pricking out stick if the ‘actual re-enactment – in reverse’, for the benefit of the cameras, came anywhere near his new roses.

  Pills safely in the pocket of the most senior RSO in the history of the US Air Force, the Harrier rose sedately into the air, after the crew chief; complete with ladder, had disappeared inside an armoured personnel carrier, and settled gently back down a few minutes later beside the SR-71. All television cameras were switched off within a ten mile radius of the airport (Presidential Order 01) for the occasion, but it was slightly academic, it was in full view of half a million spectators, and the RSO then claimed the second part of his bribe, and disappeared behind a hastily erected sheet, with two stunning ‘survival suite specialists’ who were almost in their un-suitable micro bikini’s). Two minutes later, after a resounding smack was heard above the SR-71’s idling engines, he was out and into the aircraft, after first checking that the pill pot was safely in his pressure suite pocket, and second, checking that the cheek with the hand print on it was away from the pilots view, and they were quickly airborne – but no greenhouses were harmed in the making of this flight, and on arrival at my favourite watering hole he was quickly out, and handing the pot over to Fred, who stomped over to Dingbat and slammed it into Natasha’s outstretched hand. Smiling primly at her arch rival, Natasha tucked the pills in her breast pocket – sorry delete that – chest pocket – forget that – oh forget it, and she was off down the runway, only just failing to solve Fred’s earwax problem with the pitot/static tube on her wing tip, but at least she tried.

  On arrival at El Campo Natasha missed the runways altogether, and set Dingbat down on the dogs-leg in the taxi-track, the dogs leg (not a real dogs leg, just a curve in the track) had precluded her from taking off from the track a week ago, and she was standing on the brakes well before the wheels made contact with the tarmac, ‘let the Maxaret units (anti- locking units in the braking system ) earn their pay’ she though, as smoke started to billow from yet another new set of brake pads. Just as she thought that she would miss the turning up to Mi Casa, there was a ‘shift in the wind’ (‘I really must stop having curry before I fly’, she though) and slid around the corner, and began the assent to the grandiose front doors. As she had plenty of speed she shut down the Avon and coasted silently up to the doors, sliding the hood, complete with makeup mirror (not important now, but it will be in a minute) back along its track. As she came to a halt, it theory (and practice, after practice) Topsy would then come forward with a set of chocks, place them either side of the nose wheel, and then come and take the pills from her out-stretched hand, but in this practice he had just come off the phone with Fred, and he snatched the pills out of her hand, and smiled sweetly at her - then Natasha noticed the chocks, in a flower bed, and Dingbat started to trundle slowly back down the incline. Her brakes were virtually useless so frantically slamming the hood shut, so she could use the rear view mirror, she guided the gathering speed (in the wrong direction) Hunter, with what little brakes that she had left, along the road towards Sasha’s roundabout by the main gate, turning the corner onto the airfield was out of the question. Under normal circumstances Natasha’s skill would have warranted the front page of Flight International, and numerous other aviation magazines, but at that moment all she wanted to do, apart from getting the silent engine started again, was to disembowel both of them, preferably with a blunt screwdriver. The Avon finally reached ‘self-sustaining’ RPM just before she reached the flower bed, and she slammed the throttle forward to its stop, and Dingbat at first slowed, and then finally reversed direction a mere metre away from the curb stone that was only fifth removed from Sasha’s (don’t forget lineage was very important to Sasha), but unfortunately the Avon has slightly more power that its Continental cousins, even the turbo charged ones, and every living thing on the roundabout was spread over the front of the Security Office, leaving just another forlorn bird bath in the centre.

  ‘But what about the pills’ I hear you ask, Topsy had correctly guessed that after that landing Dingbats brakes would be well and truly knac useless, so after giving its nose an encouraging pat/shove he trotted into Mi Casa, whistling as he went, and as he entered my room I asked him if he could sing, because he certainly couldn’t whistle, and then I continued my conversations with Mrs Blake, Marcel and Inma, who seemed to be fascinated about Sheila’s cross-stitch poem, the menu on our first Concord flight and what I had written on the inside of Patricia Barbers satchel, which had gotten me ‘six of the best’ from the Headmaster, until Freyja removed tw
o pills from the Mach 3.3 pot, slipped them under my tongue, and firmly clamped my mouth shut until they dissolved. A couple of minutes later she removed her fingers and I looked at Mrs Blake, shouldn’t she be below-stairs terrorising some young house maid?, and what on earth was Marcel prattling on about Concord for, it had been grounded for years, and who is Patricia Barber? Just like that I had the brain of a fifty year old, they wanted to adjust it to my actual age but I certainly wasn’t ready for my free bus-pass just yet, and as if on cue, Miss A returned from her travels.

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