For the CAA who skulk around blogs looking for descriptions of illegal activities – the following description is entirely fictional as an example for other pilots of what could happen [really]

The plan was to fly down the Lake District to meet my son who was cycling down (a challenging 160 mile each way cycle ride with his chum), I would take Mrs Forrester my folding brompton bike which fits in the passenger seat of the plane so we could meet somewhere in the area. That was the plan.

The plane was full of fuel, Mrs Forrester was in the back and Mike’s gear was in the back, along with Mrs Forresters heavy handcuffs, and Mike. We didn’t bother weighing as it was patently overweight (Mike was certainly). It was a cross wind take off, bar in and rolling down the runway – revs over 6K half way down pushed bar forward – no response (oh fuck). Abort point not reached yet – push bar ahead again and sweep into the air groaning past the abort point skew round with the cross wind and push into the air.

It was fairly turbulent and I could see over the Lammermuirs there was a lot of cloud and there was blue sky. The blue sky was tempting – that meant no turbulence and a gentle flight with a good tailwind. To get to the blue sky required a climb into cloud that was moving northwards, fast. To clear the cloud I banked left and continued climbing over the wave of cloud crashing down like a tidal wave. Once over I was in heaven – an antarctic landscape with occasional holes with only cirrus tens of thousands of feet above and a tail wind – I was hurtling southward at 85mph. Here was the cloud cuckoo land of Aristophanes Birds and it was a mirage.

Windows in the cloud allowed navigation, GPS confirmed and timing and compass provided more navigational data. Then the windows disappeared. They disappeared totally. There were no windows – apart from the last one which was now disappearing with a 25 knot tailwind meant that I had assumed there was no way I was going to reach it. On the ground doing the figures and realising that the clouds were not actually moving north but it was a relative movement to the aircraft I would have made the last window, but I didn’t.

What followed was a frantic chasing of windows which turned out to be mirages in the luminous clouds. I was according to the GPS north of Penrith (the airfield I wanted was getting closer – so close but so far away under an unknown amount of cloud. I was also running out of map as I didn’t need any map south of the lake district. This was a serious situation and I started to desperately look for windows. There was one – in a cauldron of cloud.

I descended into the cauldron – clouds on all sides like a snowy mountain – but again it was no window just a grey patch of cloud. I climbed out of the cauldron in a spiral climb back to the antarctic landscape, which now had also added in climbing cumulus – I was at 7,000 feet and may be pushed higher – this was getting desperate as I even if I turned back I might not escape the climbing cumulus and the 10K ceiling is there for a reason (oxygen starvation above 10K).

Then a window – definitely, there were green fields and a road – and it was near Penrith – spiral dive through the hole descending fast. Made it through, hooray, and then noticed the Television aerial I had missed by a few hundred yards. I was also headed North so turned, avoiding the aerial to see the hills which were touching the clouds base – so if the hole had been over there I would have done a controlled flight into terrain (which on reflection might have been under the first cauldron I tried to descend into). My promise to myself was never to do this again.

The way south to Bedlands Gate follows the M6 and a line of aviation unfriendly pylons to arrive at a grass strip which has a tree at the start of the runway which I managed to miss. I landed and then took off again when I hit the bump on the runway and landed again (fortuntaly they don’t charge per bounce) – just as well it is a 450 metre runway.

Hangering the plane I managed to jam my finger in a trailer, and then when the friendly chaps asked where I was off to, I revealed Mrs Forrester and my plan to cycle her to Kendal. There were puzzled looks and the question – have you heard of Shap Fell? Who the fuck put a 1400 foot summit on my cycle route from Shap to Kendal. When I reached Kendal I was completely knackered and leaning Mrs Forrester up against walls and hiding to allow anyone to steal her. But this plan had a flaw – there was no one in Kendal – the place had been hit by a neutron bomb – the streets were deserted. I booked into the Rainbow Tavern, where the barman apparently wants to run tourist flights around the Lake District, and went on what I thought would be a short pub crawl sampling some real ale of England.

First there weren’t that many pubs with real ale, although those that had excellent ales. Secondly at nine o’clock all the people in Kendal returned dressed to the nines and ready to party. Discos started in pubs and young ladies in rara skirts and older ladies in more tasteful cocktail dresses were knocking back the vodkas and red bull. Folks of all shape, size and degree of tattoing were now dancing everywhere in a erotic melee. They they all moved to the next pub – I managed to elucidate the intended map from a lady from a hens night – they were all local as well (this wasn’t incomers partying like a stag/hen night – this was a local melee and apparently was a weekly thing)

The end point once the pubs had emptied the purses and wallets of the good people of Kendal, was the 5 story night club Passions. This where they let their hair down. I left falling down the stairs at 3am to find my way in the dark around the back of the inn where the rear gate had been set up to only look locked. After faling over various dark objects cunningly hidden in the dark I managed to make it to my room, behind a dark door that was in a dark wall.

Kendal is a strange place, a christian science bookshop and a quilting exhibition and wainrights cast off possessions including his pipe in a museum and a totally hot generation of partying girls. What a strange combination – perhaps there is more to christian science than I first thought.

To celebrate my hangover I cycled to Windemere the next day, noticing that Kendal had returned to its Lovecraftian empty state. I followed the cycle track which promptly took me out of the way, so on my search to avoid yet another hill and looking for the 6 minute train – I ended up on a bus to Ambleside. Mrs Forrester tucked in the baggage shelf because although bikes aren’t allowed on a bus (she is a folding bike which the friendly drivers were amused at).

Grasmere was a short cycle from Ambleside (which is full of bookshops) and is a busy road so I took to the pavement. That was a mistake. The first accident was hurtling down a hill to be hit by an overhanging branch which walkers will easily duck under, the second was the bush of nettles and large thorns which met with my bare left leg enthusiasticlly. Grasemere was a lovely place filled with unlovely tourists. The Rowan Tree cafe had the attraction of a riverside terrace, spinach and mushroom pasties and a metal drainpipe I could handcuff Mrs Forrester too.
William Wordsworths grave is there jidden with the rest of the Wordsworths and another William to test the poetry lovers, and a daffodil free daffodil garden. It did have the attraction of a bus stop to Keswick.

Alasdair was lost in the lakes, Kim and Stuart and Cara were now climbing Haystacks and out of mobile coverage – the Forsyths had migrated to Cumbria and were all uncontactable. Keswick is full of hill walking shops, pizza and fish and chips and a cornish pasty shop, and a lot of street entertains – pushing the definition of the word entertainment. I stopped to eat my pasty and folded Mrs Forrester so she stands – which people seemed to misrepresent as the start of a street entertainment – standing around to see if I was going to do more (or perhaps they were amazed that I could drop so much pasty filling down my T shirt).

There is a wonderful and magic stone circle outside Keswick – normally these attractions are deserted, but folk who visit Keswick are obviously put off with the quality of street theatre and all flock up to the stone circle. To add to the magical experience of people clambering over the stones and whooping for no good reason, there is an ice cream van with a particularly noisy generator. And I had to cycle/walk up a very steep hill to enjoy this and the views of the hills in cloud.

Kim and Stuart (and an exhausted Cara) drove me to Penrith, which is definitely not a party town. The George Hotel bar had some attractive girls discussing their friends veneral disease and the dilemma of the Aids test – it was concluded that it was better not to know. I left then to try and find a pub with real ale – an hour later I had tracked one down. Alasdair was by now at the other end of the lake district so we had avoided meeting (waving whilst cycling past each other) the reason I had flown down.

I had again wrongly assumed that since Penrith was north that everything south was downhill. In this topsy turvy world it was all uphill to the airfield, and I even took wrong turns to add to the miles. I stopped for a breath of air after the Clifton hill to enjoy the stench of sewage – it was a lovely churchyard there but I didn’t stop long as I can only hold my breath for a couple of minutes.

The sight of low cloud meant there was no flying over the lakes – the lakeland hills were higher than the clouds and there was a brisk northern wind. So northbound in low cloud to see a cessna on my left heading north and fighting turbulence saw two military transport aircraft cross my path after carlisle. The low cloud meant traversing the southern uplands lower than I would have liked, with an eye to landing fields in the event of engine failure.

Surprisingly the transit through the valley of death as I had thought it – was smooth and I was delighted to see blue skies ahead and the eildons. That was when the turbulence started – thrown across the sky, up, down, wing drops it was continuous, past Hawick and I reached the Lammermuirs and then it got worse with oscillations and unexpected fast descents and ascents. I managed to get above the fast moving cumulus clouds and things calmed down, until I got nearer the airfield and it started again. Unbelievably the wind was down the main runway so managed to miss the black wrapped hay bales at the entrance to the runway and could relax at last.

Lammas, not to be confused with Llamas, is a time to bake men shaped bread, and gingerbread men arrive at this time of year. It is also a Finnish word meaning sheep and this is the month that sheep will be caught and taken to the big pastureland in the sky (the butchers).

On the bits of religion that Sunday school forgot to mention we have – Holy Body Parts. Since Christ is supposed to have disappeared entirely through the first alien abduction known as the ascension, the only articles left to venerate are the bits he left behind previously including his foreskin, milk teeth and umbilical cord. At least there isn’t a holy Camel Toe much studied in The Weather Man in between Nicholas Cage being hit by fast food. In the dangerous book for boys one of the less dangerous things is the listing of the ten commandments – I had quite forgetten that on the Sabbath your cattle are not supposed to work either – not sure how that effects Flora and there is no mention of Soay sheep so they can go back on the treadmill 24/7.

Summer recess of parliament is normally a slow news period but this month sees an escalation of the Lebanon/Israeli ‘its not really a war yet’, the Pure Songs Initiative is cleaning up Rangers football fans chants and Tommy ‘hairy body’ Sheridan is packing them in the aisles with his self defence and it is surely no coincidence at BBC Scotland that the words ‘and former prostitutes’ drift over the images of MSPs as they march into court. Drugs in sport rears its ugly head with the Tour De France winner being banned for having too much testerone (11 times normal) and in contrast it is the 25th anniversary of the Penlee lifeboat diaster – where real bravery in the face of death to save others makes me think we should start sticking cheating sportsman in the stocks and throw rotten fruit at them, sometimes the old ways are the best…

Ali and Malcolm next door have decided to cut our hedges up to the height they can reach and left them half way with a fringe which is reminiscent of a ned (chav for the southern readers) so we have named them Nedges.

I decided to take my son sailing, this was to let him try a new sport but I hadn’t counted on his observational skills in witnessing the chaos that is mike in a boat. I was doing the RYA2 up at Whiteadder Reservoir, and it was straight into a Pico and off to practice – well everyone else was doing that I managed to get the mainsheet wrapped around the tiller and hence managed to lock both rudder and sail and went into a descending circle with ever increasing speed and angle of hull before capsizing. So capsize practice first thing in the morning in a chilly reservoir with no wet suit – what a rude awakening. This was followed during the navigate around a triangle of buoys, by trailing one of the buoys with my rudder and confusing everyone else as to the course, I was eventually chased by the rescue boat who recovered the errant buoy. The other joy of the pico is that the boom whacks you on the head if you do anything wrong – however I managed to wrap the mainsheet around my sandals (and my neck) and was busy untangling myself when the boom was flying back and forward – I managed to lie in the bottom of the boat untangling whilst the pico sailed into the beach. Kim flew over in the microlight buzzing the clubhouse but we were safely in trhe cold showers by then. Ali spotted all the mistakes and reported (with animated gestures) to Kim, who was at this time collapsed on the floor in stiches.

We got onto larger boats the next day (the Wayfarer) which required a crew of two so an Aberdonian housewife won the lottery to crew with me – we rigged and set up with, yes you guessed this one already, the mainsheet wrapped around the tiller rendering the boat completely uncontrollable. Fortunately the Wayfarer boom doesn’t act as a Pit and Pendulum blade, so the shreaking housewife and I managed to have time to unravel and gain control. After that we were model sailors apart from saying ‘All Aboard’ when I should have been saying ‘Ready About’ and when told to lay alongside the rescue boat we managed to aim for (on instructors advice) the outboard motor and hit it (not on instructors advice). Oh well after tying a few knots and being lectured on racing (where the strategy seems to be to sink your opponet where you get a time penalty but are still in the race) I walked off with my RYA2 certificate and a licence to hire and capsize.

No one else noticed outside Scotland but Tommy Sheridan’s spirited defence against the News of the World was an entertaining aside for all us. The headline writers were working overtime – my favourite when he dismissed his legal counsel was ‘Tommy drops his briefs’. He won and was awarded 200K (which one assumes as a good socialist he will be distributing amongst the poor) and is now standing as head of the Scottish Socialist Party – whose MSPs all testified against him (and may be being done on perjury charges and are counter suing him letting the entertainment run and run).

Following my flight to the Lake District we enjoyed a night at the Edinburgh International Festival with a delicious vegetarian meal and espresso cocktails at David Bann and a quick run up the hill afterwards to the glass fronted Edinburgh Festival Theatre to enjoy two short operas by Kurt Weill. The first directly linking to my flight was about Lindergh’s flight across the ocean, stunningly visual with a cockpit suspended across a row of clocks, a map of the route and projected seas and fog (the fog brought back many memories). Following the interval drinks (I can make it from the front of the circle to the interval bar to be in the first 2 people now with only hurling a few fur coated ladies out of the way) was ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’, an opera about me I thought. It was a perfect mix of music, contemporary dance and writhing semi naked bodies.

I heard a knock on the door and the sound of salsa music drowning out my Radio 3 orchestral piece so crept downstairs to investigate to find a dancing electricity meter reader in our hallway writhing around, fortunately clothed, and entering our meter numbers. This might be the way forward for keeping your staff fit and cheering up customers by having tangoing gas men, polkaing postmen and waltzing milkmen – then again, perhaps not.

One of our fellow djembe drummers sadly and unexpectedly died of Anthrax posioning, two of the drummers are on 60 days medication as they had visited his house, which is now a biohazard area with up to 20 people in the area being sought”. So cue the Badger, Badger, Badger, Anthrax” song.
Public Health got in touch with a survey and seemed a might concerned, as are others, with my dry cough.

The launch of the heritage website consisted of drinking wine in aimable company,
with impromptu depressing poetry readings from a local poet with a captive audience of myself and a blonde harpist.

So to the Innerleithen Folk Festival with an cringingly appalling first act, some kids singing about Soggy Socks and the brilliant Malinky – even the name is good, but the music was superb. Helped along with a bar the music just got better.

The Kelso Triathalon meant that to avoid going in it we had to help out at the side of the pool. The only person who would sit near me after hearing of the anthrax story was a GP and even she was a bit unsure. We counted and acted as timekeepers for a lane in the swimming part which meant we got soaked when they tumble turned, so the strategy of getting an inside job in the uncertain weather failed miserably. Relaxed the rest of the day in the company of d’Indy orchestral poems and trios.

The Scottish Borders Bright New Futures Parents and Carers guide proudly declares it is produced by the Kelso Locality Integration Team, although they don’t print its acronym. Which reminds me that The War Against Terror is also an acronym.

I am busy post processing a film called ‘Teen Mum’, yes it is a documentary on teenage pregnancies done by a government funded project we are part of up here with films on youth activities. Google videos is having to put it to their obscene panel to watch the entire film to make sure it will not offend anyone out there – wow what a job! All the other movies went up without any problem so the title is obviously causing concern…

Then my son opens the morning mail and out pops packets of vibrating condoms – he had filled in a survey on caio for Durex and has ‘won’ the aforesaid sexual assistants along with the incentive of getting 20 quid if he reports back on how they/he performed. I have agreed to assist in this but he doesn’t want to see the feedback…. now he is busy texting old girlfriends to see if they want to assist in this research.

Cows have regional accents, now does this mean that Flora the Highland cow has a highland accent ala Hamish Macbeth or a Scottish Borders one? I am surprised she doesn’t baaa since her only companions are soay sheep.

Our annual croquet match is a time for excess in drink, in food and in cheating. The weather was great with clouds all around except for a patch of blue above our garden, which reinforced the tale I told that I had hacked into the weather satellites to guarantee sun for our game.

We feasted off barbecued fillets and sirloins of Angus, our last slaughtered highland bullock, who was simply delicious, followed by enough creamy and sugary sweets to keep the middle eastern guest sweet tooth, and his dentist, happy. The wine and beer was flowing to eliminate the croquet competition along with dandelion and burdock for the drivers and our cleaning ladies vodka for the children (which we only found out about once they started vomiting over each other).

A varied set of guests including a lady who had been investigated by MI5 at the age of 13, was involved in the theft of the stone of destiny and recently had MI5 tailing her in Selkirk when she told BBC Scotland that the current government should all be assassinated; a nude model for lesbian artists in Berwick, an Israeli with his shisha pipe and dessert tobacco and guitarist sons; a friend of Mr Nice the most successful drug trafficker who used to smuggle drugs in rock bands speakers; our old lady neighbour who told us that she used to be a stripper in Marseille and our staff who were remarkably well behaved (and lost to me at croquet).

Croquet was a chance to kick balls into position when the opposition weren’t looking, but after been spotted on a video in previous years all eyes were on Mike for most of the match. Mike and Uri teamed up and swept the opposition off the pitch including an unlikely two hoops in one shot by me which sealed the match. I am not sure the prize of yet another glass of wine was sensible as I decided it would be a good idea to pretend to be a horse to get teenage girls to ride on me and I curled up and fell asleep whilst watching Spinal Tap in the evening, which was just as well as everyone else was cleaning up teenage vomit.

Pluto is no longer a planet, something that Holst knew ages ago (his Planets Suite doesn’t include Pluto, possibly because it hadn’t been discovered then).

The Fortean Times carries an article about Stoat packs, 50 to 80 of the darling creatures attacking wayward travellers through the country, carrying their dead away and wrapping themselves biting and clawing around peoples legs. The image alone is one to shudder whilst walking through fields – cattle are not the only dangerous thing in the countryside and size is no indicator of danger.

The joy of reading Paradise Lost with William Blakes pictures (no it is not a graphic novel) is enhanced by a book on the dualism of Milton and the symbiosis of his poetry.