Dumped, Actually(83)

. . .

Er . . .

. . .

Um . . .

. . .

‘Ollie! It’s time to jump!’ Ted wails at me.

‘Yes! Yes! I know!’

. . .

Ah . . .

. . .

Ah, to hell with it.

‘I just want an easy fucking life!’ I scream, and chuck myself out of the plane.


My most humble apologies for not coming up with something more profound or life changing. You know . . . the kind of thing you can take away into your day-to-day life, and tell all of your friends about smugly when they ask why you’ve got that smile on your face.

Unfortunately, I’m wearing a bright-yellow jumpsuit that makes me look like an ambulatory banana, I enjoy masturbating in front of wild animals, am unintentionally racist when attempting an Italian accent, and like to have conversations with imaginary antipodean elephants.

Am I really the person you want to be getting profound or life-changing advice from?

Go buy a motivational poster. Or get drunk.

Or get drunk and then look at a motivational poster. Probably one with a nice big mountain on it.


‘Aaaaaarrrrrgggh!’ I screech as I leave the plane at an extreme rate of knots.

My mind goes blank as gravity starts to do its terrible and inexorable job.

I feel the parachute pack yank backwards as the line goes taut for a moment, before the chute is unfurled in a glorious blossom of life-saving silky green material.

My breath is taken from me as the air fills the parachute, and my descent towards the patchwork fields below is arrested from a terminal velocity to something much more gentle, and survivable.

This gives my brain a chance to regain its faculties, which I suppose must be a good thing.

Wisely deciding that I am still highly discombobulated by the jump, it goes into autopilot for me, remembering everything Ted told me to do, during those two long, hard days of instruction.

I have hold of the control lines before I even realise what I’m doing. These things are pretty vital, given that without them I’d have no control over the parachute at all, and would probably float off over the English Channel.

They’re pretty simple to operate, thankfully. A tug on one sends you to the left, a tug on the other sends you right. Both together slows you down. Simple.

‘How are you doing?’ Ted’s voice crackles at me through the headset, which I’d forgotten all about until this moment.

‘Jesus!’ I scream in shock.

‘No, it’s just Ted,’ he replies.

Frankly, I’ll take the definitely corporeal Ted over the possibly non-existent Jesus any day of the week, given the circumstances.

I look up to my left and see Ted descending at roughly the same speed as me, in his jet-black jumpsuit and charcoal-grey parachute. He looks about 247 per cent cooler than me. I am in a bright-yellow jumpsuit, and my parachute is equally bright green, so I look like something that’s just escaped from the Mardi Gras.

‘Sorry,’ I reply, sheepishly. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

‘Good. Control lines okay? You’ve got control of the parachute, like we practised?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘It’s all coming back to me.’

‘Excellent stuff. Well, we’ll start to turn ourselves towards the landing zone, then. Can you see it?’

I look down . . . and down . . . to see the airfield below us, with the large red circle that I’m supposed to aim for clearly visible on the grass. ‘Yeah. I see it.’

‘Good. How are you feeling?’

Oh blimey.

How am I feeling? I hadn’t given it much thought, until Ted asked me the question.

I guess . . . I guess I feel calm.

Which is ridiculous.

I should not feel calm. I should feel on the verge of a heart attack. I have just thrown myself out of a plane, and the only thing between me and certain death is a few yards of thin parachute material. Panic should have set in long ago.

But you know what? I actually feel quite relaxed. There’s something very soothing about drifting through the sky on a crisp, sunny September morning. I didn’t expect to feel like this at all.

I tell Ted as much.

‘Yep. Not surprised,’ he says. ‘People think this is all about the rush of the jump . . . but that’s only part of it. Floating along like this, just you and the wind – that’s as big a part of the fun for me.’

I see Ted swing his parachute away from me somewhat. ‘I tell you what, Ollie. I’ll leave you alone for a bit. You look like you’ve got everything under control, so I’ll let you enjoy the peace and quiet. I’ll speak to you when we get on the ground. Just talk if you get into any problems, though.’

‘Okay, Ted. Thanks very much.’

What a guy.

Seriously, why am I not gay?

I watch Ted pull away from me to a distance of about a hundred feet.

Then I spend the next minute or so doing something that does not come easily to me – absolutely nothing.

My brain goes back into autopilot, steering me in the right direction over the landing zone, in a series of gentle, falling loops – leaving the rest of me to do very little, other than look out at the green countryside below, and blue sky above.

Later, there will be time for reflection. Later, I will think long and hard about how I felt during the parachute jump – but for now, there’s nothing. No internal monologues, no external anxieties. Just Ollie Sweet and his parachute, descending towards the earth at a speed that shouldn’t break anything once he reaches it.