Dumped, Actually(84)

It’s quite fabulous.

It’s a real pity it only lasts a few brief minutes. I could stay up here all day. I have no idea why birds are so bloody bad tempered all the time. This is immensely relaxing.

Ted comes back on the mic again, asking me if I’m prepared for the landing.

‘Yes, I’m ready,’ I tell him as I watch the ground coming closer and closer.

My voice is steady, and there’s a calm confidence about it that sounds quite alien to me. It also sounds marvellous, though. Something quite profound appears to have occurred in these few minutes in the sky. And though I will spend quite a lot of time in the near future thinking about what that profound thing was . . . I’ll never come up with a satisfactory answer.

Some things just aren’t meant to be examined and fretted over until they make sense. Some things are just meant to happen. Some things are just meant to be.

It’s high time I learned that, and accepted it, for that matter.

The ground is getting very close now. So close that I can see the faces of the expectant crowd again, all watching the last few moments of my descent, with a mixture of delight and apprehension. I can see Erica standing slightly forward of everyone else, her hand shielding her eyes as she watches me descend.

This is the hardest bit of the jump, and the part Ted spent the most time teaching me in our training sessions. Landing a solo parachute isn’t something even experienced skydivers take lightly.

As I get within a few feet of the ground, I pull down hard on the control lines, which arrests the speed of the parachute to a near walking pace. Now I’m drifting towards the ground, more or less right towards the centre of the red circle.

As I do this, I bring my legs together, slightly bent, and cross my arms over my chest. My feet hit the grass at a comfortable speed, and I immediately bend my knees even more, and shift my body weight so I collapse into a half roll, which prevents any injury occurring.

The landing is pretty much perfect.

Time to be smug!

I stand up as the crowd starts to cheer and clap my landing.

I feel a fist pump is appropriate at this juncture. I’ve never really felt that I’ve done anything in my life that could justify a fist pump before, but surely making your first successful parachute jump qualifies, doesn’t it?

I don’t really care. I’m doing a fist pump, anyway.

At this point I should be gathering in my chute, but I’m too damn busy being smug and pumping my fist like I’m doing an emergency tyre change.

Smug – I think you’ll find – is an emotional state that never gets you anywhere good in life.

Because I’m being smug, fist pumping, and also waving at the crowd, I am not noticing that my parachute is beginning to fill with air again as the breeze catches it. This makes it billow out, and fly right over my head, in the direction of the crowd.

In a split second I go from smug, fist-pumping champion of parachutes, to stumbling idiot, being dragged along by thirty square feet of bright-green material.

‘Ollie!’ Ted exclaims from his own perfect landing position a few yards away. ‘Pull the cutaway!’

The cutaway is the handle you yank when you want to release your parachute in an emergency – for occasions such as this one.

I scrabble at the handle on the right-hand side of my chest, desperately trying to pull it before the parachute launches me into the air again.

Luckily, the wind isn’t quite strong enough to do that, but it is more than strong enough to propel the parachute at the crowd, with me right behind it.

And who’s standing at the head of crowd? Poor old Erica.

This is how Ollie Sweet’s life functions.

If he’s going to be propelled towards a crowd of people, he is going to head straight at the worst person possible.

Crashing into Wimsy wouldn’t be much of a problem. Nor would hitting my father, who is still a strong and capable man, even at his age. Hell, even whacking a complete stranger is something I could probably get away with – if I didn’t cause any major injury, that is.

But no, I have to make a beeline straight for the person who pays my wages, don’t I? Literally the last person I want to crash into.

The drifting parachute pushes me inexorably towards Erica, who has gone wide-eyed as she realises what’s about to happen.

Luckily for both of us, I do manage to yank the cutaway handle down just in time, and the parachute flies up higher into the air, no doubt happy to be free of my dead weight.

Sadly, I am still being propelled forward by the unhelpful forces of inertia, so cannot stop myself from tumbling into Erica, face first.

I’m not going all that fast, though, so what could have been an immediate trip to casualty, instead becomes an awkward pratfall – sending us both to the ground, with me flopping on top of her. I throw both of my arms out to cushion the blow as we hit the grass together.

For a few moments we just stare into each other’s wide-open eyes, both in disbelief that neither of us has been hurt.

‘Hi Ollie,’ Erica eventually says to me in a breathless tone as the parachute floats down on top of us, having lost the balloon of air that sent me hurtling towards her in the first place.

‘Hello,’ I reply in a shaky voice. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

The parachute now settles over us completely, blocking our view of the crowd – who are now surrounding us, probably quite concerned for our welfare.