Flying Free (29 page)

He assisted in the legislation required for the creation of the Euro, was the European Parliament's representative on the EBRD and on the European Monetary Institute – later the European Central Bank. He founded the Pro-Europe Conservative Party.

He is a very dedicated federalist and he obviously has very good friends in the printing industry. His campaign literature, declaring himself the one true Conservative in the poll, looked like
Vogue
next to
Private Eye
compared with our more modest electoral-budget publications.

The biggest gamble that I had taken was that Bercow really would defend his seat as an Independent, leaving true Conservative voters a free choice.

David Cameron, however, whatever his personal feelings and despite Bercow's nominal non-aligned status, endorsed him.

Bercow was thus enabled to print blue leaflets adorned with pictures of Cameron alongside his own. This is clearly in breach of the spirit of the law but did not violate its letter, which is enough for today's politicians.

I was stuffed anyhow, but it certainly did not help that, as the people of Buckingham were voting, I was lying in a hospital bed and neither they nor I knew if I would ever be able to represent anyone again.

The god of machines has it in for me. I really don’t know why. OK, I am peculiarly useless with machines, but that is surely no reason why they should avenge themselves on me. They seem to have a definite grudge against me.

These days I get mildly nervous near unmanned hostess trolleys.

The great determinant of age in our generation is this: if you kick a machine when it goes wrong, you are past your best-by date.

With proper machines, kicking, cursing and coaxing often actually worked. Land Rovers, Roberts radios or whatever, would stir their stumps, recall the virtues of loyal service and the Dundee cake you gave them last Christmas and start working again.

If you are under thirty-five, you don’t even consider this venerable technique. You may curse, but only to yourself because today’s machines are insensate and stupid and don’t understand. You may tinker for a minute or two just for form’s sake, but then you sigh, hunt for the warranty which you did not bother to get and fling the machine into the bin.

So all right. I have kicked a lot of machines. Maybe they have formed a vengeful union, but that really cannot be considered justification for their repeated attempts to kill me.

Don’t get me wrong. I like machines. I have always enjoyed cars. That has not stopped stray Volkswagens from careering into me.

I also like planes. To look at.

Since that first childhood trip to Portugal, I must have flown several million miles, but never, I confess, in total confidence.

I know all the statistics. ‘Crossing the road is more dangerous,’ they persist in telling me.

In my case, you will understand, that is not hugely reassuring.

But I fly because I must and because it is daft to be scared of flying.  

I was not happy, then, about riding in a tiny aeroplane tugging a banner but, when Peter Day of UKIP Southampton mentioned that he had met a pilot who did that sort of thing and suggested that I might like to give it a go, I agreed.  

I made the first such flight on a Saturday afternoon in April. It was scary but fun. The feedback from those who saw us flying over was good. ‘Cavalier’ was a word much used, ‘fun’, ‘gallant’ and ‘defiant’. I took care to eat nothing and to empty the bowels first, but I did it again.  

The pilot seemed competent and experienced. Any slight grimness in his personal manner only persuaded me that he was businesslike and professional. I cannot say that this enabled me to forget the fact that his Polish fixed-wing landplane resembled a very old tractor with wings, nor the gulps and sudden silences, followed by guttural, rattling roars, from the engines. All in all, however, I reckoned that a pint or so of my sweat was a fair price for an eyecatching stunt.  

British election days have dreary conventions. There are few picture opportunities. People shove envelopes in boxes, then there is a long pause whilst Peter Snow finds new ways of saying, ‘We haven’t a clue what’s happening.’ Broadcasters are generally restricted to showing the leaders of the two principal parties casting their votes for themselves and some idiosyncratic polling booth, complete with sheep, on a far-flung outlying island or some such.  

So a banner-flying expedition around the constituency on election-day morning would not only jog the memories of local supporters and don’t knows as they headed for work or for school but also, perhaps, provide picture-editors with a slightly more colourful option than usual for their inside pages.

I did not know the half of it.

Believe it or not, when I was asked why I thought it worth my while, I texted a friend, ‘It’s always hard to make any sort of impact on election day.’

I was to make an impact.

It hurts to this day.

Hinton-in-the-Hedges is an unmanned private airfield between Banbury in Oxfordshire and Brackley in Northamptonshire. It is almost exclusively used for gliding and free-fall parachuting save when the British Grand Prix takes place at nearby Silverstone, when it serves as an overflow car park. I had great difficulty finding the place on that polished pewter morning.

When at last aide Duncan Barkes and I arrived at 7.30 a.m., it was to find the pilot (whom I will here call Jason Smith for reasons which will become clear) spreading out on the bright, dew-spangled turf a banner reading, ‘VOTE FOR YOUR COUNTRY – VOTE UKIP’. A photographer was also there, squatting over his case and selecting lenses.

I greeted them and exchanged a few pleasantries, including a jovial, ‘Just as long as long as the bloody plane doesn’t blow up and crash.’ This reflected my habitual nervousness, not any newfound prophetic insight.

I felt slightly silly out there in the wilds in my pinstripe suit and brogues, but I was on the stump. I had a whole load of other meetings to attend during the day.

Bobby Kennedy used to have a full-time shirt-carrier so that he would look fresh at each new venue on the campaign-trail. Even an MEP’s expenses do not run that high.

Jason was now forcing poles upright into the ground. A wire was stretched between them. Together they created something not unlike a soccer goal.

I was by now familiar with the procedure. A plane cannot take off with a dirty great banner trailing behind it, so it must swoop down and, with a hook slung beneath it, pluck up the wire which in turn tows the banner. The plane then climbs almost vertically in order to straighten out the banner before settling into normal, more or less steady horizontal flight.

Given that the wire is no more than ten foot off the ground when it is snagged by the hook, I thought that I was doing pretty well at conquering my fear of flying, even if my bowels were not quite as sure about that as my head.

As I climbed into the cockpit that morning and strapped myself in, I actually congratulated myself. After all those years of flying white-knuckled in airliners, here I was, smiling (admittedly nervously) at a photographer and about to emulate a hungry swallow in a plane which might have impressed, but would by no means have astonished, Baron von Richthofen in 1917.

We bounced up the turf runway. I gulped a lot. I erased the smile. I had no chair-arm to cling onto, so I clawed at my knees instead. The plane rattled. The turf and the hedgerows and the rabbit-droppings sped up. A few hard, teeth-rattling jolts, then the engine made a noise like an angry cat, the earth tilted steeply downward and we were airborne.

It’s that wobble as the plane tastes the quality of the air which first worries me. The plane did its wobble. It did not catch a wing-tip on a tussock. It decided that this air was OK really. It bounded on upward.

We climbed steeply. Jason looked businesslike and calm beside me. He flicked the odd switch. The plane did its gulping and gasping but did not plummet like a stone. Occasionally the breezes shoulder-barged us, but they were gentle enough.

We made a big loop around the airfield. I saw Duncan and the photographer beneath us. We banked and turned to line up for the first attack on that goal, only it did not look like a goal any more. At this distance, we could only see the uprights. The wire was invisible.

Jason eased the plane into a shallow dive. I breathed a prayer. I wanted to close my eyes, but some part of me was convinced that I too was flying the plane and that my judgement was essential to the success of the manoeuvre.

We levelled out. My feet were pushing against non-existent brake-pedals just eight or nine feet off the ground. I could see every pockmark in the turf.

The plane bellowed and soared. There was no banner behind us.

Jason was unconcerned. Even I knew that this was to be expected. It had taken two passes to catch the wire last time.

We described another circuit, swung around, dived again and once more sped, rocking from side to side, towards the wire. It flashed past beneath
us. The plane blurted and roared again. Suddenly the two men beneath us were small. Nothing.

We circled the field again. We missed again. Jason was wincing. That worried me.

‘I know that was perfect!’ he shouted above the engines. ‘You mind texting your mate? Just check that the wire and hook are suspended?’

I shrugged. I am not good at texting at the best of times, but I fished out my phone and, as we headed out into the country, banked and turned again, I tapped in, ‘Is wire still there beneath us?’

It took a couple of minutes for Duncan to get back to me with: ‘Can see something there.’

I held out the phone so that Jason could see the message. He nodded.

He tried again. No banner.

By now I was getting seriously nervous, not least because Jason, who did this for a living, was scowling and looking confused. I shouted, ‘What’s the most you’ve ever done?’

‘Six times is my worst!’

And I bet that that was when he was learning his trade. And this was his fifth attempt so far today…

I was now thoroughly uncomfortable and wishing that I could be somewhere – anywhere, even Brussels – but there. Jason considered landing to recheck his equipment. I wish he had. Instead, he decided to keep on going.

We were headed for the wire again. I flinched as we passed over it, rocked back as the plane rocketed skyward. Jason was looking back over his shoulder. He nodded. ‘We’ve picked up!’

Relief. I sat forward. I came back to an election day with loads of tasks and adventures ahead.

But Jason was still looking back. He uttered words which I had only ever hoped to hear in movies. ‘This is an emergency,’ he said. ‘Real trouble.’

‘Why?’ It came out husky. I tried again. ‘Why?’

‘Banner’s wrapped around the tail and rudder!’

I knew immediately what this meant. I had been thoroughly briefed before my first flight. A banner is far too large and clunky to jettison. We were in for a crash-landing.

Jason’s lips were working now, his teeth grit as he struggled to keep the plane up and to make the turn with the massive weight of the banner flapping and slewing us in the wrong direction.

Reared on innumerable tales of gallant last words, I have often fantasised about how I might make a distinguished ending in such circumstances. I’m afraid that all I came up with was a very quiet, commonplace ‘Oh, fuck,’ which is not going to make the
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

Jason radioed an emergency call. It was not until later that I asked myself just to whom, on an airfield without control-tower or emergency services, he was sending this plea.

He was by now streaming sweat. It dripped from his jawbone. He shouted his explanation to me above the grinding and shouting of the engines. ‘We’ll do one circuit, then I’ll try to put her down on the airfield!’

I just nodded. Later, Jason would say that I was strangely cool. I wasn’t. I just did not know what else to say or do.

After some rapid calculations, I was pretty much certain that we were going to die. I could not see how anything as flimsy as that plane could crash into the ground at 70 or 80 mph and leave mere organic tissue fit to function.

Of course, I wanted to chip in with any number of brilliant solutions – I could clamber to the tail, perhaps, and disentangle our drogue. We could … er…

Oh, sod it. He was a trained pilot and aware of all possibilities. And he was sweating more copiously than anyone whom I have ever seen outside a Turkish bath. He did not want to die any more than I did.

Perhaps for the first time in my life, I decided to shut up.

Adrenaline had kicked in. Time had slowed to a crawl.

We were still on the turn. I did not want to see the airfield and the two waiting men ahead of me. That would mean that landing and death were that much nearer…

So then came the next question. What is the correct protocol when confronting death within minutes? I wanted to call my nearest and dearest and say something, but I could not see how ‘Hi. Just thought you’d like to know [or should that be ‘ud lk 2 no’?] that I am about to be spread
like strawberry jam on toast across England’s green and pleasant land’ would help anyone much. Better, surely, to keep silence and let everyone remember me fit, boisterous and intact.

How about texting, then? You could broadcast text to all your contacts, couldn’t you? But that demanded something truly memorable and considered, and just then I could think of nothing which would have been suitable for all those who merited contact. ‘Keep fighting’ might have inspired the UKIP faithful, but was hardly what I wanted to say to my family and close friends, whilst declarations of undying love would unquestionably have embarrassed my fellow MEPs and probably earned unwelcome headlines in the tabloids.

So I left the phone in my pocket and wondered if I could chance a last cigarette. No one, surely, could plead Health and Safety regulations now. ‘It’s bad for you’ just doesn’t cut it in those circumstances.

Then I thought about fuel. Cigarettes were abandoned too.

The condemned man had not had a hearty breakfast for fear of regurgitating it in flight. He was not to have a last cigarette either. He just shrugged.

With all options gone, I was suddenly very calm. Like a Great War subaltern, I just hoped not that I would escape the inevitable but that it would be quick.

I was staring straight down at the airfield now. We were descending fast. The plane was bucking and lurching. It was fighting Jason like a bucking bronco as he made sure that we cleared the hamlet beneath, but he could no longer keep the nose up. We cleared a hedge like a hunter. By reflex I tightened my safety harness. There was rising ground ahead.

This was it.

The banner hit the ground. We tipped forward. We nosedived from 38 foot, directly into the turf.

The plane and both of us knew what it was like to receive a Sugar Ray Leonard bolo to the face.

For those wondering, it hurts.

I closed my eyes a split second before the moment of impact.

I expected that to be the last light I ever saw.

There was a lurching, a flurry of hard blows to the body, forcing the breath from me. The ‘bang’ of impact turned into a slow ‘crunch’ and a groan as the fabric of the plane buckled and seared. The plane toppled forward.