Two unexpected flight experiences in one day
Sometimes odd or extraordinary things happen to you where you least expect them.
Yesterday was a case in point for me.
My latest fitness (that could alternatively read as “futile attempt to ward off the ravages of time”) regime – like all my previous equivalents – involves setting myself a target of taking 10,000 steps per day on my Garmin fitness watch and then also – every two or three days – undertaking at some point a 45-minute high intensity interval training [known in the trade as a “H.I.I.T”] session, upon which I then usually tag a short but brutal workout with some weighted dumbbells that my son Gerald left behind when he went abroad for his latest work-related trip.
For completeness, I was pleased to discover yesterday shortly before tea-time that I had just achieved my 10,000 steps per day target for a record 31 days in a row without a break – this a successive run of doing so way beyond my previous best of 17.
As a result of this routine I have dropped half a stone (7 pounds) and consequently feel better in myself generally, particularly since my body has now once again become used to “taking exercise” to the extent that – whenever engagements, obligations or unforeseen circumstances conspire to prevent me from doing so – my body “complains” about it by generally feeling under par and/or leaving me with a guilty feeling (and sometimes both).
None of the above has anything to do with my post today.
Quite by chance, having moved last year to the South Coast for a change of scenery and vibe (both happily achieved, I must add), last weekend Sophia and I twice took two of her grandchildren swimming at the beach of our nearest resort just fifteen minutes away.
Having enjoyed the experience for ourselves anyway, since then we have begun the practice of going for a 20-minute dip in the sea together every day – save when our respective schedules make this impossible.
We haven’t yet inflicted an early morning (pre-7.30am?) dip upon ourselves – going swimming before the sun comes properly up being only for the truly hale & hearty – but at some point in the future I’m sure its day will come!
Anyway.
Yesterday we went for our daily dip at about 5.15pm.
The sea seemed to be about 90 minutes from “high tide”, resulting in us having some stones on the beach to negotiate before reaching the water – and then about another twenty to thirty yards of wading into it before reaching groin-level and the point where we were prepared to “dive in” and get used to the coldness and prevailing conditions, which on this occasion included a south-westerly wind and a sea drift going eastwards.
No sooner that we had done this and begun thrashing about in our respective impressions of the art of swimming than – out of the blue – we heard what, through repeated experience because of the relatively-close Goodwood aerodrome, we knew was the instantly-recognisable deep, throaty roar of a legendary Rolls Royce Merlin engine and (just milliseconds later) coming from an overhead Spitfire WW2 fighter plane.
I’m not an expert on such things – albeit that, on separate occasions, both my late father (a former Fleet Air Arm pilot) at the age of 80 and Gerald my son have had “flights” in a specially-altered Spitfire with a second cockpit added behind the main one – and so all I can report here is that the example overhead us was coloured silver.
I can tell you this. The pilot was clearly experienced and highly-competent.
For the next ten minutes or so – at times varying from being some 3,000 or 4,000 feet to only about 500 feet (!) above us – Sophia and I stood riveted to our spot in the sea, effectively enjoying our own personal Spitfire display, as said veteran aeroplane swooped and soared, dived and climbed whilst performing all sorts of amazing aerobatics, including going straight upwards for several thousand feet before flipping over completely backwards in a circular loop and then coming round to flying straight ahead again …. and later repeating said vertical climb and then (at the pilot’s chosen apex of it) “falling away” sideways and then swooping down over the town as if he was in pursuit and on the tail of an ME109 at some point in September 1940.
After this extraordinary episode, when I was asked what I thought was the purpose of the display, I could only offer the guesses that the pilot had either been rehearsing a display that he was due to be giving the public at some point in the next week or so, or else perhaps was the proud owner of the aircraft and was just up in the air for the hell of it.
Spitfires – and other retro aircraft – flying over our property is a regular occurrence, but yesterday’s was a truly memorable event.
Quite separately from the above, about 11.15pm last night – Sophia not long having joined me in bed (I had retired as usual at 8.30pm) – a different kind of air flight came upon us.
Suddenly we became aware of an enormous roar overhead. This grew so loud and near that at one point we dashed to the window, opened the curtains, and looked out to see a giant helicopter flying past our window at speed and only a couple of hundred feet of altitude. Conversations on our local WhatsApp group soon revealed that the apparent cause of this incident was a multi-car road traffic accident pile-up further down the road that required the attendance of a Sussex & Kent ambulance chopper.
