A Sideways Look into the possible future . . .

‘This Prima Donna has to be treated as another airliner. We’re now a grimly competitive bus company, not a bunch of formula one fairies.’ Nobody actually said this, but perhaps you get the idea.

“Alright, you can have the Flying Scholarship, but you’ll have to grow two inches if you want to come back here.”

Jeremy turned round and said ‘Jump in, you can fly the accel.’ . . . Wow! Is he serious? I’ve never been supersonic before, even as a passenger. Of course, his confidence belied the Concorde’s agreeable nature when doing the very thing it was designed for.

‘. . . but even worse is the crime of a deliberate attempt to step outside one’s capability box in the hope that Lady Luck will somehow come to your aid, and make you look like the hero that lives in your imagination.’

Leopards live in these inaccessible regions – and they have the strongest bite per size of any seriously-biting creature. A walkout, if possible, would take for ever. And this is their home – think about it.

. . . . hesitation or incorrect timing could put you in big trouble, confront you with the most dangerous paragliding circumstance. I’ve never done this manoeuvre myself, but I know how it works.

‘Many of us function quite satisfactorily with no personal picture that we’re aware of, and many will have binned their write-ups instantly. I salute them. Their motto is ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,’ and my 200,000 mile Golf has prospered similarly.’

Was there really an aeroplane out there? Do the past and future exist? Perhaps the present is the only reality, suggesting that cat-shots are, for most of the time, creations of the fevered imagination. What a surreal way to take off. Fantastic.

Think, damn you! Think!!” I told myself. My first decision was to climb as high as possible until the collector tank ran out, so as to give myself the full eight minutes of life that I had left.”

“They don’t need a trainer”, suggested my assistant Randy Reinhardt, “more like a corner man with a bucket and sponge”.

“If I was going to land in the lion’s enclosure I would want four afterburning Olympus engines to get me out of there.”