Two planes fell out of the sky last week with no official explanation, but we were halfway down the street and heading for a corner-shop when we stumbled across the why.
A large swathe of Seattle and a slightly more modest patch of Sussex were in the process of being combed over by inspectors, still chock-a-block with lifting cranes and bobbing fireman’s helmets and smouldering wreckage.
And we can turn to each other now and nod our heads and say: ‘Aha, so that’s why…’
Air-traffic control towers across the country must be experiencing a morning of sheer naked terror, grounding planes left right and centre.
I think of this as I stand there, in the middle of my street, watching my girlfriend rise into the air.
~
‘Wow,’ she said, with a shaky giggle. ‘Watch this.’
I could have grabbed her ankles, dragged on her coat tails with all my strength, but would have prevented a perfectly good imitation of a slow motion back-flip. Besides, I was beginning to drift myself.
‘Isn’t it windy up there?’
She shrugged, her hair was a fan that just kept blowing.
‘Nope,’ she said, lying. ‘Not at all.’
Her heels kicked twice, and she bobbed on the breeze.
‘Come on up, the air is fine.’
It was, too.
~
The most beautiful sight I have ever seen was a rush-hour traffic jam on the A4 that morning. All those people peeling like sticky labels from the sunroofs of their cars and falling into the sky in their suits and ties.
Like they belonged there, all along.
~
Jen and I did ten impossible things before breakfast, and all before eleven o’clock, Believe me, that’s good for us. I’m not going to list them, except to say they all involved flying.
Then it started to get a little brisker up there and, agreeing that we were being terribly English about it all, we came in for breakfast.
Pooling our resources, we spent half of them in a café with white plastic chairs; I remember the chairs because they creaked to each other in a far more relevant conversation than the one we appeared to be having. I can’t remember what precisely we talked about.
We didn’t think. We just rolled cigarettes, lit cigarettes, stubbed cigarettes and talked. Calmly, deliberately, and about nothing in particular.
~
A bald man with puzzled and crinkly eyes served us perfunctorily and nipped into a back kitchen to sneeze absent-mindedly into bacon, sausages and eggs, then reappeared to deliver a coagulant mess heaped onto roughly equal platefuls.
He apologised for the crispy bits on the bacon, and explained that he had been distracted by the random people flying past his window. His explanation was lucid, his manner calm, almost careless. He didn’t seem to mind about the smoke from our cigarettes. I registered wary disinterest at his news and he went away, satisfied.
~
Sitting there, sipping lukewarm tea from cracked mugs with careful precision, it mattered more than it should not to matter in the slightest.
But we couldn’t talk about anything either. So eventually I flipped open the paper and borrowed a pen from the counter. Jen pulled her chair round and we bent over the crossword, ignoring the old lady and her dog hovering over the Espresso Shop.
For at least five minutes, we failed to come up with anything for anything across and any clue down. Then we gave up entirely and turned our chairs to the window to watch all the people flying past it.
~
Behind us in the shop, someone turned on a radio.
nick gibbs poetry 