Monday 31 August 2015

The planes go over our house on busy times like this weekend, a bank holiday in England. The flight path is changed I presume for the abundance of extra excursion planes joining a holding pattern.  As they go over the house they are gradually loosing height  and banking over to the right.  In the distance, their wing lights twinkle and the sound of their engines alters, each time it puts me into the aircraft amongst the passengers.  Strapped into our seats anticipating the landing, some of us looking forward to sleeping in our own beds, meeting up once more with relatives and friends perhaps waiting for us now in the arrival hall, others sad that their holiday is over and they must return to the daily grind. At that moment cabin lights dim, a few nervous coughs join the murmur of voices, the cry of an infant wails out as air-pressure pains our ears, there is the rumble and roar and rush of air outside as the pilot throttles back, engines roaring as we hurtle along the runway.  That optimum moment when just for a split second I would think,
"We're not going to stop!"
Everything green and concrete rushing past at incredible speed, until the feeling of gravity thrusts in and the plane cruises to a gradual halt.  Cabin lights flicker up and one of the crew presses the intercom ping and a voice reminds us all, to,
 'Please remain seated until the plane comes to a stop.'
How many times have I been there in the past?
Returning to Manchester where it would invariably elicit a comment over the intercom from the pilot, his voice brighter, more free now that the danger of the landing is over, telling us the air temperature outside and almost always adding...."And it's raining!".

Saturday 8 August 2015

It's drizzly in the North today, wet roofs and pavements.. what's new?  It's Manchester in August in the suburbs.  Well, we're all used to it I suppose, some would say resigned, to wearing woollies in the summer and having an umbrella somewhere handy.  I'm struggling with withdrawal symptoms from a recently prescribed pill that my body decided it didn't like one little bit, so threw a big wobbly.  The GP said stop taking it.  Just like that, when on the instruction blurb it said, 'On no account stop taking this pill, always taper off over a series of weeks.'  However she said, to go on taking it means certain death..... Cheery thought that!
I think of myself now as being like a typewriter.  Well to be specific, my best friend's typewriter, back in the days well before computers, when we used to type spreadsheets on great big hulking machines in the office where we worked.  Her machine was totally temperamental, it knew when someone other than S was using it and it would go out of alignment, every time.  So I think of myself as 'out of alignment' presently.