In a homage to my dear friend Nathan, who recently and nastily twisted his foot back-to-front during a freak paragliding incident, H (Squiffy’s sister) and I decided that it would also be wise to throw ourselves off a mountain under a silk kite attached to our persons by means only of a few bits of string. Oh, and a man that looked like Elvis strapped to our backs. At the last minute, and unbelieveably, Squiffy agreed to go along with our stoopid plans and have a go too.

Unfortunately for my nerves, fattest goes last and so I was forced to observe the ladies; in particular their take-offs and landings to learn how best to mitigate a disaster for myself. Last time I landed under a silk canopy, I didn’t walk away and it took me over six months to walk without twinges of discomfort.

H went first and had the most perfect take-off, flight and soft landing. Unfortunately, I saw none of this myself as I was busy taking photographs of her experience. Anyway, I was heartened in the fact that she was able to walk unassisted back to us.

Squiffy was next and had a great take off and flight. The landing left quite a lot to be desired though, with the instructor misgauging her weight and dropped her on her bottom from about a metre with a definite thud in a bush, some way past the dropzone. Still, it could have been worse, the canopy and wiring landed in a prickly bush and I spent the best part of the next five minutes carefully unpicking and unravelling the wires from the thorns. H found it quite amusing at the care that I took during this task — after all it wasn’t her turn under that canopy next!

I donned my flying shell suit and slipped into my safety harness. The instructor and I had some tooing and froing with the harness; I wanted it tighter and he kept loosening it off as I’d be required to lean out of the straps mid-air to aid his turning ability. A bit scary, I thought.

The pilot instructed, “Now, you’re a lot heavier than the girls so the take-off is going to be more difficult. Whatever ever you do, just keep running until I tell you to stop. Even when we get to those those thorny bushes. Just keep running. Until I say.”

Grief! So off I ran towards the African inch-long thorn bushes knowing full well that the odds of ascending before impact were very low indeed. Worse still, a bus load of American tourists had recently arrived and now I had an audience to witness my death by a thousand cuts.

Good fortune come to those who persevere and a gust of wind hit us backwards a metre before the pain-plants and my pilot was able to convert this into an upwards jerk tall enough such that the evil spikes could only reach to the soles of my shoes. Hooray!

The mountain wall soon fell away and we were soaring about 400 metres (over 1,200 feet) above sea level looking down onto Cape Town, but never looking down on Table Mountain itself — that is over 1000 metres from sea level.

The landing, whilst quite fast, passed wthout too much drama in the end. I lost a little bit of my nerve on the approach and the crowd below could hear my pleas to the pilot, “slow, slow, slow, slow, Slow, SLOW!” as I flashed-back to my prior failed landing. I felt a slight twang in my ankles and heels, but this my have been more psychological than real.

At least I didn’t land in a bush.

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