The day dawned with blue skies and a gentle breeze, making it slightly cooler than it had been earlier in the week, but still hot. I got up, dressed in leggings and a long sleeved T shirt in preparation for the big event - existing members of the skydiving fraternity told me the suits you get to wear are not the most comfortable - and ate breakfast. After that it was feed the rabbits, put them out in the run, wash the dishes and put some make-up on before heading off to Headcorn Airfield, where the jump was due to take place, with my youngest daughter on board in the capacity of official photographer.
We arrived bang on half past nine as required, parked and made our way to the Tandem Skydiving Portacabin, sorry, Meeting Point, where I signed in and got the hard sell on hiring a camera person to film the entire escapade. I then made my way over to the offices to pay the remainder of the fee and then back to the tandem portacabin to sign up for the camera man - 50 still photos and a DVD for £140. I wasn't going to bother, but they pointed out that the drop zone was a quarter of a mile away from the spectator area, so the prospects of my daughter getting any shots were slim to say the least and when you're trying to raise money for charity, you need some kind evidence to prove you've done what you said you were going to do.
After that it was hang around until the briefing at 10:00 am (gosh, this is beginning to sound like an army mission with every passing sentence!). Speaking of the army, the Army Parachute Display Team, the Tigers, were also there with some competition winners who were going to do tandem jumps with them. I don't know whether their tandem jumps also involved the aerial equivalent of synchronised swimming or not. There wasn't much to do - there was a small café and some picnic tables, no shade and then a variety of light aircraft parked, if that's the right word, alongside the runway. Sometime after 10 am my parents turned up to watch and then shortly after that, probably getting on for 10:30 am, the jumpers were called in to the portacabin for the briefing. We were talked through what was going to happen and how terrified we would be; the harness and how each of us would be attached to the instructor was explained in great detail. We got to look at the protective clothing and found out what the protocol was in the event of suffering from motion sickness. For the record, the instructors carry sick bags in their pockets as they're not too keen on finding out you're feeling unwell via any other method than verbally. I guess nobody likes a face full of vomit! We also had to balance precariously on the edge of our chairs and kneel on the floor to practice various positions - how to hang precariously from the edge of the plane prior to launching into the unknown, free fall position and also a timed trial of holding your legs straight out for six seconds to simulate the landing position. Last of all we got to watch a video of a woman experiencing the whole thing, with the instructor pointing out how petrified she looked before jumping (like we hadn't noticed that!) and how happy she was once back on terra firma. I'm not sure whether that was due to the euphoria of completing her jump or the relief at being on solid ground.
Training completed it was back outside to await my turn. The first four hopefuls went off pretty soon after the briefing session and we watched as they came down, getting a nice surprise when their parachutes opened up; although they didn't seem to be that high up at this point, it was virtually impossible to see the before deploying their parachutes. After the first group were safely back nothing much else happened. I was on tenterhooks, definitely feeling apprehensive if not downright scared, and I just wanted to get it over and done with. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. The wind picked up a bit, which proved to be difficult. Tandem skydiving can't take place with winds above 20 knots, or at least not at Headcorn it can't and for the rest of the day there were gusts of 22 or 24 knots. Eventually, my parents having left at 2:00 pm, I decided to call it a day and rebook. This was at about 5:00 pm. I had very little cash left, the only food available was crisps and chocolate and we were both starving! I'd learnt earlier that skydiving on an empty stomach is more likely to make a person feel sick, so you needed to eat and drink regularly. Also, whilst the wind had dropped slightly at around 3:00 pm, it had then got back up again, so it wasn't looking like there'd be any jumping any time soon. The final nail in the coffin that led me to rebook was that the Tigers were still there, but had to leave by 6;00 PM, as they had a long drive to Glasgow for two sows they were doing there over the weekend, so I was a little concerned that the competition winners might be fast-tracked ahead of some of the other jumpers.
So to cut a long story short, I spent all day at Headcorn and didn't get to do my skydive. On the plus side, I've rebooked it for next Wednesday - July 24th and I get priority, so providing the weather is okay, I can virtually guarantee I'll be in the first group to go up. On the down side, I've had all weekend and a couple more days still to come to think about all the parts of this endeavour that are really freaking me out, making it doubly hard to go back and do what I originally planned to do - throw myself out of an aeroplane from a great height and hurtle towards the earth! My instructor had better be attractive, that's all I can say!
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