The Man Who Fell To Earth

There are some bizarre activities in my non-existent list of 'Things to do before you're 40':

Ride a racehorse very fast.

See whales in the ocean.

Drive an F1 car or MotoGP bike.

Be a passenger in any military fast jet.

Falconry.

Watch Falkirk win the SPL*.

But in a few weeks I'll be fulfilling another, I'm going to do a skydive.

I will be strapped to someone who will actually know what they are doing.

We will clamber into a rickety wee plane.

We will climb to approximately 10,000 feet above the very beautiful but very hard Auchterarder countryside.

At this point, the nice man strapped to my back will shuffle us to a gaping hole in the side of the plane, something I never thought I'd ever see and live to talk about, where we will then leap like heroes, but plummet like stones.

In a few seconds we will be travelling at something like 120mph, because as everyone knows 1g [m/s^2].

If everything goes to plan, our 'chute, as we skydivers call it, will deploy at around 5000 feet, and we will glide like a sycamore leaf  to a pinpoint accurate landing on the unyielding ground below.

.....where I will stop crying and change my pants.

It's all for a good cause of course, a Scottish charity called ENABLE, which is why, dear reader, I'm looking for sponsorship. 

No amount is too small so get clicking HERE! 

*It is a fantasy list after all!