Man With His Head in the Clouds

O. Smith Richard

Description

Hilarious, enlightening and inspiring The Man with His Head in the Clouds is anything but ordinary. Smith has artfully created a category-defying juxtaposition of historical biography and autobiographical recovery story. . . fun and accessible.' --The Psychologist'All human life is here, served up with a light touch and keen sense of the ridiculous.' --Dr Lucy Worsley'Pure pleasure... A brilliant blend of biography and self-help, and a bold book about ballooning, The Man with His Head in the Clouds is nothing less than a trip.' --Frances Wilson This is the story of how an uneducated Oxford pastry cook became the first Englishman to fly, in a self-built balloon powered by primitive, and potentially lethal, hydrogen. Despite taking off in force 8 gales, crashing into hills and plopping into the Irish Sea, James Sadler became a rare pioneering aeronaut to survive such perilous ascents. Good luck was not hereditary; his son's balloon fatally collided with a chimney. Sadler advanced the scientific evolution of lighter-than-air flight, and took part in both of the famous races that so captivated the public in late eighteenth-century Europe: across the Channel, and the Irish Sea. He earned Lord Nelson's endorsement for improving the Royal Navy with applied science, created one of the first--perhaps the very first--mobile steam engines and was revered by fans like Percy Shelley and Dr. Johnson. Yet even the brightest stars one day collapse, as Sadler's name emits virtually no light today. Like Sadler, Richard O. Smith emanates from Oxford's Town not Gown. Like Sadler, he wants to look down on Oxford--literally--and his admiration for the balloonist culminates in him replicating the first ever flight, also over Oxford. But there is a problem. The author suffers from acute acrophobia, a crippling fear of heights. This prevents him from standing on a stool, yet alone dangling at 3,000 feet beneath an oversized party balloon. To overcome his chronic height anxiety, he seeks pre-flight counselling, learning all about current understanding of phobias and anxieties. Here he discovers that he is also bathmophobic--a fully-functioning adult who is afraid of stairs. Inspired by Sadler, Smith sets out to overcome his debilitating fear and ascend in a balloon over Oxford. 'Be positive. You just need a will to do it,' counsels a psychologist. So, taking that advice, he starts positively, by making a will.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Oxfordshire

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 07 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909930339
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Title Page
The Man with His Head in the Clouds
James Sadler: The First Englishman to Fly
Richard O. Smith



Publisher Information
First published in 2014 by
Signal Books Limited
36 Minster Road
Oxford OX4 1LY
www.signalbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Richard O. Smith, 2014
The right of Richard O. Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. The whole of this work, including all text and illustrations, is protected by copyright. No parts of this work may be loaded, stored, manipulated, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information, storage and retrieval system without prior written permission from the publisher, on behalf of the copyright owner.
Cover Design: Baseline Arts, Oxford
Cover Images: Baseline Arts, Oxford; Wikimedia Commons





Prologue: The End?
They say being on death row clarifies the mind. They also say that the footsteps of a dead man walking emit no sound - although that could be because they’ve just had death row carpeted.
60 seconds and counting...
I am facing death in public and no one is offering me a blindfold, cigarette or last meal. Usually when a firing squad ties you to a pole, it is probably a good time to start thinking about life insurance. I haven’t got life insurance. Maybe I should ring a call centre and spend my last few seconds on earth listening to someone with a Geordie accent read through the small print of an insurance policy that I - or rather my widow - will be able to claim on within sixty seconds of taking out the cover.
50 seconds...
This is the most terrifying thing I have ever encountered. Forget screeching dentists’ drills, imagined monsters stalking my childhood bedroom or that occasion when I was slightly too slow in reassuring my wife that she is still just as beautiful now as when we married.
40 seconds...
I am a cliché whirling into life. My whole existence is flashing before me. I never thought this literally happens when you are about to die. Yet there I am, the only cinema-goer in a big screen multiplex watching an edited compilation package of my own, admittedly rather average it transpires, life. That time I wet myself at Amanda Jones’ fifth birthday party. (Why did that scene make the cut? Who edited this?) I can see myself, asking my mother for a pound in order to buy her a birthday present - and then spending it on an action man accessory. There is a parade of characters and suddenly recalled experiences competing for airtime. All represent the cluttered colours of my life.
30 seconds...
Hang on, my life has actually been alright, pretty good even, on this quickly flicked highlights package. What an inconvenient time to make that discovery, when I’m just about to die pointlessly in an Oxfordshire field. The worst possible time to make that breakthrough, I can tell you - as it’s all too late now.
20 seconds...
Admittedly, I may have worried about a lot of stuff that never happened, carried the imagined weight of irrelevant burdens. Why did I worry so much? Waste such precious time-on-earth anxious about petty imagined dangers, ruminated fears, when I could have saved it up for this? A situation that really needs worrying about.
15 seconds...
Look, I know I have been quite rude about the world in the past. But I’ve just discovered that I really, really do want to live now. Please can I live? I promise to be good.
10 seconds...
Hi God. Yes, I’m aware it’s been several decades since we last spoke. I have been busy though - well, you’d probably know that, what with the omnipotence. No, don’t make that face. Anyway, in the statistically unlikely occurrence that a supernatural deity exists outside human comprehension, rather than an inevitable artificial construct of a guilt-induced afterlife expectation to offset nihilism, please save me from my upcoming certain death. Amen. Cheers.
9 seconds...
It was worth praying. After all, that’s the potent appeal of religion. Join most organisations or societies and they’ll present you with an introductory free pen, windscreen de-icer or Amazon gift voucher. Join a religion and you’re offered everlasting eternal life. That’s a hard sell to compete with.
8 seconds...
Just in case you didn’t catch that last sentiment, God: I REALLY WANT TO LIVE NOW, OK?
7 seconds...
Memories. There’s space on my hard drive to download a lot more from life. So stop the countdown. Please stop. It seems to have stopped. Flooded with relief, I feel like a soldier surviving a war. They’ll be no more...
6 seconds...
Oh B*^&*%$*&! How could I think that? The countdown is appearing slower as an illusion. Like a car crash, everything appears to slow down before the moment of impact.
5 seconds...
Of course there were girls I kissed whom I shouldn’t have, and girls I didn’t kiss whom I definitely should have. Emotion rises within, swelling up like the hot air inflating a balloon, causing a geezer burst of tears. I try and shape words out of these emotions, wanting to reveal my love for my partner. Without a blindfold I am able to see my wife is playing with her phone, smirking at a text message from a friend. I call out my wife’s name with honest affection. “Er... can it wait a minute... texting,” she replies. Insensitively.
4 seconds...
Time for some profound words. Final words, simply by an accident of time, can become gilded with an undeserved poignancy. Rendered significant merely by being the last words you ever drew breath to orate. There is also that tense expectancy to make one’s final words profound. And then, once you’ve uttered them, you are forced to remain silent. There’s no point in superseding profound grandiloquence as your chosen final utterance, only to remark ten minutes later: “Could I have another glass of water?”
3 seconds...
I wish I hadn’t got so attached to the world as I’m not ready to leave it yet. The world is like a pet that dies too young. Oh God, I’m actually leaving the world. So long, world - thanks for the good times, and frankly your bad times weren’t that bad. I know that now. It’s my sort of world, the earth, and I’m sure I can be happy here. If I’m given another chance, I promise to be reformed, better with my time. I won’t leave toilet rolls unchanged or expect someone else to clear up the crumbs near the toaster. I won’t stare at my wife’s younger sister anymore, even if we go on holiday again and she insists on wearing that tiny bikini (which, you have to admit, was odd for a Helsinki city break). I’ll get a direct debit done for Oxfam. No, I will.
2 seconds...
Allow me to share, as my final words, a thought on humanity. My observation is a positive one. Being this close to death has provided me with some good news to share: the compulsion to tell someone in your final moments that you love them is far stronger than the instinct to tell someone you hate them. That’s why passengers on doomed hijacked planes leave messages of love on answer phones. No one rings up that bloke they work with in HR called Dave to inform him: “I just called to say I always thought you were a twat.”
1 second...
Trying to compose myself now in order to step out of the world and disappear for ever. We’re all admitted into the world with that same pre-determined plot ending hanging over us. The agreement is, that by accepting life you simultaneously hereby accept to one day leave it, to disappear for ever, as the waters close quickly about you. Well, I never signed anything agreeing to that.
0 seconds... Countdown completed. We have lift-off.
I hear a terrifying loud noise.
BANG!
And with that sound, my soul starts to drift upwards to heaven.
“Basket-case!” says my wife. And then everyone’s faces fold into laughter.
You see, that’s funny. Perhaps cruel, but undeniably funny, because I’m standing in a basket. And having a breakdown - a breakdown that is entirely justified in my view.
We have lift-off. I am taking my first ever balloon flight and suffer from crippling acrophobia - that’s a fear of heights to you and me. I’ve never seen, nor imagined, anything this terrifying before.
And yet I am trusting my continued existence to a fifty-foot plastic inverted teardrop. As we inch above the ground I am in a full-on state of fight or flight emotional arousal - my brain ordering my heart to palpitate like someone’s kicking a bass drum pedal inside my chest cavity. My palms trickle sweat. Fear fibrillates throughout my body
I want one of the last things I see to be my wife’s face. She’s smiling. An image I frame in my memory. She’s come to watch me take-off with Sofia - a friend’s five-year-old daughter, not the capital of Bulgaria. I feel a sense of handing over to the younger generation. Her smile is to be the last thing I ever see, like those heart-scarring final messages left on answer phones from doomed victims. Then, although you never really want an enjoyable book or movie to end any more than you wish a fulfilling life to end, at least that would make a satisfactory final scene: my wife’s smile before the final fade to permanent terminal blackness.
Also I want her to be happy and meet someone else. Judging by her reactions to the texts, she probably already has.
Right, I’m off to die now. And it only cost me £125.



Introduction: Sadler And Me
James Sadler was born in Oxford some time in February 1753. It was a dark (obviously) though not necessarily stormy night. And they say historical biog