After the last few random posts, I think it’s time to get back to telling you more tales about my mum the story-teller.
When I broke off, she was about to drive home from West Burton, after she and her partner had met up with their friends Adrian and Kathy and visited the Bartle Burning Ceremony in nearby West Witton. And, while they’d been together, they’d made some great plans for meeting up again towards the end of September.
By that time work would be about to start on some massive alterations to Mum’s partner’s house which would make life easier for him. They would affect every room, however, and for a while the house would be uninhabitable. Luckily they could rent the house next door, but would need lots of help in moving furniture, putting things into storage and so on.
By coincidence Adrian was going on a business trip to Argentina in the middle of the month and would get some extra days leave when he got back and so he arranged to spend some of them with Mum and her partner and help them get the house ready.
That was in the late summer of 1994, the year in which the British-made film Four Weddings and a Funeral was a surprise smash hit in the cinemas.
Sadly for Mum, her 1994 turned into the exact opposite as she went to four funerals and a wedding – and even that ended in divorce.
Now three of the funerals were of old family friends or neighbours who’d died peacefully in their late eighties and so, although Mum felt sad about going to them, they weren’t exactly unexpected. But the fourth one came completely out of the blue and left both Mum and her partner devastated.
When Mum answered the phone at tea-time on the last Thursday in September, she expected Adrian to be at the other end to tell her when he was coming up to visit her and her partner. Instead it was his wife to tell them that, although he’d arrived safely in Argentina, the small plane that was taking him on the last part of the journey had suffered an engine failure on take-off and crashed in flames, killing everyone on board…
Quite apart from their grief at the loss of one of their best friends for over twenty years, not surprisingly Mum and her partner suddenly found they didn’t want to fly ever again. Though they’d flown thousands of miles between them over the years and never batted an eyelid, this crash had unnerved them – and Mum especially.
Though she kept telling herself that any plane she flew in would have at least two engines, she couldn’t quite convince herself that she’d feel safe and not panic – and she didn’t know how to get over that.
Then later that year she saw just the thing advertised in their morning paper – a three-hour flight in search of the Northern Lights, flying from, and returning to, their local airport with no stops in between. That meant there’d be just one take-off and one landing and so she wouldn’t have to worry about having to take another flight to get back home if she didn’t like it.
She booked straightaway, before she could change her mind, and so early one evening a couple of weeks later she and her partner were on their way to Leeds/Bradford airport. They soon found a parking place and, as Mum had let them know in advance that her partner was in a wheelchair, everything was well organised and soon they had their boarding cards and were ready for off.
Except what Mum hadn’t realised was that first there was going to be an hour-long talk by Sir Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott about what caused the Northern Lights and what they might expect to see on their flight.
They also saw pictures of a moonquake and were told there were probably sunquakes as well. (This was finally proved in 1998, using data collected in 1996.)
Then it was time to get on the plane. Mum said she was beginning to feel a bit shaky – and it was made worse by the fact that there were so many people in wheelchairs going on the flight that there wasn’t enough room for all their carers to get in the special vehicle that was taking them out to the plane.
Mum was one of those who volunteered to walk across the tarmac to the plane and, when she got to the bottom of the steps, she found an elderly woman with a walking stick who looked very lost and unsure. Mum asked if she could help and the woman explained that she’d recently been in a car accident in which she’d hurt her leg and had to have part of one arm amputated – and, if that wasn’t enough, she didn’t know what to do as she was on her own and this would be her first flight.
Before Mum had time to think about what she was doing, she found herself escorting the other woman up the steps and into the plane, before handing her over to one of the cabin crew. Then she found her own seat and went to wait for her partner to come on board. Through helping the other woman, she’d got on the plane with no problems, but how would she feel when the doors shut and the engines started? Would she enjoy the flight – or would it seem like the longest three hours of her life?
I’ll let you know in my next post, but meanwhile take care and stay safe – and look out for some more tales from me soon!
Follow my next blog: 205. MY MUM THE STORY-TELLER – PART EIGHTY-NINE
09/06/2022
Wilf the bear-faced blogger 