The Past at Two Thousand Feet

Drawing melancholy circles above my old school, my little Luscombe and I learned lessons about each other that both of us wished we learned earlier. Bushi realised that clumsy-footed me is actually capable of co-ordinated turns and I learned that two thousand feet is worth twenty years of perspective.

I had been feeling very satisfied with the day's sortie. Today I had taken a different, less direct, route to visit friends in Galway. The choice of routing was to satisfy curiosity about a rumoured farm strip but the route motivation was to force me off known paths; to refocus on navigation and not just find my way by familiarity. Forty minutes of clock and compass and I had arrived overhead the expected town and the strip was where I suspected. A few nicely balanced turns and photos and I continued on my way to my friends’ airstrip where tea, Jaffa cakes and a solid “8” landing awaited. Taking the unknown route had added a smidgen of anxiety; an eagerness not to get lost but the reward was another increment in confidence. Flying lessons never really end.

I tend to fly point to point - enjoying the journey but generally focussed on getting to a destination. Having departed my friends’ airstrip, heading for home, I noticed my route took me close to where I grew up. Today my only deadline was sunset and with plenty of fuel I could loiter with no intent and the notion of dawdling dawned on me.

On my list of flying to-dos is to circle my former secondary school at the end of their lunch break; to be a distraction for many and hopefully, to lift the spirits of one. Being a Saturday, I wasn't going to tick that particular to-do item but I thought it would be good to have a dummy run and anyway, it would be interesting to see the vast grounds of the school from the air.

Wheeling north, off track, I could see things had changed. Gone was the hilltop water tower that land-marked the school for less familiar navigators and just over a fence, immediately to south, the bright new girls’ secondary school. It's adjacent but not quite co-educational - change doesn't come that quickly in my home town. But I wasn't interested in the girl’s school - the teenage me can't believe I just wrote that. I was looking for the courtyard classrooms, the science block, the rain stained handball alleys, the sports pitches spurned for the refuge of the broad tree-lined walk, the fountains and woodlands. As I orbited my past hypnotically, wondering whether I grew here or was stunted, I noticed that all of it; the education, the exams, the taunts and travails were all framed by my Luscombe's little side window. How very insignificant the past seemed from up here.

Levelling out and heading south to pick up the track back to my grown-up life, the school fading behind, the rest of the world rolling out ahead, I wondered what the teenage me would have seen if he'd had the gift of two thousand feet of perspective.