December 28, 2006
Our parachute jump - date to be fixed, you morbid bastards -
will be taking place over Salisbury Plains.
Now, I've never been to Salisbury Plains.
So I just Googled it.
As you do.
And, well, basically, I'm now thinking - thinking quite seriously - about how impossibly unlucky I can be.
And not just unlucky, either.
But about how much bad karma is sat at the starting blocks glaring at me at the other end of the track, too.
I mean, me...
Falling through the sky...
Fast...
Oh, so very fast...
Presumably with some mad, stoned, long-haired, bleach-blond Australian strapped to my back...
Screaming...
And then the land will be rising up in front of me.
Now, just to be crude for a moment, and I do, of course, apologise in advance; but at that moment, my testicles, those strange, small, frankly ugly but damned important things that have already been through quite enough in this life, will be gaily crusading through the air - according to a physics website I've just been perusing like a fucking bug-eyed madman - at "about" 190km an hour, or 118 miles an hour.
Think about that.
118 miles an hour.
Maximum velocity.
Which means I will be falling so fast - so hard - that I could travel, well, 118 miles.
In one hour.
In mid-air.
Downwards.
Back to my testicles, then.
They will be hurtling towards terra firma faster than I can hope for.
Protected by a mad Australian, some dutch courage, and a piece of canvas.
And at the end of this perilous, danger-filled, fucking insane endeavor, where will those precious globes end up?
Yeah, exactly.
You just know it's going to happen.
I'm going to land on this.
