The Human Condition

here at the Clifton Gliding Centre, towing gliders two thousand feet up into the air and then letting them go so that they can drift back down to the ground. Easy. I have a good life now. Simple, but good.

    A line of three virtually identical (in all but colour) cars pull into the gravel carpark. The sound of their wheels crunching along the ground disturbs the quiet of the morning. This must be today's visitors arriving. There are supposed to be eight or nine of them I think, sales reps from a company in town. Noisy buggers. It's only just turned eight and all I can hear is them laughing and shouting. Why can't they talk quietly? It's probably just nerves. It's good sport watching blokes like this. They try and act all cool and relaxed on the ground, but I know they're nervous as hell. As soon as they're strapped into the gliders and they're ready to go up they change. All the bravado and macho bullshit disappears. When there's just the hull of a flimsy little plane and two thousand feet of air between their backsides and the ground they tend to shut up and drop the act. I hate these corporate team building activities. To think I used to have to do all this...

    As the group disappears into the office to sign in and be briefed on the rules for the day I start getting the plane ready. I can still hear the voices of the seven men and two women as I walk over to the hanger. I climb into the plane, shut the cockpit and fire up the engine, drowning out their noise once and for all. I taxi out onto the airfield (which literally is a field here � no concrete runways for us) and move into position. Once we're ready I stop the engine, get out of the plane and walk over to where some of the other staff are standing in front of the hanger.

    `Do me a favour,' I say to Willy who's one of the regular glider pilots.

    `What's that?' he asks.

    `Give them a fright, will you? Scare the shit out of these buggers!'

    He smiles knowingly. He shares my dislike of overpaid businessmen.

    `No problem,' he grins. `Anyway, Tuggie, five minutes of being dragged up behind you with your flying is enough to scare anyone! I'll be shitting myself, never mind them!'

    `Cheeky sod!' I snap as Willy walks away, cackling to himself.

    Willy and Jones (one of the ground staff) stand and wait for Ed (Willy's lad) who's towing the gliders out of the hanger and out onto the airfield. The tractor he's driving is a noisy bugger. It fills the air with chugging and clattering and with clouds of thick black fumes which it spits out of its exhaust. I head back to my caravan for a cup of coffee to wake me up properly before the flying starts.

    We move quickly. It's not even nine o'clock and I've already towed three gliders up.

    This really is a simple job. The glider's attached to the back of the plane by a cable. I take off and drag it up until we've reached around two thousand feet. The glider pilot releases the cable. They go up (for a while, if the conditions are right) and I go back down. They usually stay up for anything between twenty minutes and half an hour. The flights might last a little longer today. The clouds are good and the sun is bright. There should be plenty of thermals to keep them up in the air. Once I've lost them I can just coast back down to the landing strip.

    We usually try to have four or five gliders up in the air at the same time. This morning the first three went up without any problems. Ed's just attaching number four to the back of the tug plane. I watch the lads getting the glider ready in my mirrors. Ellis (the pilot) nods to Jones who gives me a hand signal and I start to move slowly forward until the cable is taut. Another hand signal and I stop. Behind me two ground hands hold the wings of the glider, keeping it steady. A final signal from one of them tells me that they're ready to fly.

    We're off again. The tug plane bumps along the uneven grass for a couple of hundred yards before I give it a little more gas, pull back the controls and start to climb. The rumbling beneath me is suddenly silenced as the wheels leave the ground. Now the glider's up too and we're on our way. I can see the faces of the two men in the plane behind me. Ellis is talking ten to the dozen but his passenger isn't listening. He's bloody terrified! I think he's got his eyes shut!

    Christ, the sun's bright. There's no escaping it when you're up here. It's hot too. It's not like you can pull down a blind or open a window. You just have to put