Volume 40 No 4 Aug-Sept 1989.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

WAY OFF TRACK
Full-blown breakfast.
, u
. "
",J '0
the flight. Then I felt and was immediately
alarmed by a hot sensation in my chest which
clearly went beyond the gastric heartburn ,
sometimes suffer after a full-blown breakfas!. "Is
this a heart attack" I asked myself with some
foreboding, beginning a hurried descent when
awareness dawned.
But Idigress. What have these things to dowith
peeing or, more, important, with not having immediately
to pee Just that tucked down beneath
one's harness buckle, in the approximate region
of the waterworks - at least, their approximate
location in my physiological conformation, what
about yours - the effect of warmth on a chilled
and shrunken bladder at altitude is quite wondrous
relief.
You're good for at least another 2000-3000ft
and perhaps another hour in flight and can make
an unhurried descent to pee in comfort - and
the John.
Whew! The tone of S&G is on the up and up.
Please note Ii've got to the end of this discourse
without once vsing the words "wet knickers."
The second time also had a catch. It was in
Limerick, where aboul 150 01 the region's great
and good were hosting a party of jovmalists and
broadcasting "celebrities" from Ihe wild north.
Only seconds before my dessert plate was
aboulto offer nothing but its, glaze, IleameQ the
catch. "You're on in tWQ minutes. You're to:do the
vote of thanks," whispered Herself, seated at
my side.
By the grace 01 God, as I l10undered lamely
towards the end, to a sea of faces as unmoved as
any sea of Irish faces ever can be, I recalled a
gliding incident that had happened some years
before, when I quite shamelessly hijacked a jest
that I had read in one of Rhoda Partridge's
articles· in S&G.
Hijacked a jest.
I had had an immensely long and tiring journey,
solo, towing a gliderfrom Belfast through the Irish
Midlands, where the roads have more twists and
turns thana belly dancer's lower bowel. But I was
happily nearing my destination - the Dublin/
Ulster GCs' autumn safari to Co Kerry - then at
Farranfore Airport but now flown from several
beaches further west.
in England to win races by 8 long neck.
"We're over here cleaning up at all Ihe Irish
meetings," I added in a qvick-fire embellishment
of my own.
Despite Ihe fact that the tired' jokes the English,
in their arrogant dimness, tell about Ihe Irish are
first told by !Dubliners about Kerrymen, he was
smarter still. "Sorry I asked," he fired back
instanlly.
"Should've been obvious. The English have
been sticking Iheir bloody necks out in this coun­
·try for 800 years, so why shouldn't their
horses too"
Wllen they heard an Englishman recounting
this, with a warning to his northern colleagues nOt
to attempt to be a smart-arse down in the west of
Ireland because the locals were likely to prove
smarter tharil they, Ihe faces of Ihe