Going Up!

GOING UP

“I’m not sodding going!” Percy Jeffries spat, getting the pound coin out of his dressing gown pocket with a shaky hand before Nurse Carole Whenlock shook the ever-ready swear box at him.

“Don’t be like that Percy,” Carole pleaded, “look upon the fact that your family went to a lot of effort and expense to do this special thing to mark your one hundredth birthday.”

“After doing sod-all for months, not even visiting me when I was poorly last September,” Percy muttered, putting another coin in the waiting slot.

“Ker-ching!” grinned Assistant Nurse Prisha Patel, “Way ta go, man, that’s me Gadgie!” And smiled all the wider as Percy always lost his otherwise normal early morning frown and smiled whenever he heard Nurse Prisha speak in broad Geordie, and, well, Nurse Prisha liked making Mr Jeffries smile. She had only worked here for six months but he was already her favourite patient, sorry, she reminded herself again, guest, and she happily took his twenty pound note to the bank for another bag of pound coins for the swear box on a fairly regular basis.

“You’re not helping Prish,” Carole lightly scolded her assistant, “Come on Perse, let’s get you washed up, changed onto your outdoor togs and off to Reception, they’ll be ready for the off in twenty minutes.”

It was actually scheduled for nearer 40 minutes but she knew that getting Percy actually going and ready was going to mean obstructions all the way and, although Prish was such a wee young thing, she was surprisingly strong and agile, and it was well known that Percy in particular of all the patients, sorry guests, of Fern Grange Care Home was putty in Prisha’s hands.

‘Oh to be 18 again like Prisha,’ thought Carole, ‘living with yer Mam, no money worries, no coping with the slipping mortgage payments because you’re working on minimum wage with yer husband laid off after furlough and three young and hungry mouths to feed with the help of the local Church-run food bank’.

“Remember the lockdown, Percy?” Carole reminded Percy, although she knew from the two years that he had been resident here that the 99-year-old was as sharp as a tack, “You’ve only been allowed to have visitors come here for the last month and, because of staff shortages and maintaining social distances and the compulsory testing of all the visitors, you can only have one visitor a week and that’s for only 40 minutes max. They’ve not been allowed to visit, so they’ve not totally abandoned you.”

“I know, I know,” Percy replied with more than a hint of resignation in his voice, but then he rallied as Carole expected him too, “It’s not even my ffff-flaming birthd’y, that’s not ’til 21 December. I’m not flamin’ going up until I see the Queen’s flaming telegram!”

Carole sighed, reminding herself that patience is always a virtue and sometimes some patients were a pain in the arse.

She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a pound and popped it in the swear box.

"That’s just for thinking what I’m thinking," she said looking sideways first at Percy and then Prisha, they were both grinning at her, and then they all burst out laughing.

“All right, all right, I remember them saying that the Dale Adventure Ballooning Company don’t fly in the winter and this was the best opportunity for going up, in early August,” Percy admitted, sounding grudging but good-naturedly retaining his customary cheeky grin. “You better help me get dressed or my daughter Audrey’ll be spitting nails, the old battle axe.”

“That’s the Dunkirk Spirit,” Carole chuckled.

“I was never at Dunkirk,” Percy muttered back, “That was for the flaming Regulars, I wasn’t conscripted until I finished my Chippie Apprenticeship in ’42, and then they started me off in tanks where I thought I’d be safe from bullets before they shipped me off to Tobruk, the buggers. Those Afrika Corps tanks come fitted with can openers that tear up tank armour like it were hot butter. After they shipped me back with a few superficial burns and me head wrapped up in brown paper, I must’ve still been suffering head trauma, ’cos I immediately transferred to the Paras and the first thing they did, after practising half-a-dozen forward rolls during PT, was push me out of a bloody balloon a hundred feet up! I had to do three jumps out of them buggers before the NCO’d had had enough fun seeing us recruits fill our brigs with wet bricks. Then they thought it was even funnier chucking us out of aeroplanes at 500 feet without any kit and then taking us up to 2000 feet with two kit bags weighing 120 pounds, the buggers! I survived D-Day when my company lost every officer and NCO during the fighting at Bréville, and now to,cap it all, my family want to send me up in a bloody ballon!"

He proceeded to put five more coins from the bag in his dressing gown into the swear box.

"Do you want that vest on, Pet?" Prisha asked, "it’s August an’ dead hot out there, ya’know?"

"Too bbb-right I want me vest on, the higher you go up my lassie, the colder it gets!"

***

"Ay up, Perce," ‘Cheerful’ Jack the driver bounced out of the Care Centre bus to help Percy climb the stairs, "Ow thee doin’, ould lad?" he added, calling everyone of the residents ‘ould lad’ or ‘ould lass’ even though everyone knew the volunteer driver had been retired for at least 15 years but still living at his own home with his wife, ‘Effervescent’ Else, who often came on road trips to help out the ‘ould folk’.

Today was no exception, and as Percy reached the top step and turned to go down the bus, Else was there to help him put on his face mask and squirt sanitizer on his hands, greeting him with another, "Ay up", but her version was in a slight German accent; Jack and Else were once divorcees who met on separate package holidays in Spain over 40 years ago and discovered they were perfect together, both being carbon copies of Christopher Robin’s ‘Tigger’, they were irrepressible bouncing bundles of joy.

"Are thee lookin’ vorward to zee ballon ride, Perse?" Else laughed as she looped the face mask around his ears and avoiding tangling with his spectacles, which immediately fogged up as soon as he exhaled.

"No, not really," sighed Percy in resignation, "but vot can von do but follow zee orders?"

Else grinned and slapped him playfully on the shoulder, "Cheeky beggar!"

"Stop messin’ about wi’ me missus an’ move on dahn’t bus, Perce," Jack called from the doorway, "let rest o’t folk on."

Percy looked round, mind you he had to shuffle his feet, his neck had stiffened up over the years and he didn’t have the movement he once enjoyed. Carole and Prisha were climbing up behind him still with their masks on.

"What, are you two coming?"

"We would miss this for the world, would we, Prish?" Carole grinned at her assistant.

"Wey aye, Pet, it’s a canny dee, an’ we’re here ta cheer yee up, Mr Jeffries, yee’ve bin in a fine fettle all dee," chimed in Prisha.

"No peace for the wicked," Percy signed as he eased himself into the bus seat.

***

"What’ve you brought the wheelchair in the back for?" Percy asked as he climbed down from the bus onto the worn tarmac of a very narrow country lane, "I got me stroller, and anyway, aren’t we a long way from an airfield all the way out here?"

"Nar, they canna use an airfield like, so they fly from and come doon in farmers’ fields, Mr Jeffries, only they have to be a thousand metres from trees, so they don’t get owt snagged on take off." Prisha said, helping him down to the roadway, "so we’re ganning across a field to the balloon in the middle."

"We’re jus’ gonna push thee across t’four-be-four just in’tside field, Perse," Jack said, "field’s grass but soft after’t las’ night’s rain, bus’d get stuck as sure as ninepence, so tha bus is sticking t’t road."

After the heavy overnight rain, the battered Land-Rover, with ‘Dale Adventure Ballooning’ painted on the doors, slipped and slithered across the mud under the patchy yellowing grass of the meadow. Although the morning was already a couple of hours old the grass was still alive with dew and the rise in temperature was squeezing the juice out of the ground and a mist became more apparent around them the nearer to the middle of the field they got.

"Look at the length of them flames!" Percy pointed out the front window of the crowded 4x4 with Percy sitting in front and the three ladies crammed in back, Else and Prisha were rather slightly built but Carole, even with her family on food stamps, could only have her build described as ‘burly’. Percy’s wheeled stroller was stretched sideways across all their laps.

Jack stayed behind with the bus, but he had his mobile phone at the ready to take a video of the lift off, the direction of the light winds would probably take the balloon across the lane where he was parked.

Percy used his stroller to walk the few yards to the basket, where he was met by his daughter Audrey and son Gerald, both of them in their mid- to late-seventies.

"Hello, Aud, Gerry," Percy greeted his grey-haired children, "are you both coming up with me?"

Audrey put her arms around him, kissed his cheek and looked him in the eyes, "You giving up your objections just like that, Dad?"

"Well, I know I can be an arse when I want to be but it would be churlish to say ‘no’ over this at this late in the day after you both went to so much trouble."

Gerald squeezed the pair of them in a hug, "Well Dad, just you and Audrey and about 15 other paying guests who booked the trip are going up. I’ll see you when you get back to Terra Firma."

"Ha! Typical accountant, Gerry, playing it safe with both feet on the ground, where’s your sense of adventure?"

"Oh, that’ll be me trying to find your lost arse old man, somewhere out in the blue yonder," Gerald laughed. "Look Dad, enjoy this little adventure. Now, the balloon is almost inflated and they are signalling everyone to climb aboard, so smile for the camera!" He held out a mobile phone and took some snaps of the pair with the colourful inflated balloon rising up behind them.

Audrey and Percy made their way over to the basket, with one of the organisers and Gerald helped him to climb the three slotted footholds in the side of the basket until he was able to swing a leg over where another helper aided his safe embarkation. Carole was on hand to pass the stroller which was in turn passed up into the basket.

"You’ll need that when you land," Carole called up, "and you can use the fold out seat when your legs get tired and still be seated high enough so see over the lip of the basket. Good luck and enjoy your trip."

Audrey was also helped into the basket along with one or two of the straggler passengers, leaving a couple of dozen assorted family and friends of the various passengers to wave them off and record the event for posterity on a variety of different devices.

"I’m Wayne," a tall blond man, with his shaven head gleaming in the watery sun, said, "I’m your pilot this morning and we expect the flight to last about four hours. Please do not try to climb out of the basket, we have a 100% safety record and we want to keep it that way. Although we are outdoors, it is impossible to keep to safe social distances, so would you all please keep your masks on for the duration. According to the application forms there is no-one on board with a medical condition allowing them respite, so if you do remove it you will be asked to replace it. The wind is light on the ground but when we get higher, there will be less resistance from the ground level obstructions, so the wind will be stronger. We have to go the way the wind takes us but that is all part of the adventure. With today’s wind I expect we’ll travel between 20 and 25 miles. From this hill, we’ll rise rapidly over the trees and across a river valley, over the village of Winstone Norton, see the church and the ruins of an abbey, then over Munday Woods and the West Carlton hamlet. There’s plenty of interest to see and I’ll point them out to you as we get near. We are in contact by mobile phones and location apps with the team in the Land-Rover and trailer, so they’ll be monitoring where we land and pick you up and ferry you to the nearest pick-up point where your families will be waiting, then we are booked in for lunch at the Red Lion in Solborough, where we’ll give you your souvenir certificates and you can purchase memory sticks with video and stills of this morning’s outing. So, enjoy your trip with Dale Adventure Ballooning and tell your friends that you had the time of your lives. Give us about three minutes to get really warmed up and we’ll start going up."

In no time at all, there was activity on the ground, removing whatever tethers kept the basket still while the balloon, with the roar of the flames at the opening making it seem like it was itching to fly. With a gentle jerk or two, the basket twitched and shuddered. The roar of the flame made it hard for Percy to hear anything else as Audrey waved downwards and Percy’s friends waved back up at them. Percy waved and then he could feel them taking off and the figures on the ground grew smaller and smaller though they were still waving frantically.

Percy glanced around him. Audrey was still smiling down at the field but when she looked up she looked pensive. Percy squeezed her hand, "You all right, sweetheart?"

"Yes, Dad, I’m fine, what about you?"

"Don’t worry about me, love, last time I was in a balloon we didn’t have anyone telling us not to jump out, we were actually threatened with the promise of a horrible existence if we didn’t bloody well jump out of the basket!" Percy replied. "This is a walk in the park by comparison. Let’s enjoy it together shall we?"

And Percy did enjoy the trip. They silently sailed over the trees at the end of the field, the air was soon clear of mist as the late summer sunshine burned off the mist and they had some lovely views of the green river valley below. As the land rose on the other side and the balloon sank a little, occasional squirts of hot air kept the balloon bouncing across the sky like one of those majestic galleons of old. Maybe they were at the whim and mercy of the wind, but it was a peaceful passage across the landscape that they could observe in relative silence and some awe.

"Thank you Audrey, I know I have been complaining long and loud ever since you organised this little adventure but I have loved every single minute of it … and your Mum, God bless her, might have screamed blue murder even louder than me, but I like to think that she also would’ve loved to be here."

There was a little tear in Audrey’s eye, "Yes, Dad, I’m sure I’ve felt that she’s here somewhere watching us."

"I know, I feel her too. Thank you, sweetheart."

Just then the brief jet of flame helped lift them over the trees at the start of the landing.

"Yes, Dad. I’m glad you enjoyed it," Audrey said with tears in her eyes, "it’s been a blast!"