I shoot my hand up and hop excitedly from foot to foot, nodding my head, while my new Nikon swings on its neck strap like a giant pendulum.
“You’ll love it” he assures me, as he helps the others into the basket. I grin back at him somewhat dementedly.
“I think love might be too strong a word, Douggie Baby” I think, but he seems so enthusiastic on my behalf, bless him, that I’m not going to tell him I’m so nervous I’ve already had five wee’s in the last half an hour.
Or that I need another one now, meaning the hopping is only partly down to the adrenalin.
He takes my hand and helps me clamber, cross legged, into the wicker container, which feels only slightly sturdier than the Fortnum’s hamper we got last Christmas.
I take my place in the giant cat basket (or gondola, as Doug apparently prefers to call it) and unhook my camera from around my neck. With its nice shiny, new long-distance lens, it’s beginning to feel quite heavy.
I shut my eyes tightly ready for blast off or whatever balloonists like to call it, as he pulls the handle to inflate the envelope to bursting point with hot air.
The feeling of floating gently away from the ground is odd but less frightening than I thought it would be, which is a blessing for my bladder.
I experience a great sense of weightlessness as we soar skywards.
“Did you see Stephen Fry in America, on TV?" someone asks. “He got to pick a leaf from the treetops when he was in a balloon!”
An admiring gasp goes round and Doug chuckles. “Well, if any of you guys want to…” he starts.
I need no second bidding. I jump up from the crouched position I had adopted in case of emergency on take-off, open my up-until-now tight shut eyes (well, one of them anyway) and grasping the basket edge, lean out as far as I dare.
I peruse the seasonal beauty of the red, orange and gold foliage laid out before me.
With fingertips outstretched and on my tippymost toes, I can ju-ssss-t rea-cchh one. There!
I haul myself back in beaming, my golden prize in hand. Everyone stares at me in amazement. I swear I hear a snigger from someone at the back.
“Er, I really meant once we had taken off” Doug says, with a smirk.
“What?” I’m astonished. Surely as the bloody pilot he should know when we are airborne. “Didn’t we just take off?” I peer over the side to prove to myself that I’m right.
And so am somewhat surprised to see I’m not. And that he does appear to have a point.
We are floating a few feet off the ground, above a low hawthorn hedge.
“Afraid not” he says, to another round of giggling from someone who is looking for a black eye.
“We are still tethered while I do my final checks.”
“But I’ll make sure you are first to have a go at pulling a leaf off a tree as soon as we are high enough and in position”.
“Don’t bother” I retort, a little petulantly it has to be said.
“I’m actually perfectly happy with the one I have already picked” I add, patting my pocket for added emphasis. The pocket where I have put my beautiful autumnal golden leaf (or discarded Twix wrapper as it later turns out to be) for safe keeping.
I settle back down in my corner, glare at the idiots I have been forced to share this experience with, and shut my eyes, resigned to my fate.
The handful of tranquillisers I’d taken after wee three and before wee four kicked in around now and I must have fallen asleep, because by the time I open them again we are well and truly flying.
High above the land, with only the occasional Victorian farmstead and meandering river breaking up the vista.
The golden ploughed fields look like silk below and I’m bewitched by the shadows from the clouds scudding across the rolling hills.
I grab my camera, remembering to remove the lens cap this time and start taking what will no doubt be Country File’s calendar shots of the year.
My fellow passengers are all crowded round Doug as he shows off the gizmos he uses to keep this thing in the air.
They are all quite obviously a bunch of total balloon geeks, as they are listening in rapture, hanging off his every word.
“Then there was the time we got caught in a strong cross wind and were being blown towards live power cables…” he’s saying. They gasp.
I laugh pityingly to myself and turn back to my uninterrupted view of the world.
The basket sways and jolts a little. Probably one of those oh-so-terrifying cross winds, the old gas bag is going on about.
I take the opportunity to lift my camera higher, unencumbered by the strap, or the backs of people’s heads.
The basket jolts again, and I steady myself with one hand.
Oops.
I glance round at the group but they are still mesmerised by our pilot.
For the second time today I peer over the side.
Only this time, it’s in the hope I will see my new camera, caught on the wicker, dangling by the nylon neck strap I should have been wearing.
I don’t see anything but air, and below me, a field of cows, grazing contentedly in the warm sun.
I nonchalantly edge towards the back of the group, pretending to be paying attention, whistling as I go. I even manage a little casual saunter, although this is more tricky to achieve given the dimensions of the woven capsule we are in.
“Tell me Doug, old boy” I begin jovially, “What would happen if something went over the side?”
“Nothing would” he replies, a bit too smugly I feel, under the circumstances.
“Everyone on board has been given the safety briefing and must keep their hands and personal belongings inside the basket at all times”.
“But say something, quite by accident you understand, just happened to fall over the edge?” I continue.
“Something, for sake of argument, I don’t know…. um, like a camera?” I point accusingly at the person who was cruising for a bruising earlier and who is clutching a pathetic little snappy snaps digital affair.
And something which being much smaller, older and far less impressive than mine, must also weigh considerably less too.
“Well, if that went over” he indicates with a nod of his head towards the camera and then the side of the gondola. Black Eyes Man shrinks visibly and clutches the ridiculously small silver box to his chest. I note he has threaded his wrist through its carrying strap.
‘It could kill someone!” Doug announces dramatically. The occupants of the giant wicker basket look shocked. “If it reached terminal velocity, it would be lights out for anyone it hit."
“But don’t worry, folks” he continues brightly. “It’s never happened to me yet. Everyone still got their cameras on them, haven’t they?”
“Oh yes, Doug” we chorus (some of us more truthfully than others).
We all take it in turns to look relieved, while some wave their cameras in the air to prove it.
I pat my camera bag, making comedy huffy puffy noises and wiggling my eyebrows, to suggest it is far too heavy to wave, now my camera and assorted lenses have been safely packed back into it.
“Great, now has everyone got all the shots they want?” he asks the assembled throng, who are all now giggling at the shared joke - I mean, can you imagine being stupid enough to drop your camera overboard?
The general consensus is that yes, thank you, we have, although I privately think I might have got one shot too many.
“Good job” he says. “I’ll start to take her down now, as it looks like it might rain soon”.
We gaze upwards at the clear blue, cloudless sky.
“That’s clever’, says the bloke who I’m still itching to slap a tiny bit. “How do you know that?”
“Well’ starts Doug, stretching and leaning back, enjoying this moment where he shows off his knowledge of the countryside. “It’s an old wives tale, but there’s some truth in it.”
“If you look down there, you’ll see one the cows in that field has just laid down. The rest will follow, you mark my words. And that’s a sure sign it’s going to rain.”
We all lean over the side to get a better view of the herd.
He’s right, one of the cows is lying down.
But with all four of its feet in the air.
And a throbbing, pink Nikon shaped lump on the top of its head…
N.B. Pearly Jones would just like to state that no cows, real or imaginary, were harmed during the writing of this blog.
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