It was a dark and stormy night.......

This has been put off for reasons I cannot explain. Today I must commence “The Vanishing Mind,” my interpretation of my descent from a mentally active (some would contend that is not correct) leader of the family group, into what awaits. On reflection and I have been doing a great deal of reflecting recently, it is similar to documenting the inexorable slide of a terminally ill patient into the darkness. 

What a jolly jape! I am full of fizz and up for anything, it’s just the functional acts that are difficult. In my head I am still that young lad undeterred by any problem, striding along into life and the challenges ahead. 

The camera however shows the wear of 69 years, the physical changes but not the internal situation. That is why I feel I must record it; for the family to understand why the irascible old fool became the docile older fool. Also the Medical Mafia may find my insights useful. These days when I visit the wonderful dominatrix called the Doctor, I hand her my latest witterings on a piece of A4. She will read them, then file them. This book, or journal if you prefer, will let her know more intimately what has been happening during recent years and hopefully a while into the future.

Yesterday I blipped about a crew change on the Borgland Dolphin. AussieJasmine, Blipper of the upside down world, asked if I write from journals or memory. Therein lies the incongruity of what is occurring. My only journal is my flying log-book. All these memories are clean, crisp and vibrant. Sitting here I can look at yesterday’s blip, remember handing my camera up into the cockpit once I had taken a few images. There is a place very few people go when a helicopter is turning and burning, it’s under or alongside the tail-boom. It’s extremely dangerous, but when the temperature is way down below 0ºC and it’s snowing, there is a haven of warmth bathed in jet exhaust surrounded by howling machinery and weather. The scent remains with you for life, walking onto an aircraft at an airport you may spot ancient pilots, they are the ones who pause and take in deep lungfuls of that visceral gas, taking them back to a different time in their lives. 

The extra is a “borrowed” image from the internettyweb. I call it the “Autumn of the mind”

No gloom, no pity or sympathy; it’s quite an adventure. Wave as I pass by, extend your central digit if you dare.