Final sunrise of 2014 from my bedroom window. I never tire of watching this from my bed. Hope tomorrow's is equally uplifting!

Flights, flying, spacemen

 I dream about these things. Often my first inkling that I am stressed, a dream pops up where I am sitting in my car at traffic lights and a passenger jet flies over my car, so close I can see the landing gear. The whoosh of terror wakes me as the aircraft flies into the town ahead of me. Another is an alien craft landing on flat ground, a mile or so away. The sky fills with odd shapes, gatherings of more and more aircraft, and no one around me thinks there is anything strange. I am shouting - we need to leave! And people just potter around, giving me sideways glances. The mad woman. 

Last nights was a strange one. The red arrows formation team are performing a split palm manouvre, the smoke is thick and greasy and I am shouting "This isn't the arrows! This is not them!" People again look askance at me, when two of the arrows fly into each other, causing the entire display to explode in an almighty bang... but the pilots all eject, and land in 9 neat parcels next to me. I watch the parcels and they (in an arrow formation of course) all pop up at once. They are Jack in the Box men in uniform, all with mannequin faces, identical plastic features. I wake, shaken. The first time that the Red Arrows have featured in a stressplane dream.
I love the Arrows. I live in the city, where, by luck, they are based. Often (unless they are in Cyprus training, or performing a display somewhere in the world) I get to spot them, flying over the city in formation, drawing giant hearts in the sky. Every time I see them, my heart soars with them.

I don't really know exactly why they move me so much. Perhaps it was when, as a child, my father (ex RAF) used to take me to the beach to watch their fly past over the sea. He'd put me on his shoulders, and help whip up my excitement by pretending he could hear their engines as they neared. Of course, he knew what time exactly they would appear over the point where sea met sky. By the time they appeared as a tiny triangle of dots on the horizon, my delighted expectation was a palpable huge bubble of excitement. They neared, and my four year old self was so sure they would scrape the top of my head as I perched on Dad's shoulders, that I screamed and ducked, as they whooshed over at 400mph, trailing the vivid colours of the British flag above me.

So, maybe that's where part of it comes from? There was a recent BBC documentary which showed them training, two new members. As my imagination was lit and my disbelief was suspended, I got to sit in the cockpit with them and listen to the language they use when forming patterns in the sky.
Awww, I love them. 

Now, how to deal with the stress?


Inside the Bubble