The Man With His Head in the Clouds

by Richard O. Smith

  Ryan runs past us. There is a massive smear of wedding cake across his face, and he is busily combing currents from his hair. “Sasha!” bellows a military-type man, who is attending the wedding in an army uniform. What is it about military people that make them want to attend weddings in their work clothes? Painters and decorators don’t get married in their overalls.

  “Sasha!” hollers the military guy. “Yes?” Sasha answers calmly and matter-of-factly, as if she’s been asked to confirm if she prefers milk or lemon in her tea. Her father’s mood is the polar opposite and yet Sasha continues to check her phone. “YOU KNOW THIS BEHAVIOUR HAS TO STOP - AND YOU ALSO KNOW, DON’T YOU, THAT YOUR BROTHER’S SUIT IS HIRED?” “Yes,” she replies again, as insouciantly as if confirming she will also take sugar with that tea.

  “PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE. YOU’RE LEAVING!” the uniformed man bellows like a Sergeant Major. Which, it is quite possible, may be his actual day job.

  Ryan is standing beside his father, enjoying this opportunity to see his sister about to be court-martialed. I note for the first time that wedding cake icing has been scrawled into both the back and front of his expensive looking, and recently revealed as hired, jacket.

  Sasha gives a “nothing to do with me” look to both of them that fails to win over any neutrals.

  Their army officer, who may well be called Corporal Punishment since this looks distinctly likely, glances at the table where his two delinquent offspring had been sitting either side of me. “HAVE YOU BEEN DRINKING RED WINE AGAIN? YOU KNOW YOU’RE NEVER ALLOWED WINE!” - another addition to Sasha’s charge sheet. “That man gave it to me.” I shake my head. “He’s frightened of stairs!” I adopt a she-just-says-silly-random-things expression followed by a ‘kids, eh?’ skywards roll of the eyes. This last remark backfires, as the likelihood of an adult male being scared of stairs is so unlikely that it renders Sasha’s previous fact equally discreditable - the one about a responsible adult giving her wine. As if. Talk about unlikely.

  Ryan and Sasha are frog marched out of the reception, and are presumably looking at a long spell in the cooler. Great. The two people seated either side of me may have only been kids, but even they vandalised their afternoon to get out of talking to me. This leaves me to endure coffee course on my own, with wedding cake and champagne. I say champagne, but closer inspection would almost certainly reveal “sparkling wine flavoured blended product of Moldova”. I don’t begrudge them that - money is tight. Not that it’s easy to get the attention of the coffee and champagne waiters when you’re annexed on the children’s table.

  A tall elegant woman in her very early fifties appears, attired in a shapely blue dress and large Royal Ascot-type hat with a brim so large it’s unlikely she could fit into any conventionally sized bathroom. It is so over the top it resembles one of the eighteenth-century balloon hats that Sadler would recognise. She has clearly been a head-swivelling beauty in her time, but the multiple stress fractures produced by parenting and married life relentlessly lapping against her inner sea wall of tolerance, are beginning to show. Her resistance is visibly beginning to crumble into the sea.

  Her spirit is being replaced by another sort of spirit - almost certainly gin. “What is it this time? You promised you’d both behave today!” she imparts to the two arrested children being marched past her. Significantly, neither Ryan nor Sasha turn their heads to acknowledge her, nor their father. Red wine stains are all over the front of Ryan’s shirt, noticeable as soon as he unbuttons his jacket. This war must have escalated. Sasha also has red wine on the back of her lemon-coloured dress, and mint sauce in her hair. This is quite an achievement, not least because the main course was fish. Did she bring her own mint sauce in case the food fight arms race escalated?

  The parents are making the decision to remove them before the food war escalates even further, sensibly before the nuclear option arrives: aerodynamically perfect profiteroles with a gooey sticky chocolate sauce. Logic decrees if they’re out of the room when the later teatime buffet is unveiled, then that constitutes disarmament.

  Then the librarian lady Emily approaches me. “Why didn’t you say you were frightened of stairs? I’d have understood. I thought you didn’t want to talk to me because I was boring.” She has been drinking. A lot.

  Having launched her missive missile, she turns away and is gone, leaving my floundering response mostly unheard: “I’m not... OK maybe a bit... I do want to talk to you... really...” She’s now quite some distance from me, so I shout sufficiently loudly for most people to turn around and look at me: “...I do.”

  My life officially sucks. Two hours later, I see Massive Hat Lady again. I discover she is Sasha’s mother and that her best friend Emily is upset because another guest was rude to her. She is extremely drunk. She’s dancing, or rather being held upright, by another man who’s come to a wedding in his work clothes - another soldier. No longer bothering to keep up the pretence of sipping daintily from a flute, Sasha’s mother is sucking on the end of a Cava bottle. “Do you have children?” she asks me. “Alas no, I fear I’ve left it...” “You f* * *lucky bastard,” she confirms. She then hugs me. I get smothered in curly chestnut hair and assaulted with lots of sharp hat brim, but it’s nice to hold and literally feel the warmth of another human being for a few seconds after you’ve spent all day on your own being ostracised by a wedding group who mainly think you are a gate-crasher.

  After several seconds, however, the hug becomes progressively awkward, and I realise that since she’s showing no inclination of letting go - and using me in the same way that a clematis would use a fence. I attempt rebalancing a drunken woman upright. This turns out to be notoriously difficult. Replacing her in a position where she won’t topple over is akin to balancing a coin on its edge. Having succeeded, I tip-toe gently away from the table in case I cause a vibration that sends her tumbling towards the floor with a loud crash. At no time does she let go of the Cava bottle. “Perhaps if you let go of the bottle, you could steady yourself with the other hand - no, you’re not going to do that, are you?”

  Then her husband arrives, wrestles the bottle from her - although not without a spirited defence and greater resistance than he has probably ever seen in the day job - and she is carried off like a drunken real-life enactment of that scene from An Officer and A Gentleman. Disappointingly no one hums “Up Where You Belong”.

  After eight hours at the wedding I speak to the bride for the first time. “Sorry we haven’t spoken before. And sorry you were on the kids’ table. Suppose that must have been really boring for you.” “Er... yes. Nothing much happened.”

  ***

  Eventually I leave the wedding guests and retire to bed, after first leaving my stained shirt - caught in the chocolate cross-fire - to soak overnight in a hotel bathroom sink.

  I am in Manchester to see Sadler’s plaque, located where appreciative Mancunians have named a street after his achievements - more than his hometown of Oxford ever did. It’s late and I am lying in bed in an aggressively expensive hotel room, imploring sleep to arrive as I have a busy schedule planned for tomorrow. Instead of successfully falling asleep, I am a 49-year-old man currently having an argument with his penis.

  “That brunette was nice at the table opposite just now,” my penis feels compelled to point out.

  “Yeah, I thought you’d notice her,” I reply. To my penis. Even though I want to go to sleep, our conversation continues.

  My Penis: You should have asked for her phone number.

  Me: What? No, of course I shouldn’t.

  MP: She was up for it.

  Me: She was not up for it. You always conclude that. She was friendly and pleasant - and it was nice to have a chat with her. Just because a woman is friendly doesn’t mean her congeniality should be rewarded by being hit on. Sometimes you repel me.

  MP: Well, you should have at least asked her if she wanted to come u
p for a drink.

  Me: No, that would have appeared creepy. Now go to sleep.

  MP: Can we watch the porn channel.

  Me: No! You know we never watch the porn channels. Why? So we can depress ourselves by watching footage of people having a far better time in a hotel room than we’re currently having.

  MP: Typical - you never spend any money on me.

  Me: What’s that supposed to mean?

  MP: Other guys spend money on the porn channel.

  Me: Stop it. Why would you want to see some poor girls with false breasts and dead eyes regretting not persevering with their GCSEs?

  MP: Who said anything about going to Tesco?

  Me: I’ll do the jokes. You’re always such a dick.

  MP: Good joke.

  Me: Thanks

  MP: Are you still awake?

  Me: Thanks to you, yes.

  MP: Can we think about my favourite weather girl now?

  Me: No.

  [I have a request that will ensure I have a fulfilled life if granted. If this scene is ever dramatised for Radio 4’s Book of the Week, please could the role of my penis be voiced by Charlotte Green. Thank you. Believe me, it’s only a small part.]

  In the morning I wonder why I am increasingly experiencing a growing libido, and harbouring a secret unexpressed longing to mate with most of the women I see around Manchester later that day. The answer turns out to be unsurprisingly Freudian. Just when you think Freud has been discredited to make way on the couch for more empirically proven psychological theorists, he still proves capable of relating some insights that remain undissolved by the incoming tide of progress.

  I’m not weird - it’s just that I’m convinced that my death is imminent and have an instinctive desire to pass on my genes. OK, maybe mildly weird. Thus every woman I see has heightened, exaggerated attractiveness to render her a potential mate ripe for insemination. See, there’s definitely nothing weird about me.

  My body is starting to prepare itself for what it believes is inevitable death. It is starting to close down. The urge to pass on genes is paramount in this process. Military personnel were supposedly banned from keeping journals in both world wars, yet of course many logged their innermost private thoughts. This rising urge to pass on oneself, preserve an aspect of your being, some tangible material part of you inhabiting the future, burns with a primal power when your body truly believes it is under mortal threat. My body is going into premature mourning mode, closing itself down, grieving for its nearby loss - its unavoidable demise. Like a man in a war.

  It recognises its last chance to pass on a bit of me into the world before I disappear for ever. A physical symptom manifested in a human form.

  My brain lies to my body that I am in such abject fear when I am not. This is the power of a phobia. I recall the advice of Steve to focus away from negative anxiety, and the tip from my Australian magazine blind date to stop thinking thoughts that offer me no help whatsoever. It does help. And it reinforces my inclination to do this balloon flight, no matter how terrified I remain of heights. I am not going to be an avoider for the rest of my life, though the rest of life, my brain keeps wanting to point out, may not be that long if I go through with the flight.

  ***

  I travel into Manchester as I am keen to see a park, a street and a plaque, all with Sadler associations, and conveniently next to each other. Escaping the swarm of rush hour Manchester traffic, which appears to be present even on a Sunday, I start to head toward the newest part of the city to find the street named in Sadler’s honour: fittingly called Balloon Street. I anticipate the wealth of Sadler memorials to be discovered here, but unfortunately, the Haworth Gardens where Sadler took off, both in 1785 and 25 years later, has no visible signs of him. No statue stands in his honour. The mansion house that he flew from was finally knocked down in 1980.

  Fortunately a proven treatment for anxieties is exercise, and I obtain much more exercise than I expected walking around central Manchester and its aggressively urban retail developments. Significant regeneration of Manchester’s commercial centre has occurred in the last two decades, mainly thanks to investment projects and the IRA.

  Sadler’s blue plaque is surprisingly difficult to find, as is Balloon Street.

  More walking than I expected is necessary, as Balloon Street appears to have become elusive. Manchester’s authorities seem to have taken the street signs down - do they still think there’s a war on? Ironically, Google makes the experience even more taxing (yeah, mean that one). Google Map offers no returns whatsoever if typing “Balloon Street”.

  Ascending from the recreational gardens adjacent to a large house in the Long Millgate area of the city in 1785, Sadler was honoured by a thoroughfare behind the field being christened Balloon Street soon afterwards. The house then became a pub, and continued dispensing beer as the Manchester Arms for nearly two centuries. Until its eventual demolition in 1980, when it was destroyed with a wrecking ball - a more route one method of forcing reluctant drinkers to leave after last orders than flicking the light switch on and off a few times. Ask locals, as I did, whether the area is associated today with Sadler, and it appears that the Manchester Arms is much better known - and more fondly remembered - than Sadler. Especially by one older Mancunian gentleman who enthusiastically informed me that it was the first pub in Manchester to introduce lunchtime strippers in the 1970s. See, Manchester does have a cultural history!

  Eventually I find what remains of Balloon Street: a street incongruously compiled of faded Victorian buildings alongside the gleaming newness of a shiny modern headquarters for the Cooperative Bank. Stepping over tramlines to get a better view, I find the plaque near Manchester Cathedral on the corner of Corporation Street. Cautiously checking for trams constantly swooping past, I cross the street and get as close as I can. A circular plaque, topped with Manchester’s coat-of-arms, proudly proclaims: “From a garden on this site James Sadler pioneer English aeronaut made the first manned balloon ascent in Manchester 12 May 1785.” Appropriately marking the 200th anniversary of Sadler’s first historical English flight, the plaque was erected by Manchester City Council in 1974. A statue of Robert Owen, the founder of the Cooperative movement, stands guard over it.

  Barry Worthington’s Discovering Manchester: A Walking Guide at least credits Sadler’s noteworthy achievements in the city. The book confirms that the Manchester Arms was indeed the first pub in the city to introduce strippers, before bemoaning the fact that it was demolished to make way for a road that was never built. “We must be mad,” he concludes. This tragic double loss - a pub and lunchtime strippers - is a clearly a difficult bereavement for any true Northern man to accept.

  It is at times a lonely pilgrimage. No one else stops to read the plaque all the time I stand there paying tribute with head bowed, clasping my lowered hands together to subconsciously adopt the body language of a solemn churchgoer.

  Yet viewing this Sadler memorial increases my motivation - adds an extra cylinder to my ambition - to fly like Sadler. Nearly two and a half centuries later, in the most relentlessly modern of contemporary shopping areas, Sadler is still considered worthy of acknowledgement to the occupiers of this most urban temple of modernity.

  ***

  Most historical biographers eventually reach a stage where they crave a meeting with their subject. This is after trawling through endless boxes of library papers, pursuing false leads, panning bowl after bowl of gravel in the occasional hope of spotting a flashing glint of real golden insight. In my case the longing is exacerbated by Sadler’s lack of letter-writing proclivities or perhaps even abilities, for it is possible that he was barely literate.

  Just twenty minutes in a coffee shop with Sadler is what I crave most - ideally at the Lemon House Refreshment Hall.

  Speak quickly, time is precious. These are the questions I want to ask James Sa
dler: why did you do it? Where did you learn so much about engineering, chemistry, invention, design and gases? Why wasn’t collecting the money due to you important in your first years of flying? What did your wife think of your exposure to such risk? Why, when everyone else was getting killed, did you persevere? Why did you stop then return to flying about a 25-year gap? Why did the Royal Navy sack you and leave you bankrupt? How surprised where you that your friends collected money to re-establish your financial and physical wellbeing? Why did you fall out so violently with Oxford University? How mendaciously do you think the University treated you? Can you really barely read or write? What do you think of the quality of the pastries available in Oxford’s High Street today? Why did you include both “Hall” and “House” in the name of your refreshment hall (and house)?

  Unlike most biographers of long departed historical figures, I can actually go and sit next to Sadler, which I do on the eve of my maiden balloon flight. I have earned the right to do this, and we have something in common - tomorrow morning I will join the club he started as the inaugural member: those who have risen above Oxford in a hot air balloon and looked down at the Dreaming Spires below. When I say I sit with him, I genuinely do - and not in any metaphorical sense either. I sit down with the great man James Sadler, pioneering aeronaut and pastry cook of this parish.