“Houston, the eagle is about to fuck up,” I said as the desert rushed up frighteningly fast. Like Neil Armstrong I decided to take personal control during the last seconds, unlike Mr Armstrong  I hadn’t really a clue what I was doing but I’d found a lever marked ‘flaps’ so I yanked it down, what the hell ? .. there was a creaking noise and to this day I don’t know if it did anything.…

Lots of dials, even some holes where dials had been (I resisted the temptation to shout out a question about Gollum's parentage) which I examined hastily as the nose dipped more.  Let's see, oil pressure and manifold pressure both zero, tell me something I don't know, the engine has gone to some crankshaft heaven on the other side of the sky, I doubt even God could get that thing going.…

The nose dipped and a great swath of stony desert began to fill the windscreen.  Have you ever had  one of those dreams where you are trying to do something, and obstacles keep getting in your way ?   However bad your dream, it doesn’t compare with trying to get from the back seat to the front seat of a small plane with a bloody great rifle standing in for the Berlin wall complete with vopos and barb…

The silence after the shrieking engine was deafening, if that makes any sense, but it gradually gave way to the strange whine of air moving over the wings.  The plane still flew on steadily, like one of those cartoon characters that runs off the edge of a cliff and stops for a few seconds before it realises its mistake and then gravity kicks in, gravity doesn't take prisoners.…

The plane was a four seater Cessna, well ... it had been once, right now it was a bundle of cable ties, duck tape and worm-wheel clips, all held together by a bag of hopeful nails. Not that the pilot was much better, he was a Gollum lookalike who was missing six fingers and was so old I think he learned to fly on Zeppelins.

He was…