Moonlight, the light touch of hands, a gentle breeze….All the ingredients for romance….or so you might think.
It was in the early hours of the morning. We were standing in line, waiting to board a helicopter bound for Camp Bastion. Leanne, our media operations escort was in front of me, Cath was bringing up the rear.
In came the Merlin and as the ground crewman wafted his fluorescent stick, we dutifully marched in our tidy little queue up to the rear ramp and made our way to the deafening sound of the rotor blades into the belly of the aircraft.
During the hours of darkness, no doubt in order to avoid passengers inadvertently looking for a seat in the cockpit or doing a face-plant into the pile of mail bags, the RAF do allow some light inside the helicopter. Blink and you’ll miss it though; it’s switched on for just long enough to put your bags down on one side, turn round and register which empty canvass seat you need to make your way to. At that point you are once again plunged into darkness.
Leanne, Cath and I had got to this point in the proceedings. Bags down, seat clocked then scramble over to them before the lights went out.
Following a rather undignified bump of bottoms, we settled into our seats then started ferreting about for the seatbelts. And it would be the aircraft with the most complicated Formula 1- type harnesses wouldn’t it? Not for us the straightforward lap belt. Oh no.
I located three of the four straps but couldn’t for the life of me find the fourth. At this point in the moonlight I spotted a very self-satisfied-looking Cath putting the last tightening touches to her straps and casually gazing out of the aircraft at the world below.
Leanne and I meanwhile fumbled away and finally found not our seat belts, but each other. We are both happily married to our respective husbands so the moment passed without so much as a sigh. After an awkward moment of holding hands, we untangled the mess of straps and at about 2000 feet, eventually got ourselves secured in place.
Thankfully, only the moon was witness to our embarrassing moment of not-very-warry-helicopter-passenger-ineptitude, so we both adopted the nonchalant frequent flyer’s distant gaze and settled in for the ride back to Bastion.