Carol’s Column

Up, up and away in a plastic bubble

MY STOMACH turned inside-out as the helicopter flew over the Brixton cemetery. I looked through the glass separating me from a 100-metre drop and thought to myself that if I was going to fall, it was as good as any a place to drop into.

You might wonder what I was doing zooming high above Johannesburg in a plastic bubble in almost sub-zero temperatures at the crack of dawn.

Easy.

The evening before, I'd attended the swish CNA Literary Awards, a very formal, posh affair.

There I sat, among the Chris Levines, Gretas and Rosenwerths in my Garlick's sale R9,99 purple off-the-shoulder with the black rose on the hip, next to a dashing young man in a frilly pink evening shirt and embroidered dinner suit.

“That's the 'Eye in the Sky', Paul Beresford the 702 broadcaster, the one that does the traffic reports,” murmured the guest on my right.

One glass of wine led to another and before long Paul Beresford was talking helicopters.

After one glass of wine, I get happy, after two I become distinctly enthusiastic. So I enthused to the delicious Beresford who, by now, was looking a little glazed about the nostrils.

He got the message.

“You wanna come up tomorrow?” he asked in a moment of recklessness. “Be at Rand Airport at 6.30am and it's up, up and away.”

So I was. It was a knee-cap, toe-freezing, nose-chilling morning.

Admittedly, I'd been a little taken aback when I'd arrived to find the 702 team nowhere in sight.

Instead, I was greeted by Radio Highveld's Eric.

“How's your bladder?” he asked by way of greeting.

“My bladder? It's great,” I answered, a little confused, “and my spleen, liver and kidneys are fine, too.”

“Have you a large or small bladder?” he persisted.

Goodness, I thought to myself. My luck that I have to meet a madman at 6.20am. I should have stayed in bed wrapped in my synthetic duck duvet.

Eric was still talking.

“You'll be up there for two hours, so if you have a small bladder, I suggest you pay a visit to the loo,” he suggested.

Light dawned. So did Paul Beresford, who arrived looking like an abominable snowman in a screaming yellow quilted anorak.

“Do you want to use the toilet?” he asked, “because nothing is worse than an emergency stop on a mine dump while you have to do your thing in a howling wind. It's cold on the derriere.”

I got the message.

And then we were up, up and away and off to Roodepoort to fetch Corrie Swanepoel, the traffic officer who would co-ordinate with his colleagues on the ground.

Strapped and earphoned in, I watched the Big Naartjie below me.

Over golden mine dumps, tin roofs, high-rise buildings, shanties, mansions, swimming pools, junk yards and parks we soared. Oh, what a wonderful feeling. It beats making school sandwiches any day.

Johannesburg glittered in the early morning sun.

“It's a nippy morning,” said the Eye in the Sky to his radio listeners below. “It's 3°C up here in the chopper.”

“Are you okay?” he asked me. I couldn't answer. My lips were frozen solid with cold, not fright.

“Great, great, I'm super,” I whispered eventually. Nobody heard, they were too busy checking on the matchbox cars below.

“If you want to be sick, there's a plastic bag beside you,” said John-the-pilot solicitously.

“Don't use your handbag, it makes a bit of a mess,” added the Eye in the Sky.

I learnt many things as we swooped over Johannesburg and its surrounding suburbs.

It's pink in the early morning, cars look like rainbow dots and the Johannesburg hospital is as much of an aesthetic abortion from above as it is from below.

Harry Oppenheimer's house is not small, the city's swimming pools are a multitude of blue pimples ... and choppers are not pressurised.

The wind whistled through our plastic bubble, making the Antarctic seem a tropical pleasure resort by comparison.

It was then that I learned the cunning Beresford wears thermal underwear and has electric socks to keep his toes warm.

Unlike planes, helicopters cannot do a total flip. If the propeller is at the bottom of the chopper, it's goodbye synthetic duck-down duvet and all the other little things that make life worth living.

Choppers are noisy, but above the sound of the propeller there was an even greater roar. My stomach rumbling.

“Don't eat or drink before we fly,” the Eye in the Sky had said, “then you won't feel sick.”

How I longed for some substantial padkos and a nice flask of hot coffee laced with a bottle of brandy to warm the cockles of my feet.

For two hours we surveyed the traffic, the Eye in the Sky reporting back to the studio regularly.

And then, quick as a flash, we were down.

No matter that my hair had turned white from fright at the thought of bumping the other chopper in the sky, that my bladder was stretched to its limit and that, like Lot's wife, I was frozen solid, I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Only this morning I discovered there's a portable toilet that is so small it can fit into a handbag. Every small-bladdered mother should have one. Why, with such a device one could go anywhere.

Choppermania is catching. Hey, watchit Beresford, here I come!

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