Anything Goes (6 page)

‘Thought you’d never ask,’ I croaked.

The rudder pedals were at my feet and they were surprisingly fluid. I taxied the plane for a hundred yards or so
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until we got the go-ahead to fly. When we lifted off the ground, Connie’s plane was directly next to us and we rose into the clouds side by side, a duet of the finest kind.

At 15,000 feet, the Hawk was in cruise mode, and the risk of an aborted flight was now minimal. I unclenched my butt cheeks, and turned my head to ease my knotted neck muscles.

‘John, are you interested in a civilian flight or a pilot’s flight?’

I hesitated for only a beat. ‘A pilot’s flight.’

With my permission, the pilot banked the plane and we flew under and then over Connie’s Hawk, eventually flipping upside
down so that I was looking down on Connie. We could almost touch each other through our respective cockpits. The planes then swooped, banked, dived, flipped and soared, as they replicated fighter manoeuvres above the British countryside.

Our flight path took us along the southern coast of England to Cornwall, and then over the city of London. I was in awe of Gary’s skill and the majesty of what I was seeing beneath us. A number of times, he pulled the plane completely vertical, and with the pressure from the G-forces pinning me hard against the seat, I could see the curve of the Earth. Fighter jets aren’t allowed to fly over villages of a certain population in the UK, and so every time one loomed on the horizon, the pilot zigzagged around them, as if we were the Millennium Falcon cutting into the Death Star and I was Han Solo.

Of course, puking was inevitable. The aerial acrobatics with their resulting G-forces finally did me in. I could no longer control my rising nausea. Like most virgin flyers, I had actually paid attention to the safety instructions and with very little fumbling I managed to get my oxygen mask off in time, vomiting neatly into one of the sick bags supplied in my flight-suit pocket.

‘Are you okay, John?’

‘I’m brilliant,’ I replied, and I really meant it.

Meanwhile, miles away, two other fighter jets had landed at Fairford to whet the press’s appetite, followed quickly by a huge pug-nosed carrier. Finally, everyone looked up into the clear blue June sky and waited for the stars to appear.

When Connie and I finally streaked across the sky, we were once again flying in unison. Our Hawks banked at about 400 miles an hour, their wing tips almost touching, and then they crossed the sky from separate directions, touching down smoothly and safely.

I eventually emerged from the Hawk as if I’d been doing this all my life, which in Captain Jack’s world, of course, I had. In my
world, though, this was the experience of a lifetime. In fact, I was so high from the adrenalin rush and so in awe of the Hawk itself, I was almost speechless.
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Despite my best intentions, I did finally crash that day. After all the interviews were completed, I changed back into my civvies, climbed into my car, and collapsed. I was physically a wreck. My equilibrium was shot. I couldn’t hold my head up without tidal waves of nausea washing over me. My complexion turned Daz white with a hint of Palmolive green under my eyes, and because of the G-forces my chest and legs felt as if they’d been pummelled with a baseball bat. To make matters worse, the drive back to Cardiff was through narrow, winding country roads, where trying to keep perfectly still was like asking George Michael to stay out of public toilets. Not going to happen.

Yet if I was ever asked to do this again – in fact, if I was ever asked to repeat any of my experiences – I’d have to say, fuck it, bring them on. I’ve no regrets.

This is what it means to be alive.

‘Journey of a Lifetime’

M
y favourite novel when I was a young teenager was S. E. Hinton’s
The Outsiders.
The novel opens with the narrator, Ponyboy Curtis, saying, ‘When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.’ When I was Ponyboy’s age, I actually had three things on my mind: a love for all things
Star Wars,
becoming an American boy, and an infatuation with the television show
Dallas.

In a curious way, all three were related, each one a result of my dad choosing to accept an executive position in America with Caterpillar Inc. in 1976, when I was nine. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I can see now that each one of those youthful passions represented a piece of the man I was to become.

I was ten years old when
Star Wars
was first released. As it was for many boys of my generation, the film became one of a handful of defining cultural moments. I collected
Star Wars
figures,
Star Wars
ships,
Star Wars
books, and other bits and bobs from the
Star Wars
universe. I had
Star Wars
curtains in my bedroom,
Star Wars
sheets on my bed, every
Star Wars
action figure I could get my hands on and, of course, my very own lightsaber. When I wasn’t playing with
my figures, I stored them in their assigned compartments in the official Darth Vader Carry Case, which I kept on a shelf next to my model X-Wing Starfighter and my full size Tauntaun. I could, and still can, quote the exact classic line Boba Fett says in
Episode V –
’He’s no good to me dead’ – tell the difference between a Sandcrawler and a Landspeeder, and deduce that the acronym TIE, as in TIE Fighter, stands for Twin Ion Engine. And like any true
Star Wars
geek, I got tongue-tied when I had the chance to talk to the Force himself, George Lucas.

The opportunity arose when I was performing at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003. I was there as part of the promotion and premiere of the biopic of Cole Porter’s life,
De-Lovely,
which starred Ashley Judd and Kevin Kline. I had a few lines in the movie, but along with a number of other musical performers, including Robbie Williams, Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, Natalie Cole and Elvis Costello, I also performed a Porter song in the biopic, in my case it was ‘Night and Day’. At one of the many Cannes parties, I found myself literally speechless as I stood with a glass of champagne in one hand and my jaw in the other, trying to sound like a grown-up having a conversation with George.
¹    
Now to be playing a character like Captain Jack, who’s part of a similarly iconic cultural phenomenon is, to say the very least, a bit mind-blowing to contemplate sometimes.

My family’s permanent move to America in 1976 was not our first time in the US. When I was three, in 1970–1, Caterpillar, where my dad now worked, transferred him to Aurora, Illinois, for a year’s stint. My dad kept a journal of this entire year, and many of the experiences we had as a family were detailed in the pages of that book (which came in handy when I came to write this one). Back then, my parents
embraced the trip as an educational experience, a sort of ‘Barrowmans’ Excellent Adventure’, but with much better diction, dude. Whenever my dad managed to get an extra Friday or a Monday off work, we’d pile into the leased station wagon, a wide berth woody,
²    
and we’d take advantage of the long weekend to explore the country. On each trip, my parents extended the range in different directions, covering territory that many of our neighbours in Aurora had never ventured into – which I think may be typical if you live in a city with a tourist economy. How many of my colleagues in Cardiff have actually been inside Cardiff Castle? Gareth?
³    
No? It’s a date, then.

One weekend during Barrowmans’ Excellent Adventure, we found ourselves in the Motor City: Detroit, Michigan. We were all so busy gawking out the wagon’s windows at the tall buildings, like refugees from Planet Lame, that my dad didn’t realize he was driving at 5 miles an hour and holding up the traffic until he spotted flashing lights in his rear-view mirror. A cop pulled us over. Now when I say cop, I mean cop. This was not a police officer, but a true-blue, American city cop in all his lovely leather motorcycle glory. My dad weaved over to the kerb amidst a cacophony of car horns and raised middle fingers from drivers accelerating around us. Carole, Andrew and I pressed our faces against the back window, amazed and slightly terrified.

The cop pulled up directly to our rear. He touched his fingers to his forehead in a mock salute, grinned, and slowly unzipped his leather bomber jacket, exposing his black T-shirt straining tight against the line of his abs, the weight of his gun belt sitting on the edge of his muscular hips. He carefully removed his helmet.
⁴    

‘John, we’re going to get a ticket,’ said my mum to my dad.

‘No, we won’t. Let me talk,’ said my dad to my mum.

The cop stepped up to the driver’s window.

‘You’re driving a bit erratically, sir. Is everything okay?’

‘Officer, I’m sorry if we were holding up traffic, but I think we’re lost,’ replied my dad, in a Glaswegian accent so broad Billy Connolly would’ve barely understood.

‘Well, goddamn, sir! You really are lost.’

We did not get a ticket. What we got instead was our own personal motorcycle escort guiding us back to the motorway.

Then there was the weekend my dad borrowed a friend’s RV pop-up trailer, the kind of camper that’s quintessentially American, so we could take a trip deeper into the Midwest, in particular to Springfield, Illinois, the state’s capital. The camper was one of those toppers that hooked over the cab of a truck, where my parents sat, and it was fitted with a double bed over the cab, where Carole, Andrew and I stretched out in glorious but dangerous accommodations. Seriously, think what would have happened if every family in the 1950s through the 1970s had to stop suddenly. No seat belts, no air bags, no children’s faces …

When the trip to Springfield began, Carole, Andrew and I felt like we were part of
The Brady Bunch,
one of my favourite television shows then and later, but by the end of the expedition, we were lucky not to have become a bunch of roasted chestnuts.

The three of us spent the journey sprawled above the cab laughing, yelling and taking potshots at each other. My mum banged on the roof to settle us down when the squabbling got out of hand, or when I’d start screaming that Andrew was threatening to roll me off the bed and on to the Formica table below.

And then we all noticed the smell.

Now, if you’ve ever travelled any long distances with anyone, I don’t care if it’s with your family, your friends or your co-workers in
your carpool, eventually there’s a smell. And when you can no longer seriously continue to blame your brother / sister / driver / dog or the shit spread on the fields outside, you need to turn inward to the car itself.

‘Smells like something’s burning,’ said my mum, who on these trips was never without her knitting, which was why, come Christmas Day, the entire family would receive a home-knitted jumper, cardigan or socks
⁵    
along with our toys and other presents.

‘Andrew let off,’
⁶    
I exclaimed.

‘Did not.’

‘Did too.’

Andrew attempted to roll me off the bed on to the Formica table.

‘Mu-um, it’s getting worse up here,’ Carole whined. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

‘No, you’re not, young lady!’ shouted my mum. This ability to control random acts of fluid loss on car trips was one of my mother’s superpowers. Her other special gift was the use of eyes in the back of her head, which I’ve heard is common among all mothers.

She turned to my dad. ‘We should stop.’

‘Where? There are no lay-bys in America.’

According to my dad, metaphorically, this became the mantra for the entire year my family spent tooling around the US nonstop, frantically packing in as many sights as possible in short bursts of time; however, my dad was also literally correct. There are no lay-bys in America. If cars need to stop, unless it’s a mechanical emergency, they have to wait for a corporate-sponsored
food stop or a state-sanctioned rest area. None of us had seen either in miles. Finally, my dad took an exit ramp off the motorway and pulled over.

When we all climbed out, the smell was smothering the entire camper.

‘Andrew stinks.’

‘John, be quiet.’

My dad walked gingerly around the camper, Andrew following him. While my mum gripped my arm, holding me back from the traffic, Carole sat on the grassy verge.

‘It smells worse back here,’ announced my dad.

‘That’s ‘cause Andrew let off.’

‘John, enough!’

My dad decided to crawl underneath the camper, which in retrospect was probably not the smartest thing to do because what he discovered solved the problem of the smell, but later that evening almost got Carole, Andrew and me killed.

‘It looks like tar,’ my dad explained. ‘I must have driven through it when we passed that construction earlier.’

The mystery of the smell solved, we all climbed back inside.

As had been the case when we holidayed with our caravan in the UK, finding a place to stop and park for the night with the camper was always a test of my dad’s mechanical fortitude and my mum’s patience. She’d have to entertain three overly tired cranky kids, while he’d hook the vehicular beast to its various lifelines. In the campsite we found on this particular night, my dad had to string the electrical connection from the roof of the camper across a grassy area and round a couple of big trees in order to connect it to the electricity pole supplied by the camp ground. He’d just finished doing this and was walking back toward the camper, where my mum had hustled the three of us inside, when there was a loud
pop, a blinding flash, some sparking wires, and a flaming current shot from the electricity hook-up near the trees and raced along the wire toward the camper.