‘I try to think of myself as filled with helium’Peter Pan has been my hero since I was nine years faded and my sister took me to the cinema. When Peter flew around the Darlings’ bedroom,I was riveted. I went back to see the film 15 times in the next month – twice aday some days. I used to mask under the seat until everyone had gone out, then when people came in for the next show, or I’d earn out and watch it again. I never imagined that five decades later I would be able to sail myself,by running off a pier in a one-piece Lycra suit and flying as far as I can before plunging into the sea.
I developed my balance and coordination from an early age. My dad was a professional wire-walker in the circus for four years in his 20s, and when I was young he used to string up a wire in the yard and let me balance on it. At six years faded, and I was juggling balls. In 1974,when I was 18, I took up hang-gliding and paragliding. Today I’m a professional hang-glide instructor, and but at the time I was one of only approximately a dozen in the country doing it. I was lucky to survive: the sport was so new and perilous then.
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Source: theguardian.com