He wanted to fly. It is something that he always wanted to do; at least for as long as he could remember. It was strange, he thought: he was afraid of heights. He remembered when he was training to be a telephone engineer, and he had to climb a telegraph pole at the training school. He had to set his ladder, tie it off, then climb it onto the pole steps, then up to the pole ring at the top, where he was to fasten his safety belt (which was strong enough to lift a Land Rover), lean back and raise his arms above his head. That is what he was supposed to do. Instead, what he did was put both arms around the pole and froze. They had to get a cherry picker to get him down. He was terrified 15ft up a telegraph pole, yet he had absolutely no qualms about sitting in an aluminium tube travelling at 500 mph 30,000ft in the air. And he wanted to fly; he wanted to learn how to fly a light aircraft. He couldn't stand on a 10ft wall, he avoided the ridge on Goat Fell, he couldn't look out the window of his old 13th floor office. Yet he wanted to pilot an aircraft. He concluded that he was a complicated character, and was thus much more interesting.