Steve, Slander, and Fear of Flying
This account was written back in 2003
There’s a knuckle-knock on the door, and still with a bath towel wrapped around my waist and a hand towel over my head, I open the heavy door to the hotel room.
“Hey Steve, I’ll be a couple more minutes,” and return to the bathroom.
“Where’s Jenny?” He calls out.
“Doing some last-minute shopping. She’ll be back anytime. I’ve got Versace Eros, or Dior Sauvage colognes, which do you think?”
“Do you want pigsty, or cattle-shed?” He responds.
“Who got up your arse this morning?”
I hear him jangling coffee cups and resume my grooming. “I filed the flight plan. Green departure direct Stockholm; I have the GPS Coordinates: 59°39'6”N by 17°55'6"E. You making coffee?”
“Yes, want one?”
“Sure, Jenny, too. We have an off-block time 10.00hrs,” I stroll into the room, buttoning up my shirt and carrying trousers over my arm. “What time have we got now, Steve?” He looks at his wrist.
“Just coming up 7.30.”
“Plenty of time, it’s only ten minutes across to the airport. Once Jenny gets back… ah ha, this is her now,” on hearing the card swish through the card lock.
“Hello Steve,” Jenny says.
“Wow, Jenny, you look amazing.”
“That’s sweet, Steve. Thank you.”
Slipping on my trousers, “you do know you’d have been gone years ago if you didn’t suck up to my wife, right, Steve?” I say, looking for a rise out of the man.
“Yeh, yeh,” he looks at Jenny and raises his eyebrows.
I strongly dislike hotels the world over, from the least expensive to the most, all having one format, a single print on the wall, typically flowers, sliding wardrobe, and pastel colours on the wall.
Steve has agreed to travel to Stockholm with us in order that we could discuss matters concerning you.
Flying makes Steve nervous and he will rarely fly with me, and when he does, Jenny has to accompany us. Airports, too, Steve won’t be with me in an airport, he will have a different seat on the airplane, preferably in a different cabin, waiting to near last to board.
He says I have this habit of embarrassing him whenever the opportunity arrives, like the time we were at Dulles, Washington, when we had to wait a couple of hours for a scheduled flight to London. I noticed a pair of toy handcuffs in the bookstore and bought them for a couple of dollars. Hiding this fact from him, I asked for the time and when he raised his wrist, I snapped the cuffs on him. One on his wrist, one on mine. We were locked together.
He merely thought me childish, but when I started yelling my innocence, clearly demonstrating to onlookers that I was handcuffed, well, he never got over it. I had a laugh for weeks. Steve, however, has never forgiven me. He pointedly refuses to fly any scheduled flights with me, preferring to take a different route or flight entirely.
Steve is as close a friend as I have. He’s tall, light hair, glasses, and weirdly good-looking, Jenny says, and towers over me at six feet three inches, but was born without wit.
“Shall I ask for more coffee, Jenny?” Steve asks.
“Not for me, Steve. In fact while you guys are finishing up, I’ll go check us out.”
It is 9:15 on a gray morning in London when we arrive at the Signature FBO.
“Morning Sasha, I’ll just go through and print off my flight plan and come back to you. We are off chocks at 10:00 hrs.,” I say, greeting the counter clerk.
“Golly, that’s very formal, Harry. Very impressive. Do you want to do that again?” She says.
“Listen you gorgeous hunk of female flesh check us in, or I’ll be over this desk and sorting you out,” both smiling our friendship for each other.
“All I get is threats from you, Harry. How are you, Jenny?”
“I’m fine, Sasha, its good to see you. It must be six months,” Jenny says.
“Steve picks up magazines he cannot afford to buy and sits in the window as the first sunshine emerges through the clouds.
I return a few minutes later with copies of our flight plan, leaving one with Sasha.
“Stockholm, I’ll bet its colder there,” she says, looking over the charts.
“Yep, guess so. It’s just a two day stopover. I’ll check in with you at ten thousand,” and lean over the counter, kissing her cheek, “see you in a couple.”
“Safe flight, Harry.”
“Thanks, babe.”
Walking toward the airplane, I couldn’t help thinking about my strange life. Twenty-four hours earlier, I chased chickens about the field and fiddled with old motor cars. The Learjet looks as bright as a penny whistle. I remember the day I first flew her, it all seems so long ago, but here she is looking as though she’s just rolled off the factory line.
We all board, and Jenny takes her favourite seat, back in the cabin. Steve follows her. “I’ll come forward when we’re up,” he says.
“Sure thing,”
I respond and sit in the left-hand seat to begin my pre-flight checks. This done, I speak to ground control.
“Good morning, Golf Oscar Lima, permission to start up.”
“Golf Oscar Lima, you are cleared to start, call when ready to taxi.”
“Rojer that.”
I quickly nudge the rudder and aileron, check the parking brake, and flick the ignition to perform a cold startup. Switch on the batteries, check fuel pumps, and switch on the port engine turbine, listening to it winding up enough power to throw the engine into life, and then switch on the generator for cabin power. Happy with that I turn to the starboard engine and perform the same procedure. Checking my watch, we are five minutes to off chocks. I check the inverters are green. Then switch to cabin pressurization, wing heaters, cabin heaters, engine heat, and call ground on 121.8, and set Atis departure, 128.8.
“Ground, G.O.L. is ready to push back.”
“G.O.L. cleared for push back. Proceed to holding point and call.”
“Holding point and call.”
While taxiing I check instrument variations, pressures, and compass settings. How it was when those guys flew by the stars… how that must have been.
“G.O.L. at holding point.”
“G.O.L. Hold until instructed.”
I can see a British Midland 737 taxiing toward the runway thresh-hold on the west side. It’s the shuttle to Leeds-Bradford.
I switch to cabin announce. “About three minutes, we’re behind the shuttle, might be a bit of air turbulence on the climb out until we break right at three thousand.”
Steve mumbles some profanity. I watch as the 737 climbs away.
“GOL cleared to thresh-hold, contact tower on 118.7, good-day, sir.”
“Cleared thresh-hold, tower on 118.7, good-day.” I flick over the frequency.
“Tower, G.O.L. at thresh-hold for 27 right.”
“G.O.L., sqwawk ident 2.4 cleared routing direct Stockholm. You are cleared for take-off, a straight ahead departure.”
“Rojer, tower, cleared to roll… rolling.”
I ease gently forward on the throttles and feel the surge of power as G.O.L. kicks up power.
“90… 100… 110..V.1… rotate.” The airplane gently lifts her nose and rises sweetly into the sky.
I clean up the airplane.
“G.O.L. off at 10.18 call radar on 121.7 Good-day, sir.”
“Radar on 121.7 thanks, good day.”
Another flick of the radio switch and radar comes in crisply.
“G.O.L., squawking ident 2.4 passing 1 zero for 38000.”
I can see Windsor Castle and the Thames below, Sover many reservoirs glimmering in the winter sunshine. Turbulence is minimal, occasionally buffeting. I think of Steve and smile.
“G.O.L. turn onto heading 112.3 and climb straight ahead, contact air traffic control on 118.8 good-day.”
“Traffic on 118.8 good-day.”
Six notches over ATC is locked in.
“G.O.L. direct green route to Stockholm, heading 112.3 passing 4 requesting 38.”
“G.O.L. cleared to 38. Report when established.”
“Report established 38. Rojer.”
I switch to cabin announce. “Come ahead, Steve,”
I hear Steve unbuckle his strap and welcome him into the cockpit. He looks out from his window but says nothing until he turns back. “Jenny sent this, coffee in a flask and Fig Newtons.”
“Great, thanks honey,” I call back over my shoulder. “Okay, Steve, maybe we should get straight into it.”
“There’s been a journalist with the Guardian newspaper causing trouble.”
“Trouble… what does that mean.”
“It borders slander, in my opinion.”
I start chuckling. Steve thinks everything spoken about me is slanderous.
“What kind of stuff?”
I’ve lived with this stuff since leaving the air force. Joining the Coastguard and worked for Greenpeace.
Steve goes into his briefcase and brings out a copy of the Guardian newspaper, opens it, spreading it across his lap, then folds it and starts reading.
Hogg helped found Greenpeace and was a director for 12 years and in that time was responsible for direct action against whaling and nuclear testing. He’s been arrested for halting Norwegian hunters from clubbing baby seals to death and was on board the Rainbow Warrior the day French spies blew it up in Auckland Harbour.
But now Hogg is seen by other environmental organizations as a traitor to the cause.
In his latest broadside against the green movement, Hogg, speaking in the United States, denounced the charity to which he devoted so much in the Seventies and early Eighties. Hogg, later condemned by much of mainstream environmental movements for scaremongering and peddling ‘phoney baloney’.
Other green charities, including the Worldwide Fund for Nature and the Rainforest Foundation, ridiculed Hogg, saying he jumped on the green bandwagon.
Greenpeace declared that Hogg had ‘gone off the rails’. And one director stood up to say. ‘Hogg can’t be persuaded to shut his mouth, he gets far more press than is scientifically justifiable. He’s trading on past credentials, trying to discredit everything that everyone else is working for. Each time I read something by this megalomaniac crackpot, I get the urge to hurl.’
Hogg insists he is still an environmentalist, voicing concern about global warming and deforestation in the tropics, and still has warm words for the foundation he helped to found. Hogg told the newspaper, “Greenpeace is still doing some great things, but most of the really serious issues have been dealt with. The fact is that there are an awful lot of positive trends. We’re improving air quality and water quality. In the developed world, forests are increasing; the bald eagle has been taken off the endangered list.”
These developments, Hogg insists, came about because the activists of the Seventies and Eighties pushed green issues to the top of the political agenda. “At the beginning, the environmental movement had reason to say that the end of the world is nigh. Public opinion was swayed, politicians listened, and government action ensued. Hogg says after 15 years of being ‘against three or four things a day’ in Greenpeace, he left the charity to work on other projects with another Greenpeace founder. Greenpeace, says he left after losing a power struggle.
“Is that it? Steve. Hang on a minute. “G.O.L. to FBO Signature.”
“Go ahead, G.O.L.”
“Hey Sasha, we’re on our way. Thanks for everything. See you in a couple of days.”
“Take care, Harry. Love to Jenny.”
“Will do. G.O.L. out.”
“Okay, what’s the problem, Steve?”
“You don’t see a problem with this shit?”
“Steve, listen to me, they cannot quote silence.”
“But this is crap.”
“So what? It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s fucking slanderous.”
“Have you shown Jenny this article?”
“No.”
“Okay, don’t. You know how mad she gets. You’ve got to relax, Steve.”
“But this journalist has you looking like a complete jerk.”
“Most of the time, he’d be right, Steve. He’s just wrong on this subject.”
“Oh, shit, look at that, the oil pressure is dropping on the port engine…!”
“WHAT……CHRIST!”
“Oh, no… it’s only me, sorry about that, just read the wrong dial.”
“Harry, you are one sick son of a bitch,” he says, pale-faced.
“Now, Steve. That is SLANDEROUS!
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