Free The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad by Karl Pilkington Page A

all over the world and we
    don’t do much with them. Rather than taking a chunk of rock down from a mountain and making a sculpture and then sticking it in a town centre where it just gets in the way, leave the rock
    where it belongs and sculpt it there.
    Also, people get lost when they’re out climbing in mountains in Scotland. What could make life easier for rescue people than being able to pin-point where you are by saying who’s
face you’re climbing up. Also, maybe kids would get off their arse more and go walking if they could go and see the faces of One Direction cut into Ben Nevis.

    I was greeted by a man called Andre kitted out in cosmonaut overalls. He was going to show me around the place. First stop was at the centrifuge. This is a bit of kit they use
to give cosmonauts the feeling of G-force, which they experience on taking off in a rocket. The centrifuge was 30 years old and looked it. Andre took me down below into the big hall, so I could see
the scale of the thing. It’s the biggest centrifuge in the world. A huge 60-foot arm sat on a massive motor with a type of cockpit on the end where the cosmonaut would sit as it spun. Imagine
a giant swing-ball, with a seat in the ball.
    We went back upstairs to the control room where loads of staff were standing around. Andre said I could have a go in the centrifuge. I wasn’t keen on the idea, but he reassured me it would
be fine. I got into a large dentist-type chair where a few men in jumpsuits buckled me up as if I was getting on the waltzers at a fair. I kept asking who was in charge, as I wanted to get across
that I wasn’t an adrenaline junkie and don’t even like rollercoasters, so don’t make it go too fast, but it seemed like no one was listening to me as they were all concentrating
on their job. My heart was pounding. This must’ve been how Yuri felt before his space trip, with the extra pressure of knowing he couldn’t back out due to the whole world watching.
I’m a good driver and can reverse park quite easily, but once I know there’s a car waiting for me to park before he can pass I can’t do it. Having an audience changes things.
    They wheeled me in the chair and slid me into the cockpit like a chicken being slid into an oven. I was now horizontal.
    KARL : I can’t wait to get out. Honestly, I’ll be so happy. You’ll see the biggest smile you’ve ever seen when I get out of
     this. I’m not happy.
    ANDRE : (
laughs
) Don’t worry.
    KARL : What’s the reason for having to be in this position? ’Cos this isn’t even comfy.
    TRANSLATOR : Because this is the position of the cosmonaut during take-off. This way, the G-force influences you in the best way. You will not
     black out because the blood will be spread all over your body.
    DOCTOR : Calm down, Karl. It will be less than 1G.
    KARL : It doesn’t mean anything to me, that. I didn’t pass science. I got an E in history, that’s all I got.
    DOCTOR : It will be even less than when your girlfriend is on you.
    KARL : You haven’t seen her!
    DOCTOR : (
laughs
)
    It looked even older on the inside. Light blue and grey metal everywhere with a few worn switches and a bog standard office fan bolted to the ceiling to keep the place cool. They pulled at my
belts a few more times to make sure they were safe and then locked the door. I had headphones on and could hear everyone doing their last-minute checks. I felt really helpless sat there. Is this
how it is for spacemen? I didn’t even get to hit a start button. It started to move. I tensed up. The woman in the control room asked me to calm down and breathe normally. Is there anything
more annoying than someone asking you to calm down? It was an odd sensation, as there wasn’t really any sound or feeling of movement, but I could feel pressure pushing me down as it spun. The
ride didn’t last very long, but I guess that’s ’cos it must be an expensive thing to run. Once that was over, I was off to a briefing on details of