Free Turbulence by Giles Foden

delivered. The note also detailed the charting and plotting that would be required of me. It added that the motorcycle outside was for my own use as I had a balloon schedule involving releases in some quite remote locations.
    Having read it, I felt a bit glum. It was all very well Sir Peter giving me a cover under which to spy on Ryman, but the cover itself would mean quite hard work. How was I going to manage it all? Still, there were compensations. I had never been on a motorcycle before.
    So the first thing I did was I tuck my trousers into my socks and go back outside to try it. I fell off a few times, skidding about the field and frightening the cattle, but it was tremendous fun. I’d more or less got the hang of it after an hour.Spattered with mud, I went back in to inspect the crates.
    I read some of the labels: EDDYSTONE RADIOSONDE, ROTATABLE ADCOCK AERIAL SYSTEM, RADIO TRANSCEIVER … There was also a teleprinter for contacting the main station at Dunoon, plus an AO, an oscillator device for comparing the radiosonde transmissions against a known frequency.
    I picked up a hydrogen cylinder and shook it. It was empty, which explained the drums of caustic soda. From these and other ingredients, I was to make my own hydrogen. I had never made it before, but I knew this was common practice on substations, unlike at Kew. It would have been impracticable to deliver pressurised ready-filled cylinders to observers in rural locations.
    Realising the unpacking was going to be a big job, I walked down to the village shop to buy some bread, cheese and pickle and other provisions, then set to work on my return. It would take me the rest of the day to sort it all. I began splitting open the crates with a crowbar – labelled CROWBAR, in inimitable Met Office style – and I finished around midnight. The floor was covered with splinters of wood; they looked like arrows and spears left over from some terrible colonial massacre.
    That night, as I lay in the darkness, with the cattle coughing around me in the field and bits of slate dust falling on my face from the roof when the wind blew, I actually found myself looking forward to plotting some charts. Brain work rather than brawn work. But, having unpacked the equipment, I still had to prepare it.
    The next morning, after doing my ablutions, I went up to Mackellar’s farm to scrounge some milk. The gruff old farmer – pipe sticking out of his mouth even at that early hour – gave of it freely, taking me to the dairy and dipping a steel jug into a bucket.
    â€˜You keep that jug and come here in the mornings, do the same thing yersel’. Never you mind if my wife comes bawling. Tell her you have the permission.’
    â€˜Righto,’ I said cheerfully, and made my way back down the grassy hill, carefully holding the milk-slopping jug in front of me with both hands.
    I had some breakfast, then began testing the audio oscillator. The regular sounds it produced were compared with the altering transmissions from the radiosondes that hung beneath each balloon, which I could pick up on the high-frequency radio set. The signals varied in pitch according to the height of the balloon, thus enabling me to get a fix on its position as it recorded meteorological phenomena.
    The oscillator was quite loud – it made a series of pips – and could be heard outside, even though it was standing on the desk in the cot-house. It soon attracted the attention of the cows in the field. They gathered round the building in a circle, which made me vaguely uneasy. The sight of them provoked a memory.
    As a young man I once helped round up cattle on a farm somewhere on the earth road between Blantyre and Zomba, where one of my father’s friends had tried his hand at dairy. Those animals, feeding on yellow grass amid clusters of native huts, were a cross between Friesians and African zebu and they were pretty lively. These Scottish beasts, spikily horned, impishly