Free Get Her Off the Pitch! by Lynne Truss Page B

over the engine noise. ‘Open windows!’ I discovered that I felt instant nausea if I looked at the ropes hanging from the unseen canopy’s nose in the middle distance - so I sensibly stopped doing it. The aforementioned pitching and rolling, as we made our way north-east, then north above such landmarks as Epsom, Croydon and Wimbledon, made moving about quite difficult, but we survived quite well in the circumstances, with our stomachs knocking against our ribs. An astonishing number of houses had identically-shaped swimming pools, by the way: if you were a swimming-pool salesman with the Surrey concession, the view would have made you very proud. Anyway, Susan firmly declined the chocky cake, but was otherwise OK , as was the photographer (who found the chocky cake very acceptable). Evidently a TV puppet called Otis the Aardvark had been copiously sick on a previous flight, which we all found completely hilarious.
    We could see Wembley from miles away. There is a wonderful Dickensian passage at the beginning of Patrick Hamilton’s novel The Slaves of Solitude describing wartime London as a great, breathing monster, sucking thousands of tiny people in through all the train terminals in the morning, and breathing them out again at the end ofthe day. This passage came to mind as we arrived over the great white stadium, which was drawing people towards it from far and wide on this light summer evening. Why doesn’t TV use more aerial shots? It’s such a missed opportunity. Of course, such shots would be easier to achieve if the airships could be stationary - which they can’t: they have to keep circling, circling, circling, circling, otherwise they die, like sharks. But the view is phenomenal: 75,000 people assembling in one place for a sporting contest is a grand sight. The grass is incredibly green. The fans are (in this case) a beautiful white and a beautiful orange. Thousands of individual camera flashes make the scene sparkle. Once play starts, the 20 free-flowing outfield players spread and converge restlessly, like droplets of mercury being tipped about on a mirror - or like droplets of mercury all in mindful pursuit of a moving ball, anyway.
    We were told we were flying at around 1,000 feet, but I don’t know whether that was true. We could open the windows and lean out; we could see the players not quite well enough to identify them individually. And of course we had to keep re-orientating ourselves because of the non-stop circling. England are playing left to right. No, hang on, England are playing right to left. No, I was right the first time: England are playing left to right. But when the ball was destined to fly into the net (as it was four times for England in the course of that astonishing evening), seeing it from directly above was the best view you could possibly have.
    What people tend to overlook about that generally well-remembered England-Netherlands match, actually, is how nice and varied the goals were for anyone watchingfrom overhead. First, there was the penalty in the first half - which helpfully got us used to the sight of a white ball punching into the back of a white net and dancing there. A chap in white (Paul Ince, as it turned out) appeared to trip on the edge of the penalty box, and play was suspended. Players stood back to watch while another chap in white (Alan Shearer, as we later learned, courtesy of the pager) placed the ball on the spot. Up in the airship, we were bloody excited. Above the roar of the engine, we could hear the cheering from the stadium - but, truly, only just. It was like watching through the wrong end of a telescope. There was a run-up; the ball was smacked into the corner of the net, and the jubilant little ant-sized player ran off at top speed while we danced about in our little gondola, and Corky made his mind up to stay for the second half - which was a relief, as his instructions had been to leave Wembley at half time and get us back