It was the perfect day for my flying lesson, if a little hazy in the 31 degree heat. But,. as thing said in top gun, I’m going to take a shower. When we arrived at the air strip, we discovered that Dancing Ken (no relation to Ken of Ken’s disco) , the local monster raving loony candidate had turned up, which was a big morale booster, and encouraged me to really push for England and put on a good performance in the air. Well chocks away, the instructor talked me through taxiing, and taking off, which was definitely uber cool and we were in the air, being careful not to enter restricted air zones and getting shot down. At about 3,000ft the temperature had dropped to 20c. Realising we had the power to control our own air conditioned destiny, we ascended towards some clouds, to around 7,000ft where the temperature dropped again to 10c. At some point during this well executed operation, we passed some big castle, some big hills and a field with ‘Help!’ written on it in corn. Having fully absorbed the entirety of these landmarks, we busied ourselves with some manouvres. I got to try a few steep turns, and our instructor wowed us with an 8-turn and a side slip which was just crazy man. The excitement mounted as we came into land, and air traffic casually mistook us for another plane, causing some kind of airborne traffic jam. Once the confusion was cleared up, we landed safely. After that, we setlled on a post-flight beer in the quintessential air strip beer garden – and a disgruntled Dancing Ken drove off into the distance.