All part of the plan

In carefree younger days, I was only properly happy when trying to scare the life out of myself. I’d motocross, glacier ski and microlight with a like-minded crowd, each of us trying to outdo the other with the latest ‘adrenalin sport’, as they were called back then.

This is how I ended up strapped to a paraglider, drifting majestically across the southbound carriageway of the M11 next to North Weald airfield.

Rather than my short life flashing before my eyes, my attention was drawn to a 1982 Cameo Beige Ford Sierra and how I could see it from an exact orthographic top view. An unremarkable car but, as a car designer, I knew its exact model from the shape of its windows and the proportions of its bonnet and roof. I remember thinking how strange it was that my brain was full of such useless information.