PLAYING WITH AIR As parasitic stems embroider the oak – a paraglider pilot begins his attachment. As a gate brays open – he manoeuvres the risers, is a puppeteer with his marionette; an Aeolian harpist. Now that he is the bold one, his canopy cowers and billows in fits and starts. Harnessed and helmeted – so tiny, so new against Cretaceous rock! – he runs, at last towards the vagaries of chalk’s precipice: sprung like a child…. In this moment, he is one with a hiss of distance between sky and sea – like a soaring pterodactyl, like a gravitating angel. But he finds himself caught between the currents of abandon and control. Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON