I’m sure I’ve written before about how I don’t really like to promise my friends balloon flights. It’s not that I’m anti-social and don’t want to fly with other people, it’s just that I hate saying to people “of course you can have a flight” and then letting days, weeks, months even, go by with no sign of actually fulfilling that promise. It makes me feel empty and almost dishonest, and so, whilst I am happy to fly my friends, and there is an option invitation to them all that if they ever want a balloon flight to just let me know, I try to not to physically say “yep, lets do this” and instead prefer to just ring people up when the weather looks good and say “fancy a flight…?”.
Tonight I was flying with two friends – Tom Reddy and Matthew Rogers – who fall dichotomously onto the two branches of my passenger philosophy. Tom was very much a last-minute phone call, offering him the final free space in the basket, whilst Matthew, on the other hand, had been patiently waiting for me to actually do some flying having been promised a flight a long time ago.