Wind Boy

If I were to ask you what super power you’d like to possess, I expect there’d be the usual suspects - flying, x-ray vision, super strength, time travel etc. But I wonder how many of you would like my special super-power? I think it’s far better than any of the ones I’ve already mentioned, because it allows me to be something I’ve always wanted to be.

I’m not saying I have the ability to summon any meteorological phenomenon at the click of a finger, although that would be cool.  No, my super power is a bit more subtle. If I think hard enough, and for long enough about (say for instance) the wind, something rather magical starts to happen. Most of the time it starts with my hair. If I’m indoors, this always makes people stop what they’re doing and stare. If I’m outside, the staring comes later.

A few of my neck hairs stand up, as though someone’s just opened a door or a window. Then the hairs on my head join in - flapping my long fringe like the wing of a small bird. By now, anyone standing nearby is doing double takes or nudging family members in the ribs. If I were a complete show off I could just stay put and soak up all the awe and disbelief like some great big arrogant sponge – but I’m not like that.

Next, I calmly walk outside and find a quiet spot that’s away from any audience – captive or otherwise. This can prove problematic in a busy market town, like Leek, and nigh on impossible in a big metropolis like Birmingham or Manchester. Thank God for dark alleyways and giant rubbish skips, that’s what I say.

So, by now my hair is flying all over the place, like there’s an invisible dryer blowing the bejesus out of it. The next thing to change is my skin. It gets really pale, really quickly and soon becomes virtually transparent. If I lift up my shirt I can see all my internal workings going about their bodily business. If I was a watch I’d be a glass back.

Then, with the winds version of a hey presto, (but without the smoke), I disappear altogether. The coolest thing is I still have a consciousness. It’s not the same as my old one, more of a ramped-up sensory version. I feel like a kite that’s broken free from its string, or a sheet that’s blown off someone’s washing line. It’s quite scary, but deep down I know I’ve become part of something much bigger and more powerful. I also get the feeling there are others joining me, but I can’t be totally sure.

At this point you’re probably thinking when does the fun start? When does he begin his ‘wreaking havoc’ phase? Well, once I’m absorbed into the wind I have no say at all about where I go or what I get up to. Let me explain. The other day I found myself flying through a tall line of poplars in Brough Park. If you happened to be passing underneath, and bothered to look up at the trees you’d notice the leaves changed from green to silver and then back to green again. That was me. Well, a bit of me anyway. This is what it’s like. Each time is different.

I’d better tell you how it all started. How one day an ordinary 12 year old boy living in Leek, went up the White Peaks on his mountain bike and came back without it.

Mum had warned me against going because she said it was far too dangerous, and I might get blown off my bike and into the path of a juggernaut. Luckily, Dad offered to run me up there in his truck, as he was building a dry stone wall nearby. Mum wasn’t convinced, but I think the combination of my downcast expression and a few well timed sighs from Dad managed to swing it.

Dad doesn’t say very much. He believes in speaking when there’s something to say. He says plenty of people blather on about the price of cheese or the ‘bloody weather’ because they can’t handle their own silence. I asked him if I belonged to the ‘blathering fraternity’ and he just patted me on the head and laughed. I think that was a yes?

Anyway, I threw my old bike in the back of his truck and climbed up into the cab. It stinks of cheese and onion crisps and sweaty B.O. Dad says ‘honest toil’ is a dam sight more preferable to any bloody air freshener. He says ‘bloody’ a lot. When I asked him why he swears, he said bloody doesn’t count - it’s just a filler. His car radio’s covered in dust and grime and all the buttons and dials are missing. He says he took them off so no one would change his station. His station is Moorlands radio. It plays old hits from the sixties and seventies. Dad calls it the ‘golden age of music’.

So off we went, with Dad humming some old tune and me drawing ‘breath smiley’s’ on the passenger window. It’s only a fifteen minute ride to the Roaches – the last bit of the Pennines, laid out like the tail of some giant Lizard. All the hills are called clouds. My favourite is Hen Cloud, because it has Peregrine Falcon’s nesting in it’s comb.

I love it when we leave the streets and houses of Leek behind, and drive into open country. As soon as we emerge from Devils Hollow I can see the Roaches rising up in front of me. On a clear day, I can just make out the narrow road that skirts the bottom of Ramshaw Rocks. The cars are quite easy to spot, all bunched together near the main entry point. Today, the road was clear. After a few minutes we turned off the main road and onto the narrow, weaving bottom lane leading to my stop.

          “Anywhere here’s fine.”  I said, releasing my seatbelt.  Dad pulled over onto the grass verge and tried to scrub my head with his knuckle. I was too quick though, ducking out of the way of his big hard dirty fist. Then he jumped into the trailer and passed my bike down, before driving off without a word. I stood in the middle of the road and waited until he was almost out of sight. Then, right on cue he stuck his arm out the window and raised his thumb. He gave three short blasts on his air horn. This was my Dad doing his own rendition of a fly by. I did the biggest double handed wave I could muster and watched until he disappeared behind a hill.

I liked the fact it was deserted. The wind kept slamming into me every few seconds, so I decided to push my bike up to the start of the trail. I was glad there weren’t any fresh footprints or bike tracks in the peaty sludge. I felt like an explorer.

If I thought it was windy down by the road, nothing could prepare me for the battering up on the cliff edge. The sound was deafening. Everything was brought alive or into motion by the wind. Swaying trees creaked and groaned as though in pain. Flattened grasses hissed like angry snakes and every now and then I could hear the metallic ratchet of a spooked grouse.  Even the giant rocks growled as the wind forced itself into deep fissures and gulleys.

I clipped on my helmet, mounted the bike and started pedalling into the gale. The effort it took just to stay upright was enormous.  When I thought I’d cracked it, the wind would either shift direction or vary in strength, pushing me off balance, or into a rock. Any sensible person would have gone a couple of hundred yards and then given up. I was determined to find a way through, even if it meant testing myself to the limit. Mum said I was a boy of extremes, and one day, if I wasn’t careful I’d come unstuck.

Up ahead, the trail dropped down about fifty feet and a clump of kind pine trees acted as a sort of wind break. I leant against one of these and took a drink from my water bottle. Not even Mary, the ‘never say die’ fell runner was out today, and I’d seen her and her pumping chicken legs brave blizzards and flash floods. Then I thought about what Mum had said and wondered if I was becoming an adrenalin junkie. I didn’t get a rush or a buzz from putting myself in peril, I just felt like I needed to push myself. She also said I was like fly paper for danger. I still use that one today.

Dad said he went through a weird patch after his Mum died. He said he couldn’t bear to think about her, so he started doing crazy things to distract himself. One Christmas Eve, when a few beers had loosened his talking muscles, he told me how he tried to climb an old factory chimney in the dark. He said he managed to haul himself up by the copper lightening conductor, but bottled it after about fifty feet. He said when he lost his footing he felt the ‘cold spike of fear’ stab him in his guts’. When he said ‘guts’ he jabbed a finger in his beer belly.  His mates had to get a big ladder to help him down. He told me to swear never to tell Mum, because she’d kill him. I said he’d have to buy me a new mountain bike first and then I might think about it.

Down in the windless dip it was difficult to imagine it could be the same day. From here I had two options. I could go left and cycle through the woods for a few miles and pick up the road further down or just carry on along the cliff edge and battle the elements. My head said wood and my heart said cliff. I spun the bike round a few times, before heading uphill. As soon as I pedalled past the tops of the trees the wind was waiting for me. This time it punched me in the back and pushed me up the steep gradient like an unseen hand. For one brief moment I thought about taking my feet off the pedals. Then the path veered off to the left and it was coming at me head on again.

I was finding it hard to get my breath as the wind kept pushing it back down into my lungs. At the top, exhausted, I threw the bike in a ditch and lay on a long table of flat rock, watching the clouds racing by. Once I’d gotten my breath back I stood up and leaned right into the wind. Again, the kind hand chose to prop me up. No matter how far I leaned over it supported me. I even tried running and then leaning, but it still wouldn’t let me fall. Then I did something really stupid. I walked to the cliff edge and with my arms fully extended I leaned right over. I wasn’t an expert, but the wind speed must have been close to a hundred miles an hour. At first it just roared at my face, making my eyes water. Then it must have got bored with its new game.

Three hundred feet isn’t a very long way when you’re falling straight down. My high-pitched scream was flung away by the returning wind. My brief life never flashed before my eyes, there wasn’t time. At the very moment a question started to form in my head about how painful this death would be, compared to say, being hit by a car, I ceased to be.

I didn’t suffer a heart attack or explode on the rocks like a ten stone balloon filled with blood. It was as though someone had dialled the gravity down to zero and turned my body into a parachute made of spider silk. I couldn’t see anything. Not even blackness. My only remaining senses were touch and hearing. I knew my body had gone, but I could still feel its trace, like when you stare at a light bulb and then close your eyes. I wasn’t scared. I didn’t know if I was dead or alive, but I do know I felt safe, as though nothing could hurt me anymore. I thought about Dad building his wall in the howling gale, and wondered if he’d remembered to pack his flask of hot tea. I thought about Mum and her kind hands, stroking my head when I was feverish, and Oscar the Siamese cat digging his claws into my bare legs.

After what seemed like an age there was this sort of intense spinning feeling and I realised I was sitting at the bottom of the cliff, looking up. The farmer who found me said I was screaming my head off. He said it took him ten minutes to calm me down. I don’t remember anything after that. The next thing I remember is being carried out of an ambulance on a big clunky stretcher by someone who sounded like he had asthma. I felt no pain, just this odd dizzy feeling.

Dad said someone had nicked my bike, and I wasn’t getting another one until I was at least forty. Mum kept kissing my forehead and wringing all the worry from her hands. I kept telling them I was okay, but they insisted I stay in bed for a couple of days. It was obvious to everyone I hadn’t fallen, so I made up this story about climbing down to look at the falcon’s nest. All the local newspapers and radio stations called me the ‘Bird boy of Leek’.

Once I’d endured the regulation two week grounding I just carried on being myself. At school I was a minor celebrity. Bullies became buddies. Girls listened open mouthed, as I embroidered my ripping yarn. As with most ‘one hit wonders’, it all died down after a few days and I went back to being a typical adolescent. Well almost.

I’d like to think that what the wind and I do isn’t completely random. It’s a bit like when we’re feeling down in the dumps and suddenly something happens to cheer us up. I remember walking along the side of the canal, thinking that everyone and everything were against me, when a blue and gold blur shot past me. It was a Kingfisher. I’d never seen one before. I marvelled at its whirring, silent wings, the speed of which sealed its passing. Then it was gone.

So, the next time a breeze brushes your cheek or a crisp packet rises up in front of your face, spinning like a dervish, just stop to savour the moment. You never know, it could be me cheering you up. Conversely, if you’re forced into the back yard to sweep up the rubbish spilling out of your recently blown over wheelie bin then it could also be me having a bit of fun at your expense.