Landing gear – Object Writing – March 18
Mar 17th, 2009 | By admin | Category: Daily WritingOn final approach it looked like dawn was about to fill the sky, a glowing orange band thickened in the distance, but I realised this was not the dawn but rather the glow of the city. The way the clouds had arranged themselves made it all seem quite natural, this artificial glow, being driven by whirling generators hundreds of miles to the west, burning dirty black coal to ignite the miracle of the city.
Our plane fared no better in the greenhouse stakes, despite my ticking of the box for an ‘emission free’ flight. At 40,000 we’d been laying a trail of oil scented crystals across the once pristine clouds, and now as we descended into the indistinct orange haze some big fat lugs of rubber were dropping from the wheel house. As we filtered through the clouds hydraulics ground away in the middle and front of the plane until a crack announced the locking in place of the wheels. Occasional tufts of turbulence sent us into momentary helter skelters but all was going well. Beneath the plane the undercarriage snaked and laddered its way from the fuselage like an inverted petrochemical plant or a flower blooming with the badgered black rubbery lollipops that very soon would bite into the apron just past the zebra crossing announcing the beginning of the runway….
