h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great day - 2 hours flown on the way to renewing my flying license. Most of all though I just enjoyed doing it and feel no desperate rush to get the learning over with. Maybe I'm just growing up! Anyone else out there learning to fly?

My mother has had her pilot's licence for a couple of years - something she'd dreamed of all her life. It's a strange thing for her to have accomplished because I find it hard to imagine anyone less accustomed to technology than my mother. Programming video recorders? Tuning digital radios? Switching on a computer? Forget it.

Which is why I was so scared when I climbed into the Cessna beside her on the first of my 'guest flights'. Normally phased by more than two or three buttons on a remote control, Mmu now sat before a positive wall of dials, gauges, switches and readouts, over which she was deftly, and seemingly experty, sweeping her fingers, before soaring nonchalantly into the air. I grinned like a cornered masochist.

She's good, though, and we are both still able to walk.

Other than the realisation that my mother has a hidden techological awareness (when she wants), I was astonished at the opaque brown and orange cloud of dirt that hangs over London at about 1000 feet. What are we playing at, us humans?!