Page 267 - James Caan - The Real Deal

26 · What Now?

‘To be honest, I’m not sure. I thought I might learn to fly.’
I wasn’t joking: I didn’t have a plan, but I knew I wanted to give
myself a chance to do things I’d missed out on while I was working
so hard and flying a plane sounded like fun.
I went to an airstrip to the north of London and talked to a
flying instructor.
‘How long will it take me to get my licence?’
‘It doesn’t normally take more than a couple of months.’
A couple of months? That was way too slow.
‘How about I just hire you solidly for a fortnight? Would that
give me enough flying time?’
So that’s what I did, but after two weeks of intensive flying I was
surprised to find out that I hadn’t found it quite as thrilling as I’d
hoped. The windows on two-seater planes are really quite small,
and because I couldn’t see much of the ground beneath me I didn’t
get the buzz I was after. There were also several helicopters at the
airfield, and when I saw one which was basically a big glass bubble
take off I asked if I could fly one of those instead.
Another intensive course later and I was flying helicopters and
had a real taste for thrill-seeking. The next thing to try was fast
cars, and I went to Silverstone to race Ferraris. If I had realised
flying was my passion, I would have bought a plane; if I’d fallen
in love with helicopters, I’d have had one of those; and if I’d
thought I would ever be able to race around in a Ferrari on the
open road, I’d have bought a sports car, but the thing that
captured my imagination was sailing. While we were spending
time in Cannes I went to the marina and saw all these gorgeous
yachts. I arranged to have a couple of lessons taking one of them
out on the open water and I absolutely loved it and so I took
lessons to qualify as a skipper. I then bought a beautiful yacht of
my own. However, on one of my first trips out I had a close
encounter with a cliff! Thankfully I was still close enough to the
shore for my mobile phone to work. One of the guys I’d got to

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