The Man With His Head in the Clouds

by Richard O. Smith

  Burcham and Sadler were both confirmed as concussed, each convinced that the other had died. Eventually, though, they caught sight of one other in Heckington, allowing for an emotional reunion described by a correspondent from Boston, Lincolnshire in a lengthy letter to a local paper: “they flew into each other’s arms with such enraptured expressions of joy, as cannot be conceived by those who have not been in circumstances nearly similar!”

  The London Chronicle confirmed: “Mr Sadler then went to Heckington, and in the street there first saw again his lost companion, each the moment before fancying the other killed.” They were taken to the Crown Inn where they stayed until 3am. The next morning a crowd arrived from the nearby town of Sleaford to see the balloon. Several farm workers who had observed the balloon soar above their field earlier, described how they had considered it to be either “a comet or a giant tulip”. Obviously.

  1 OCTOBER 1812: SADLER ATTEMPTS THE IRISH SEA

  A Dublin newspaper reported on Sadler’s historic attempt to be the first to fly across the Irish Sea: “The day was particularly favourable to it. The morning was fine, the sky generally clear but slightly interspersed with light fleecy clouds and a brisk gale blew in the direction which the aeronaut wished to steer his flight.” A brisk gale? Once again, Sadler had suffered from the ludicrous practice of advertising a flight date in advance.

  Suspended between two vast poles, the balloon inflation commenced through a silk pipe at Belvedere House, Drumcondra. After residing nobility Lady Mary Lennox and the Duchess of Richmond had inspected Sadler’s balloon, each member of the organising committee paraded from the house to the lawn, carrying aloft Sadler’s cart.

  Launched into the gale, Sadler’s giant balloon rose rapidly, zooming upwards at a disconcerting pace in spite of the eleven hundredweight of ballast in the cart. One observer compared its speed to the champion racehorse of the era, Flying Childers.

  Progress in the gale was fast. Sadler commented: “I found myself to the north-west of Holyhead when still being resolved to make the coast of Lancashire, and judging this to be the most favourable opportunity, I opened the valve and by permitting some of the gas to escape, passed to the south of Skerry Light House over Anglesey at an altitude of 3 miles 652 yards.” A decision at this point to commence a simple landing above Anglesey would have provided him with the record as the first Irish Sea aviator.

  “Had I continued in this direction, a very short period would have brought me over the Coast of Cumberland but my principal object was to terminate the voyage at Liverpool,” Sadler stated, “I was however disappointed for the wind shifted more to the southward. I found myself driven in a contrary direction to that which I wished to proceed. In a short time I lost sight of land. The evening was fast closing in.”

  Obliged by stern necessity, Sadler lobbed the remaining ballast overboard and took his chances at a higher altitude. No favourable wind was found, so he desperately scanned the horizon for potential rescue ships. Darkness was falling rapidly, cloaking the sea in blackness. In the deteriorating light, Sadler spotted approaching shipping. He expelled gas so quickly that he splashed down into the sea like a returning space capsule from an Apollo mission. Sadler recollected: “I observed vessels beating down the Channel and entertained the confident hope that I would meet with prompt assistance that my circumstances would require. I opened the valve and in a few minutes was precipitated into the sea. But to my great mortification I found that the vessels continued their course without paying the least attention to my situation, although there can be little doubt of me being observed - thus deserted.” Remarkably, the boats ignored his plight.

  This version of events was later confirmed by a correspondent J. Fellows, an agent of Her Majesty’s Packets based at Holyhead. He speculated: “The extraordinary circumstances of not receiving assistance from the first vehicle Sadler encountered when he first descended can only be accounted for by the terror his appearance must have occasioned to such people not used to or expecting such a sight. One could hardly conceive it could be from any other cause, or the want of humanity in their crews.”

  Sadler was left grasping a rapidly deflating balloon in freezing waters. “I was clinging to the netting as a last resource, and in this situation was frequently plunged underwater,” he confirmed. Mercifully, another vessel flying the Manx flag came into view and, unlike its predecessor, rescued the stranded aeronaut forty miles north off Great Orme.

  A rope was hurled to Sadler. Even then, he was still not out of the water - literally. He disappeared under the surface, before being eventually winched into the boat. “After being dragged through the waves, I eventually got on board with much difficulty, after being in the water for at least half an hour, being quite exhausted, nearly insensible, and almost lifeless - a state in which I remained for a considerable time.”

  The vessel that saved Sadler was named Victory, out from Douglas fishing for herring. Captain John Lee took Sadler to Liverpool where a crowd had assembled at the dockside expecting to spot him. But Sadler was described as too shocked and fatigued to greet his public. Accordingly he was immediately taken aboard a Royal Navy boat Princess to Holyhead where he informed locals of his intention to cross the Irish Sea again.

  The Morning Chronicle reported on 14 October 1812: “We have to inform the numerous friends of Mr Sadler that he has arrived safely back in Dublin a few days since undergoing many hair breath scrapes.”

  Several earlier Irish Sea attempts had ended in ignominy, including that of Wicklow-born Richard Crosbie, the first Irish aeronaut. A humiliating change of wind direction led him to touch down in Powerstock, over ten miles further west of the Irish Sea than his launch site. Later Crosbie was fined for vandalising Dublin’s most popular eighteenth-century brothel - not, it seems, on moral grounds, but in a dispute over pricing.

  Stairway to Heaven: To the Next Level

  At our next session we make significant progress, and I am beginning to be won over by counselling. My pick-and-mix approach to the talking therapies may have been journalistically-based in origin, but Cognitive Behavioural Theory is a winner. Psychoanalysis provides me with better gag-making opportunities, yet conversely renders me rather sad, locked into an introspective mood after each session. The rusty locks have been forced open to reveal memory banks inaccessible for decades storing forgotten humiliations, rejections and disappointments. Do not underestimate the kick-back when you force open the lock on these emotions, as potent as striking minor chords to evoke instant sadness.

  In preparation for my balloon flight, I am ratcheting up my exposure theory. Several studies have shown that prolonged periods of exposure to the cause of an abstract fear is better for re-training my brain’s anxiety mechanism than short but frequent sessions. Gradually I am getting the faulty warning light to stop flickering on in my brain when I am really in no physical danger.

  The therapy revolves around exposing me to my fear, until the anxiety gradually dissipates. Hence I go with a friend and stand as close as I can to the edge of a banister with a drop of one floor below - only one floor, but it triggers acute panic in me. As close as I can get constitutes me hugging the wall. Discomfort does not diminish as I millimetre nearer to the edge.

  Then I try again. Reaching the edge of the banister repels me like a magnet, shooting me back to the nearest wall with a potent invisible force. Determined to persevere until I can do this, I discover that fear of public embarrassment is a strong motivator. John Cleese once remarked that Englishmen are determined to reach their graves unembarrassed, and if avoiding embarrassment means I have to accomplish something genuinely terrifying that my brain has miscoded, then given it’s an English brain it will always choose avoidance over potential embarrassment.

  I ask my counsellors if they have any visualisation techniques that may work, instead of me having to go to the edge. Quite correctly, Steve recognises me trying to initiate an avoidance te
chnique for my homework.

  My behavioural intervention strategy is not that pleasant, but like most medicine I make myself swallow it. I need to get better with heights, because at the moment an hour in a balloon floating 3,000 feet over Oxfordshire will not only ensure I scream with terror, but my behaviour will also rather ruin the experience of my fellow passengers who will have paid around £125 each.

  “How was your anxiety-eliciting stimulus affected?” asks Claire. I like the fact she doesn’t need to de-jargonise for me anymore. I interpret it as the compliment it’s meant to be. Her unspoken subtext I interpret as: “We know you’re smart enough to understand our technical psychological language. Just because you’re frightened of heights and experience manifested difficulties in going upstairs doesn’t mean we think you’re an idiot.”

  “How would life be better for you if you had no trouble negotiating stairs?” Claire asks me, signalling with a tonal change that we are back into the session. She’s wearing her counsellor’s game face again. I need to answer honestly, truthfully if this is going to help me. “I would feel less like a failed adult.” It would certainly be a start to gluing back together my shattered sense of masculinity. Claire and Steve continue incentivising me, regularly topping up my desire to reduce restrictive anxiety.

  Throughout my teenage years I suffered from OCD. Maybe I should save that revelation until I am world famous and I can sell the obligatory misery memoir to a publisher for the Christmas hardback biography market. Because that’s what people in this country appear to want for Christmas: overpriced, ghost written autobiographies about the rich and famous having an unpleasant time.

  Nowadays, in an increasingly psychologically literate nation, the acronym OCD doesn’t usually require explanation that it stands for: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. But I think it is only courteous to explain acronyms as otherwise it is an aggressive barrier to clear communication.

  There is a responsive prevention technique for sufferers. For example, an OCD sufferer imprisoned by perpetual hand washing rituals is told to touch the inside of a bin. Normally this would trigger acute anxiety and continued involuntarily ritualistic hand scrubbing. However, in a controlled environment, sufferers are told they cannot wash their hands.

  At the beginning this is only for a few minutes, but in later sessions it can be much longer. Initially sufferers will become so agitated they will sometimes cry. Yet, like the determination often required for physical improvement, there is no gain without pain. And sometimes no sane without pain either.

  After a while the substantial majority of acute OCD sufferers realise, no matter how unwillingly, that not washing their hands for twenty minutes after touching the inside of a dirty bin does not kill them. In fact, it has virtually no effect at all on their physical well-being. By repeatedly proving that the physical self is unharmed, the malfunctioning anxiety reluctantly learns to dissipate.

  It can be a slow learner, the amygdala, and frankly my amygdala, like most people’s, is a bit thick. The point is that germs in bins don’t tend to kill you. Cancer, heart attacks, high cholesterol, speeding cars and girlfriends who check your text messages tend to kill you. Yet having an abject anxiety-inducing phobia towards beer, burgers, fags and cars is surprisingly uncommon - given these represent actual sensible life-threatening factors.

  Behavioural intervention does help with stairs. If you avoid something, it is unlikely to get better - I’m pretty sure that works for most other things too. Avoiding the kitchen doesn’t mean the washing-up will get done.

  “I think we should encourage self-exposure,” says Steve. They ask me to log my exposure, and call it a “living with fear manual”. They set targets and we review them. I genuinely want to make progress as I feel a strong compulsion not to waste their time. I feel ridiculous standing at the bottom of steep, backless stairs and then making myself go up them repeatedly, edging closer to first- then second-floor landings with sheer drops below. But I know this has to be done to be cured, for me to become self-judged as “normal” - whatever that is - is a justifiable outcome whatever the methodology.

  Yet in situ on a stairwell the frightened panic does not wholly subside, although the volume level of anxiety becomes progressively turned-down after repeated exposure.

  One of the most useful insights counselling, and especially CBT, provided me with was the inoculation against awarding false credit for my successes. This was a destructive behaviour I had unwillingly and unknowingly been engaged in for years. Whenever I scooted up stairs with the pace and confidence of a teenager trying to reach their bedroom to slam the door after an argument with their parents, I was incorrectly attributing my successes to false circumstance: it wasn’t the scary type of stairs; it was because no one else was around; it was because they were wide, or shallow, or familiar, etc.; and an extra thousand etcs.

  So I do something that in the last decade has come to the rescue of everyone who is terrified of stairs or heights, that lets them stand around for no apparent reason without revealing they are temporarily paralysed by fear. I get out my phone. People seem to tolerate phone checking as acceptable behaviour wherever you are standing (well, with some exceptions: No Man’s Land next to an Israeli border being one example I learnt the hard way. Oh, and during sex, it turns out, is also frowned upon. Who knew?).

  Like a Victorian canal owner threatened by the arriving speedier railways, a psychoanalyst dismissed CBT in The Guardian in 2008 as “a quick fix for the soul”. Personally, my soul would be delighted with any quick fixes - the sooner anything sheds my anxieties and repressive irrational terrors, the better. Where the canals-superseded-by-railways analogy also works is with the comparison of past versus future in the two adopted counselling approaches I experienced. Psychoanalysis, by definition, conducts an autopsy on the past, promulgating that the past therefore informs the present. Yes, to an extent, it does - history may have already happened, but it does rather set our current circumstances. However, CBT focuses on where we spend all out time: the present. CBT focuses on current thinking models. Change the thinking, change the response, change the behaviour. Like the railways replacing the canals, CBT gets us to the same destination a lot quicker than going via the psychoanalytical route.

  Typically a handful of CBT sessions will suffice, whilst it is possible to die of natural causes before a psychoanalytic counsellor completes their theory. Cynics may argue that CBT’s inclusion on NHS treatment spreadsheets, and officially recognition in the NICE guidelines, is because of its cheapness. But cost-effectiveness is measured in the NHS not only by the patients seen, but also by the ones they don’t see because of mental health problems eradicated further upstream. NICE, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, officially endorses CBT, as well the policy that words beginning with “H” should be omitted from acronyms.

  Counselling requires inevitable adjustment for a shy and relatively retiring individual like me, neither experienced nor comfortable with discussing myself continuously. Callous experience of Jean-Paul Sartre’s hellish other people has shaped my belief that anyone speaking should be capped at thirty seconds. After thirty seconds, sometime else has a turn to speak, or signals you may continue. This avoids directionless, tedious monologues and conversation-hoggers scoring highly on the I-ometer (an imaginary machine I’ve invented for determining the ratio of I’s peppering an individual’s conversation). It also encourages an efficiency of language, and the pressure of thirty seconds should ensure that points are made quicker - rather than encouraging conversation monopolisers who prefer to take slow connecting trains to reach the point.

  Early on in my sessions I discovered that “so, what about you...” is not a permitted conversational direction in counselling. These questions are trumped by the higher suited cards that a counsellor can play, the ones which supersede my question about them, out-ranking me with a “and how do you feel about that?” Constant exposur
e to this sort of question is alien, though does not risk disenchantment or disenfranchisement with the medium as I desperately want to neutralise and shed anxiety from my life. That is always my focused motivation.

  Claire and Steve remind me of that, but crucially allow me to respond to the question: “what areas would you most like to deal with in this time?” Of course, some people love the indulgence of discussing the only subject that matters: themselves. But I don’t.

  Although it’s an accidental career choice, I have gigged many times as a stand-up comedian. Victoria Wood is a stand-up comedian too, only less accidental than me. Both of us, however, are equally shy people off stage. She told The Guardian in 2010: “But I think it’s not a paradox. Often these children who feel they don’t quite fit in, they’re not part of the group - I think a lot of very seemingly shy people have got this ability to connect with a group, rather than one-on-one.”

  Steve and Claire understand such self-contradictory cognitive dissonance. Most people, believe me, don’t.

  Soon any subconscious dissent towards counselling culture dissipates, and I slowly release the brakes on discussing my personal innermost feelings. After several sessions I discover this new-found freedom to articulate feelings and thoughts that I would previously ensure remained tightly sealed within my own head - inexpressible to anyone. Claire and Steve are equipped at getting these comments out of me, and after a while I no longer pretend that these raw personal insights can be dismissed as set-up for an inevitable punch line.

  As the jokes decline, the insights increase. Paramount in the process is the trust I feel in Steve and Claire’s presence, enabling me to express the formerly inexpressible. Rather than never inform another human being of my shaming inability to undergo the most basic of tasks without harbouring prickly anxiety, now my resistance to communicating these truths has evaporated.