No more flights of passion for me

The South Place Ethical Society, where Lamb's Conduit Passage debouches into Red Lion Square: a disshevelled figure lurches into view, shouting cheerly. An Ethical Man? No; he is too exuberant and altogether the wrong shape. Ethical Men are thin and bald, with a bicycle. This man is a Holborn Drunk, waving his can of Tennant's like a monstrance. His jaunty Santa bobble-hat is sticking straight up, like a Tenniel engraving, defying gravity and the work ethic; his smashed, grubby face is split into a huge grin; he looks like one of the lucky drunks, gone through the horrors and come out the other side, beyond therapy and beyond the need of it. He is cruising blotto to the grave, and in this weather, the coldest week for 30 years, it will not be a long journey; but at the moment he's plastered, enjoying the ride.

"Well do you hear them?" he calls out to anyone who'll listen; "D'you hear the voices? Here they are again!"

Two men with sleek, generous overcoats and sleek, mean faces - lawyers, to judge from their enormous briefcases - purse their mouths and huddle deeper into their respectability.

"They keep reminding me I haven't paid my income tax!" He laughs and gestures towards me with his beer can, like a celebrant. "Do you hear them?" he says. "Go on, then. Do you?"

"Voices? Yes," I say.

"It's the cold weather," says the drunk. "It brings them out! They're saying 'Forget it! You've had your chips! Never mind!' "

Well, so they are. One of them, one of the voices, came through on the Internet only this morning: did I know that the Federal Aviation Authority has more or less put a stop to aircraft flying over the Grand Canyon? I didn't know, but I had been thinking about the Grand Canyon because yesterday a man rang me up from Lake Tahoe to sell me a watch.

"My name's Bob," he said. "I read a column you wrote theother week, saying you were yearning for a Ulysse Nardin GMT 1 watch. I can do you a very good deal, 40 cents in the dollar. Interested?"

"Yes, I might be."

"I'll put you on to my ... assistant, then."

A voice came on the line and 10 years rolled away. It was a woman with whom, jet-lagged and hopeless, I had fallen in love in Las Vegas. You know how it is with women. You can't just hope they'll like you; you have to impress them; you have to do things. I sneaked off at first light the morning after I met her, down to McCarran International Airport. Found a man who would rent me a little Cessna, took a check-ride, booked the plane for the next day.

That evening, she avoided me, being businesslike, dressed to the nines, working the room, schmoozing the suits whose throats she'd be after when the convention was over. At 4am I cornered her in the company suite. "There's this guy," she said, "and he's just asked me to marry him. I said yes, just to wind him up." "Come flying," I said. "Tomorrow. Come to the Grand Canyon." I can do things, you see; I can fly aeroplanes; I have a Rolex and a gold American Express card; I may turn out to be lovable.

We sat in the tiny aeroplane as it grumbled hopefully along: me at the controls and she beside me in the cramped cabin, scruffy and sleepy and self-contained in her jeans and ratty old sweatshirt, 10,000ft above the Canyon floor. Her life was in my hands. I felt manly, elated, impossibly afraid.

We barely spoke. I didn't dare to hold her hand. We flew for two hours above the January snow with the planet to ourselves; there were occasional roads, but nothing moving. I couldn't find Grand Canyon airport at the end, until I saw a little Lear Jet sweep round ahead of me, and followed him in. We parked by a snowdrift, and crunched and stamped our way into the terminal building, deserted under a heavy grey sky. I bought a torch and a packet of cigarettes; we had a cup of coffee and I filled the tanks, then we set off again.

I followed the Grand Canyon back towards Las Vegas. After a while, I said: "Do you want to have a go?" She said: "Yes." I started to explain what to do, but she said: "I've been watching you," took the controls and flew perfectly while I looked down at the snow-covered rocks and loved her.

"I've got to be back," she said; "I'm having dinner with someone."

"Who?" I asked. She didn't answer.

I realised I didn't know where we were. "Where's the Canyon gone?" I said. I had lost it. It was too big.

I flew a compass heading for a while, and presently, in the dusk, I called up Las Vegas Approach. "Cleared to descend," the controller said, so we began a gentle drift downwards towards the distant neon flare of the city.

"What's that shadow?" she said.

I peered into the night; there was a patch of extra darkness ahead, like an inexplicable ink blot, between us and Las Vegas, and one by one the city lights were going out. It was a mountain, between us and our destination. Full power, and we climbed over the mountain before descending safely into Las Vegas. I circled once, passing along the neon Strip at rooftop height, and landed.

It was all there, a sort of rehearsal, but when it came to the real thing my luck ran out. We were together for a year but then ... well, I lost it. It was just too big. We steered a compass course, blindly, for another year but in the end we flew into the shadow and lacked the determination and the power to climb out. This time there was no neon at the end, no warm runway; just a cold summer of shouting and weeping.

She's living in Nevada now, with a nice man, and Bob is their friend. Maybe I'll buy the watch, but I already know the time: it's another cold January day, 10 years on, and the voices are saying, the rules have been changed. I won't make that flight again. They're saying what they always say: "Forget it! You've had your chips! Never mind!" !