Flying. Clouds like a field of cotton wool below. Hills dotted with toy-houses. Forests patchworked with sugar-cane fields. Coal-stacks small as pepper pots. Past thunderstorms piled on top of each other like tired puppies.

Betwixt and between, leaving and arriving, going and coming. A strange, soaring limbo at hundreds of miles an hour.

35 000 feet. I wait for that strange settled moment in motion. That strange peacefulness. I feel anchored, secure, home, in this little seat 500km from the ground. As far as Joburg is from Durban.

This is my place. After the early morning wake up and the misty drive to the airport. After the almost-missed check-in thanks to Joburg traffic. This is my resting place, where things stop for a moment and I can take a breathe and read a book and have a quiet glass of wine.

While  a pilot I’ve never met flies me through these foreign, familiar every changing skies.