That is not a metaphor. In the Blue Mountains, just west of Sydney, where many of my favourite people live, a light plane got into terrible trouble this afternoon and started spiralling towards the ground. And then it deployed its parachute. And it floated to the ground with no serious injuries and only a fence and the plane's tail as casualties.



My favourite part of the story is a quote regarding a chap at the Sydney Flying Club who was describing how the chutes are deployed and what the pilot would have done: He said it was most likely that Saturday afternoon would have been the first time this pilot would have ever used this system.

I think that is simply brilliant.