A head in the clouds - literally

Well readers, I’ve only gone and done it . . . I’m finally a fully qualified pilot, writes blogger Emma Suddaby.

Two years after winning a flying scholarship, and making it my mission to earn a national private pilot’s licence, I have, with lots of help from lots of different people, done it!

We’re always hearing how tough life is for disabled people, and it is, but it also helps me see the good side of other people more often than most.

Pilot training isn’t easy. It’s tough mentally, especially if, like me, you have the maths capability of a three-year-old, and so little navigational skill that finding my way off a slip road on the M5 has ended in disaster more than once.

It’s tough physically, in terms of co-ordination, stamina and concentration, and it’s tough emotionally too. A roller-coaster of highs and lows padded out with nervous excitement.

But without the help of so many, I’d never even have got started. The flying scholarship gave me 35 hours of flight tuition at prestigious Goodwood Aero-Club with all the books and equipment I needed to get me through all those exams.

Best of all, it gave me the advice and support of the staff at Goodwood and those involved with Flying Scholarships for the Disabled.

I finished my training with Herefordshire AeroClub, at Shobdon near Leominster, where my flying instructor Al invented various gadgets and gizmos for me to use on cockpit controls I couldn’t manage, like the bulldog clip he adapted in such a way that I could use it to turn the ignition key . . . and it’s amazing what can be done with rubber-tipped pencils (pressing buttons), rubber thimbles (turning dials) and sticky-backed velcro (everything else!).

Then there are all the kind strangers who’ve helped me carry my equipment to the aircraft, wordlessly picking up everything I’ve dropped along the way, too, and those who’ve let me climb in while they put their backs into turning the aeroplane around for me.

And the family and friends, who’ve taken care of the nitty-gritty details of my life so I could go off and concentrate on something as selfish as learning to fly - and let’s not forget my surgeons who held off all the surgery I require for a whole year to give me the time I needed, free of stitches or limbs in plaster, to qualify.

Training as a pilot started off as a quest to prove my independence. I wanted to show everyone that I may struggle with doing-up the buttons on my coat, but that hasn’t stopped me from learning to fly an aeroplane.

But now I can fly that aeroplane, what I really learnt along the way is that the only person who was bothered about whether I could do-up those buttons or not, was me.

And in the end the human race showed me something, not the other way around.

We’re more used to hearing of the murkier side of human nature, but let me assure you, the world is full of amazingly kind, thoughtful and generous human beings.

I love my life but it wouldn’t be half as busy or contented without the random acts of kindness strangers show me every day.

• Inspirational Emma Suddaby shares her ” highs, lows - and various murky places inbetween” - with her blog. Emma, a finalist in the 2007 Shropshire Star Woman of the Year competition, was diagnosed with aggressive, destructive rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 22. She later won a dream flying scholarship with the charity Flying Scholarships for the Disabled and now holds a National Private Pilot’s Licence.