A British parachutist has had a miraculous escape from splattery death after temporarily forgetting all about the thing he had strapped to his back.
James Boole, a skydiver with twelve years' experience, was filming another jumper in Russia for a TV documentary. He tumbled 6,000ft in freefall, only remembering to open his parachute moments before slamming into a snow-capped mountain at more than 100mph. Mr Boole has since been shipped home, encased in concrete from the neck down.
"It's my partner's fault for signalling too late," explained the veteran of more than two thousand jumps. "I was completely engrossed in looking through the camera viewfinder, and although it did seem a bit funny when I saw fir branches going by, I hadn't had a signal from the idiot I was filming."
"I did think he was coming down a bit slowly," Mr Foole went on. "So I thought about it for a while. 'It must be all the drag from that big funny umbrella thing he's hanging from,' I decided eventually. Then I noticed he was making the sign of the cross, which seemed a bit odd, so I thought I'd better look it up in my Parachutist's Big Book of Signals. I opened my backpack, and to my great surprise a load of multicoloured silk burst out. 'Oh bugger,' I said to myself, 'I must have picked up somebody else's backpack by mistake.' Then I hit a snowdrift."
"The camera's a complete write-off, according to my X-rays," he added. "I reckon my stupid so-called mate owes me a bit more than an apology."
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