In fact I must have been losing consciousness. Then an almighty jolt brought me back to my senses. It was as if a huge hand had arrested me in mid air. The thump knocked the breath out of my lungs, and I was still spinning, but much more slowly. It took me a few seconds to realise that the auto-release had fired my main chute, and that I was descending more slowly, in a sitting position.

Instinctively I reached up and pulled on the webbing strops to test the reaction. Something wrong: a rough, grating feeling, too much resistance. Glancing up, I saw from the outline of the chute against the stars that the canopy was lopsided. Instead of being rectangular, it was all sharp angles. The rigging lines had tangled round each other in the spin. Instead of working down to a position just above my head, the spreader bar had become jammed in the twisted ropes.

Because it wasn’t properly deployed, the chute started spinning as well, winding me around like a fairground ride. But by then, thank God, my mind was back to normal. I saw my options clearly. I was descending much too fast. If I couldn’t free the main chute in the next few seconds I’d have to cut it away and deploy my reserve. Also I’d have to ditch my bergen, because its weight was too great for the reserve chute to support.

I held the strops and started giving violent twists, turning my body hard to the left. The third jolt did the trick. Above me there was a hefty smack as the chute deployed fully, then a twitch came down the lines. When I next looked up, the spreader bar had slid down to its proper place and everything was back to normal. I took a few deep breaths, thanked my lucky stars and turned my attention to the ground.

As far as I could tell, I was little the worse. My eyes felt funny and my face was glowing red hot, but nothing was broken. My breathing was OK, vision fair. There was the Firefly, away to my left. Because of the spin I’d drifted several hundred metres off my heading.

I’d just started steering back towards the DZ when I became aware of someone else flying in dangerously close to me. What the hell was he doing?

‘Piss off, you stupid git!’ I shouted. Still he came at me, slanting in.

Belatedly I realised that, now that we were under canopy, the others should already be on comms. I switched on my set and immediately heard guys coming up to check in: ‘Seven, roger . . . Eight, roger.’ Then Whinger was saying, ‘Come in, One. One, are you OK?’

With a jab on my pressel switch I said sharply, ‘One, roger. I’m all right. And I’d be even better if some cunt hadn’t flown into me. Now get off the air.’