Like many other people my fancy has me able to fly. Where I differ from others is that this presents me with real problems. Being of a retiring nature, I don’t want it known that I have this unique ability. The very last thing I want is to be famous: to become public property and, as you may imagine, it is a difficult thing to keep such a secret. I can tell no-one not even my wife. Flying in the daytime was at first out of the question. One might perhaps wear clothing that concealed ones identity but where would one keep these clothes. If kept at home, their discovery would surely give the game away. If kept elsewhere and found, they would probably be replaced in their hiding place and a close watch kept. One could fly high enough to escape recognition but there is always the problem of leaving and returning to the ground. Even if one could choose a remote launch area, one would find oneself shadowed by cars as one returned there. Since I do quite a bit of walking to keep my weight and my cholesterol levels down, it was not hard to make excuse to go out walking after dark. My taste in T.V. programs differs markedly from the rest of the family and my, " I think I’ll go for a walk," occasions no comment. Although the business area of Waitara has young people on the street often into the early hours of the morning, it is possible to walk for considerable distances over a number of nights in other parts and see nobody at all. But even then one must be careful. One can never be sure that someone does not just happen to be looking out of the window of a darkened house and the same take-off and landing point cannot be used too often. The recent proliferation of street lights in the town has placed a severe restriction on the places available. It was fortunate that my fancy came to the rescue and gave me the ability to make myself invisible. I could then fly both day and night. Flying at night is rather nice, the sprinkling of house and street lights below is quite beautiful, but daytime flying has it beaten. The keeping it from my wife remains a problem. Her,“Where have you been?” requires a careful though honest answer. My religious views do not allow even the so-called white lie. Then I went and created further difficulties for myself. It has been a worry to me to see Waitara gradually going downhill. It is unlikely that any large industry will ever again be established again in the district. I thought that perhaps I could help the town. Attract some tourists. So I appeared, suitably muffled up, hovering above the town-clock and roundabout during the annual Christmas parade. It wasn’t the astonishment of the crowd that I was after, and they certainly were astonished, but the camera of the local Channel 7 which I knew would be covering the event. I floated up Mclean Street at a speed which allowed some others equipped with video cameras to keep pace with me. At The Copper Kettle, I rose into the clouds. The Channel 7 coverage and some amateur footage appeared on the major channels that evening and thereafter world-wide. Waitara was on the world map. There was an immediate response from the New Zealand Sceptics Society. ‘Anything could be done with photography these days,’ they said. ‘Christopher Reeves could fly as Superman, Robin Williams as Peter Pan. They had long had a standing offer of a thousand dollars for anyone who could demonstrate levitation. Nobody ever had. They would hold a meeting in Waitara and challenged the Waitara flying man to put in an appearance. They knew that he wouldn’t.’ It was only then that I realised what I had let myself in for. Tourists would come to Waitara expecting to see the flying man and be disappointed if they did not. But I could not keep appearing. To show a card trick while your audience keeps saying, “Show us again,” inevitably leads to them seeing how it’s done. To keep appearing for tourists must eventually lead to my being identified. And I wouldn’t live forever. So what to do? My fancy came to my aid again and did so on the very evening before the Sceptics meeting. They had hired the Memorial Hall and reissued their challenge in The Daily News and in The Angle. My fancy was now allowing me to levitate things other than myself and have them stay aloft. This solved the problem of having something apparently miraculous always available for people to see.. I had not given up my evening ‘walks’ and went down to eastern side of the river mouth making myself invisible on the metal road approaching the Surf-Club building. I raised one of the huge stones that have been deposited on that side of the river and conveyed it to the Memorial Hall leaving it suspended several metres above the grass median strip and directly opposite the Hall door. It would be absolutely immovable to anyone but myself. I was not the first on the scene next morning to see members of the Sceptics Society arrive. There was no point in being obvious. News of the stone was already all over town and quite a crowd had gathered. It was almost comical the way that the society’s members managed to enter the hall without in any way acknowledging the presence of the stone. They later crowed, with little justification, that the fictional flying man had not appeared to meet their challenge. That is not the end of it. The tourists have come and with them improved prosperity. The Catholic Church has bought the premises until recently occupied by Sharrock Motors with the idea of demolishing the existing building and erecting a centre for the relief of pilgrims. Pilgrims are something that I hadn’t expected in the present age but there are pilgrims. I am not sure what connection the stone could have with Christianity but there are certainly many people of different persuasions who consider the stone to be a bona fide miracle. Some even pray before the stone which is the last thing I would have wanted. There is no way that I can disabuse them. What has particularly upset me is the sudden rash of self-appointed prophets several of whom take bare-faced credit for levitating the stone while loudly discrediting the same claim by rivals. But all of them use the stone as proof of their personal predictions. Why my fancy dreamed them up I am unable to say. Te Atiawa also became involved particularly once it became obvious that profits were being made. A flying stone had, apparently, long figured in local Maori legend and this was obviously the very stone. It was sacred to the tribe, their treasure. Any profit gained from it should go to them not to the Pakeha who had already taken everything else anyway. It is difficult to disprove the provenance of a legend even one created for a specific purpose as recently as the day before. Soon there was a court case pending. But not anymore. Some younger Maori, unwilling to await its outcome, decided to tow the stone up to the Owae Marae during the night, possession being nine tenths of the law. They could hardly have done this unnoticed. The stone was now floodlit at night. They found that it could not be moved which is what my fancy had decided. The roar of the engine of the four wheel drive with which they were attempting to shift the stone brought numerous calls to the police who arrived well after the culprits had left. Deep tire ruts on the grass median strip were all that there was to show for their efforts. But they were known. A meeting of the town’s business people led to the appointment of a night watchman for the stone to thwart any future attempts. My fancy had another, and it thought better, idea At the river entrance are some massive concrete blocks apparently there to encourage scouring. No way could one of them be incorporated into legend. I floated one of them up to the Memorial Hall, pushed aside the stone and replaced it with the block. There was nothing that the poor watchman could do about it. I was invisible. I took the stone up to the Owae Marae. They wanted it , they could have it. I was tempted to let it drop through the roof of the meeting house but thought better of it. That would really be getting nasty I left it sitting in the middle of the driveway right in the entry. I almost made it immovable but thought better of that too. So if you visit Waitara wearing my fancy, you’ll be pestered by hordes of doomsday prophets. I apologize for that. But you’ll also find the levitated block across from the Memorial Hall doors. If I’d thought of it sooner, I’d have put it a bit higher to get it out of the reach of graffiti artists.