Why the ginger nuts ?

I can understand that pork scratchings contain all the necessary nutrients for a balanced balloon diet (got to have something to get it back down), but ginger nuts ? What's good in those ?

Better to have brought cashews, in my opinion. Try it next time with cashews, and I'm sure you'll go farther.

Gordon Bennett

The competition and the expression derive from the same guy - see

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/gordon-bennett.html

Also, maybe we need another entry in El Reg's english dictionary for ginger nuts - for Brits, that's a kind of biscuit.

Get some sleep!

Quote from the pilot's blog: "This basket is cramped. It's four ft by four ft, smaller than the size of most people's dining rooms"

This suggests there are sub 4' x 4' dining rooms out there. Anybody seen one? Maybe he meant to say dining tables. I don't think he's getting much sleep up there...

In passing

"while surviving on a typically British diet of pork scratchings and ginger nuts"

Over the course of x days, one assumes that the pork scratchings and ginger nuts have to be expelled. Glad I'm not standing anywhere under his line of flight.