I walk home two miles from school every day. After a long hard day working with sixty or so three year olds for five hours of my day, I do find the walk home tiring. But at the same time, it gives me the time to think, time to myself that I can wander into without having to do anything else.

Today, I don't know what got me thinking about it, I guess remembering it being mentioned on the news yesterday, I was thinking about Stephen Hilder. For those who do not know who he is, he was the young skydiver who was killed a few months ago when his parachute failed to open.

He was twenty, my age. Someone had cut the cords on both the main and reserve lines, rendering the parachute he was wearing when he jumped from the aeroplane to be a deathtrap.

It's horrifying, the thought nearly making me sick to my stomach when I think how he must have felt, what was going through his head as he realised he was plummetting to his death, travelling at terminal velocity. How those last seconds of his life probably seemed like an eternity, waiting for the inevitable death.

How would I cope, how would you cope if you knew you were going to die in thirty seconds, an incredibly painful death, and there was nothing you could do about it? What would you think about? Would you think? Would you try and block it out? Would you pray one last time? It's a hard question to answer, one that hopefully none of us would have to realise, to find an actual answer to.

But it goes to show that you can't predict what's going to happen from one day to the next. Stephen Hilder thought he was doing just another skydive, that he was going to land safely and carry on his life where he left off on land.

Until the moment he pulled that cord and nothing happened.

My deepest sympathy to his family and friends, and here's hoping they find his murderer and gain some kind of closure.