WHAT’S your excuse? Mine is that my legs are too short. Surprisingly, this works for most situations. With their links to unfinished homework and shirked responsibilities, excuses sure do get a bad press.

I guess they just don’t have access to the kind of PR team that made reasons the poster child for fact-based motivation.

You have reason on your side, you can convince the world your gumsy chihuahua really does hunger for 60-page dissertations. Float an excuse, though, and expect to drown in ridicule. And the only difference I can see is the right spin. Bear in mind though, I suffer selective short-sightedness.

Across my most difficult decades, one excuse or another formed the basis of my coping strategy for life. Sickness, rigor mortis, I’ve even faked a car crash to escape a particularly pressured presentation. In the world of social anxiety, excuses are a hard ally to beat. Throughout our friendship, I’ve come to recognise their selflessness, taking the blame for our every failing and the lead on our escape. And during this week’s adventure, I witnessed the friendliest side of excuses yet, as I left reason behind and joined a flying trapeze lesson.

For this child of the 1980s, The Briggait in Glasgow will always hold memories of being dragged of a weekend to source wool and other sundries from one of the shopping centres various short-lived outlets. But for a child of the 1880s, the original establishment probably evoked more olfactory memories than my own.

Built as a fish market in 1873, it still stands as a Grade A listed monument to the city’s watery past, only, in its most recent incarnation, as a hub for art and culture, you’re more likely to find soul than sole within its walls. One thing it has retained, though, is the type of temperature control that only dead trout and hardy circus types can bear. Fortunately, I was spending the morning with the much more fragrant latter.

On arrival, instructor, Stewart, welcomed me to the circle of electric heaters known as reception, from which the scale of operations of Aerial Edge, Glasgow’s Circus School, can be admired.

The company was established in 2007, with the overarching purpose of teaching circus skills and training to anyone mad enough to want them. And, you know what, a fair bunch of us fit the descriptors.

Now open every week night and weekend, Aerial Edge holds courses of a variety only normally found in life’s spice rack. So whether it’s acrobatics, aerial or fitness you’re after, running away to join the circus has never been easier – and you can still be home for tea. The beginners’ flying trapeze class began with the kind of warm-up that comes from the mind of someone who has spent a long stretch of their day upside down. The Flash Gordon warm-up involves running around on mats to the appropriate theme tune, until the eponymous hero’s name is called and you do a pathetic handstand or star-jump or just giggle yourself to warmth. Well, that’s what my version involved.

Led by Stewart and his colleagues, Ross and Scott, the three regular students and I were soon wearing safety belts and, one at a time, climbing the rig to the narrow platform. First, of course, there was a quick chance to practise the basic manoeuvres on a trapeze bar low enough to allow the pretence that you wouldn’t do significant damage to a hardy cranium if the worse were to happen. But the instructions were clear and every move happened with such pace that there was no time for any but the basest of instincts to register anyway so any concern was confined to the retrospective.

Standing, with wobblier legs than I’ll freely admit atop the scaffolding, being hooked up to safety lines, I wondered briefly if maybe this was time I really should have made my excuses... then Stewart handed me the bar, up went the ready call and, suddenly, I was stepping into nothingness with only a panicked inner ear for company.

My arms stupidly bent, my reactions slower than a cat in custard, I somehow stumbled my way through my first “hocks off” trick and landed, more or less gracefully, to encouraging applause from the rest of the group. Being very at one with my inner monkey, I’ve always loved a good swing, and the sensation of flying trapeze is more than just that. Throw a banana into the cooldown and this chimp would have lost her simian mind. Faster than I could say “after you”, my turn at the top came back around and I was once again getting my hocks off in a room full of strangers.

The progression with flying trapeze, though, is as speedy as the ride itself, and soon Ross was perched on the opposite platform, ready to attempt to catch this flightless bird. Even though I was hanging from my knees and throwing myself through the air towards the hands of a blurry instructor, I never for a second felt unsafe, knowing, as I did, that there were three sets of well-trained eyes fixed on my progress. There are no clowns in this circus troupe and my classmates were wiser than the average penny too.

Throughout the session, Cate, Jeni and Melanie provided tips and demonstrations, not only of the art of beginners’ trapeze but also of the absolute joy of just spending time learning something new and, let’s face it, slightly comical with people that make you laugh until you let go.

While circus skills were the dish of the day, the real nourishment came from the excuse they provided for spending time with friends.

And surely no reason can beat that.

Take on your own aerial adventure with aerialedge.co.uk