I ain't getting on no plane! (From Stroud News and Journal)

I ain't getting on no plane!

BY the time you read this I should be half way across the Sinai Desert - if I have made it to the plane that is.

As I sit here in cozy, familiar surroundings it is not the thought of the intense desert heat or the knee-grinding descent of Mount Sinai that sends a shiver down my spine nor even the thought that I will have to manage without a gin and tonic for eight days; it is prospect of having to sit in a metal tube shooting across the sky at a height of 30,000 ft that has me quaking at the knees.

People who know me are surprised at my fear of flying and I am pretty surprised at myself.

I am a sensible woman and I know with absolute certainty that people are killed far less frequently in plane crashes than they are on the roads. I am perfectly happy to step into a car but terrified in an aircraft.

From the moment the plane starts moving along the runway my knuckles go white, my heart races and I am oblivious to everything around me except the expressions on the faces of the cabin crew, which I scrutinise every moment for signs of worry or distress. And I am not happy again until we are taxing safely into the terminal at the other end.

I can think of no explanation for this phobia. I know of no-one in my very long life who has had their lives remotely touched by an aircrash and I have flown thousands and thousands of miles myself without the slightest mishap.

Even more reassuring in a complex kind of way is the fact that the last air disaster I know of was at the very airport to which I am flying, so it must be the turn of somewhere else now.

Yet when I arrive at Gatwick I will need several stiff drinks before I am capable of getting even as far as the departure lounge. The desert will be a doddle after that.