Fear of Flying…
[singlepic id=11 w=320 h=240 float=left] We’re off to England in a few weeks to attend our Grandson’s wedding; something we’ve been looking forward to all year. The only snag is – I’m not and never have been overly keen on flying. Mind you, I’m not nearly as bad as I used to be, say, ten or fifteen years ago – I was really nervous about flying in those days, so bad in fact, wedding or no wedding, I would have had a good try at talking Mrs. E into sailing over to England. The nearer we got to the airport the worse I would get. “Flying is safer than cars, bikes, motorcycles, and boats all put together” Lilian would say, “Just relax and don’t think about it.” It didn’t make one iota of difference; the mere thought of walking into an airport turned my stomach over. And it starts with the big sign as you drive up, the one that says, ‘TERMINAL’. I mean, that’s enough to put anyone off flying right there. I’d give anything to find out who the toss-pot is that came up with the bright idea to start your journey in a building with that ‘unfortunate’ name. I did always try my best to look calm and relaxed in front of Lilian though – the last thing I wanted was to spoil her holiday. Trouble was, no matter how hard I tried, the fear of flying got progressively worse as ‘take off time’ drew closer. Whilst Lilian sat reading her newspaper, I was doing my best to get an accurate count of how many passengers were going to be flying with us. Anything reaching the four or five hundred mark really bothered me. “Surely planes weren’t made to carry that amount of people,” I’d tell Lilian. “The airlines are getting greedier and greedier by the minute. Makes me wonder how this plane is going to get off the tarmac. I mean, just look at that fella over there, look at the size of the carry-on bag he’s got with him, it must weigh a ton, you could fit a grand piano in there.” And that’s how it was every single time we flew. But like I said, I’m not near as bad as I used to be. I’ve been patiently waiting for a response from Delta, I have written several times now asking them to confirm the rumor I heard that they are going to start providing parachutes. I didn’t mention that the rumor also says they’ll only be for first class, but if they do write back and say yes, I’m definitely buying stock in Delta immediately. I’m sure you will be interested to hear what they have to say about that one, so I’ll be sure to keep you posted if they ever get round to answering it. In the meantime, I’m bracing myself for another marathon flight [anything beyond one hour flight time is a marathon to me] and building up my resilience by watching over-edited movies on the Lifetime channel, eating over micro-waved TV dinners and allowing myself only half a can of Pepsi!
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