I used to be terrified of flying. I'm not sure if it started as a child when I landed in Perth in a horrendous thunderstorm. Or when we did an emergency landing in Abu Dhabi and my mother slept through it and denies all knowledge to this day. Or possibly it was my Dad as our jumbo chugged along the runway on the edge of a cliff at Auckland airport, chuckling, 'I'm not sure we're going to make this!'
Who knows? Anyway, what I did a lot as a child became a huge problem for me as I hit teenage years. Julie will remember me chatting up American businessmen at the age of 15 to distract myself from take off. Katy and Aly will have not particularly fond memories of me hanging out until the seatbelt sign went off as we went to Greece and we legged it to the back of the plane for a fag (remember those days)? My fail safe solution to flying, (and possibly to everything ever), was always to become completely legless before getting on a plane. In fact, Katy and Aly will again remember a trip to Skiathos in our twenties which has the most ridiculously short runway that we had to go around twice to land on on the way out. On the way back I was worried we wouldn't make it into the air, (they were weighing our luggage - to be honest, I think there were some fat people they should have been weighing too if it was that tight), and so I downed a bottle of vodka at about 8am. That is pushing it, even for me. The key to getting shitfaced on flights is doing it at the right moment. There is that nasty pause between boarding the plane and the drinks trolley coming around to you, where you want to be nicely pissed but not a blithering idiot. I've not always managed that balance so well.
I was in Turkey when September 11th happened. Not a great combination for a fuckwit like me. I remember talking to my Dad on a payphone and explaining, (quite rationally I thought), that I would just find a little boat and come home that way. See you in a few weeks then. At great expense, over a period of a number of days, he managed to talk me around to getting on the plane. It was not pretty and I'll leave that one there.
I had a rather disastrous trip to New Zealand where my poor parents had treated Stu and I to first class flights with them. I knew I would be scared so I responsibly went to the doctor and got a stock of valium in order to cope. I didn't read the 'no alcohol with valium' rule however, and cheerfully popped the pills and drank the plane dry of Dom Perignon on the first leg, leaving me on a hideous and collectively painful come down from Hong Kong to Auckland. Oops.
When I had Zak, I decided that the time had come to become a responsible adult and do something about this so that I didn't pass it down to the next generation. I did a BA fear of flying course at Heathrow that was amazing; cost a fortune, but was worth every penny. You spend the morning with pilots finding out the mechanics of planes. They related everything to driving which worked a treat for me, as, being such a control freak, the fact that when it sounds as if they have turned the engines off is just the same as you taking your foot off the accelerator a bit made perfect sense. The afternoon was spent with psychotherapists who explained in detail the nature of phobias. It was hilarious to see how many people sheepishly put their hands up to admit that they had checked the weather a million times that morning (there was a flight at the end of the day).
It worked! It really did. For a few years I flew without fear and looked forward to holidays without the dread associated with having to get there first. I went to Las Vegas for Shell's hen do. I remember as we went through a rather serious bump of turbulence over the Atlantic, Aly looking at me on that flight, and then looking again to check that I was still reading my magazine and drinking my glass of wine rather than digging my nails in to her and screaming. I flew in a six seater jet from Luton to Exeter and was fine. Nana was with us at the time and at the age of 90 she managed to get on with it so I thought that I probably should too.
I know nearly as much about flying now as most cabin crew. I had Sam, (who is also normally a little bit aviophobic), in fits of laughter last night as I told her that it was so ridiculous that you were statistically more likely to be kicked to death by a donkey than die in an air crash, even if you didn't spend your life with donkeys! It should put it into perspective.
I read 'THE' fear of flying book in one sitting today. I'm not cured. Apparently there is a lot of mental rehearsal that needs to be done before I will be. Something to do with memorising song lyrics. I'm not convinced. I'm obviously not helping myself as my immediate thought was 'what the hell use are memorised song lyrics when your plane is crashing?' Hmmmmm. I'm fully away that I'm my own worst enemy. This flight anxiety is probably only a small piece in the jigsaw at the moment but it is the easiest thing to focus on.
Fingers crossed. By that I mean, fingers crossed I actually head to the airport on Wednesday and don't go via Dover and a massive unnecessary bank loan. I'm hoping that the public 'outing' might shame me into getting on the plane on Wednesday, rather than publishing random pictures from France without a location on. Let's see. I'm promising nothing but am fully aware of the cock that I will be if I don't make it to Greece. Thanks for listening.
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