Scratch

Here you will find older scratches, musings and other detritus that once were located on the front pages, but have now faded.

Filed away here to collect dust and cobwwwebs in perpetuity, links may break, facts may change and data may corrupt.

On occasion I may come down here to tidy, but for the most, I prefer to leave the past where it lies.

 

Work Trips

I had originally intended to write about business trips and freebies, or rather my relative lack of them of late - and no, free mouse mats or stress balls do not count. Unfortunately this intention was hijacked by the reality that the events themselves are never as much 'fun' or eventiful as compared to the getting there and back.

For other conference or shows, I've enjoyed the few hours on the train taking in the English countryside and the relative freedom of being non-contactable should I so desire, or perhaps at least not having to deal with things hands on. Mondays trip to Glasgow however, meant no relaxed leisurely jaunt on the train, no this would require taking to the skies.

I have never been particularly keen on flying and this is probably a combination of four main factors. First, my fear of heights. Secondly, a dislike of not being in control of a vehicle travelling very fast. Thirdly, and to a lesser degree, my dislike of enclosed spaces, and fourthly, my fear of plummiting from the sky in a inferno-engulfed twisted tin can, before decelerating from (at best) 120 mph to 0 almost instantenously, having spread my constituent parts over a wide geographic area.

Even as I sit and type this now, the thought of flying is enough to be making my palms sweat. As a child, I was sick and then retched with fear for not just the flight, but the hours on either side of my trip to Miami, which from London, is a lot of retching. When I wasn't retching, I briefly slept and then nearly managed to wake up from a nightmare, but not before I had screamed that the pilot was going to kill everyone. Whilst not being as effective as Phoebe's revelation about the 'left philange', I suspect I may have raised anxiety levels and only the fact my plane was in mid-air prevented people getting off whilst they changed the pilot. On a recent trip to Rome, I would have held my partners hand but the shakes and the sweats made it quite unpleasant, for her not so much me. But I digress.

Sitting on the runway, trying to keep myself occupied by maintaining a grasp on my iShuffle which kept slipping through my sweating palms, I began to wonder just how random my playlist was, and every time I pressed next, my nervousness raised slightly. Living on a Prayer, Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space, I Know It's Over, Dancing Queen... and so on and so forth... I went to my bag and pulled out my current book which I had been in that bag for a week or two - The Death of Forever. Its at times like these I wish I had planned ahead and listened to some inoffensive audio book, say Miss Marple does some Gardening, perhaps packed a Dilbert book. Perhaps even packed some paperwork, that always seems to have a coma inducing effect.

I think its probably all in my head. Statistically your more likely to get knocked down by a bus, and in my case thats certainly more feasible. Perhaps I just need to not worry about something I can't change.

Perhaps I just need to remember to have a stiff drink beforehand.

12 Jul 2005 19:15 | (0) comments | Things

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