Running, cycling, flying - phobias!

This morning at the local market I ran into someone I taught about forty years ago. She was a pupil at the first school I worked at. We quite often run into each other, often almost literally. As a rule she is running in one direction and I in the other and so we only have time for a quick panted hullo. She runs a lot faster than I do. She regularly runs marathons while I do a gentle jog round the village and back. My running is like my swimming - rather slow but it gets me there in the end.

Today neither of us was running and we were both in civilian clothes. It's probably a wonder we recognised each other. So we stopped on the corner of the street and caught up on what we have both been up to. She told me about her holidays in France, saying that I and a friend of mine, another of her former teachers, would have been proud of her for managing conversations in French!

She also told me about cycling up the Mont Ventoux, often one of the more challenging mountain stages in the Tour de France. This was where Tom Simpson collapsed and died during a stage of the Tour in 1967, probably as a result of taking amphetamines. As you can imagine I was seriously impressed that she and her husband, both of whom must have turned fifty, had made it to the top, albeit not so fast as the Tour riders! She said that the descent was perhaps harder than going up: certainly more scary. By the time she got down, her hands were cramped from frequently gripping the brakes and they had to cool the brake blocks down by pouring water on them.

I have been up the Mont Ventoux, not on a bicycle, I hasten to add, but by car, walking the very last section. It must be one of the bleakest places in Europe but the views are fantastic on a clear day. The day Lyn, my former pupil, went up the temperature was 37 degrees. I was even more impressed. Mind you, she and her husband do a lot of this sort of thing, running and cycling all over the place. 

She also told me of her fear of flying. Apparently, who has cycled up and, more scarily, down the Mont Ventoux, she goes into total panic mode just getting onto a plane. Various members of her family have tried to cure her of this phobia, to no avail. They have given up on her. She and her husband now drive everywhere, making the journey a part of the holiday.

Fear of flying is an odd thing. It was triggered in a friend of mine by 9-11. After that he would never consider flying anywhere. But for some people it is an irrational, innate fear. Lyn told me that she is continually annoyed with herself for being irrational but there it is.

Another friend has a daughter with the same kind of fear. On one occasion, after several years of holidaying always in UK destinations, he booked a family holiday in Mallorca. After some discussion with the flying-phobic daughter it was agreed that her grandmother would accompany them to the airport and, should she still panic when she got on the plane, the daughter would be escorted back to grandma in the departures lounge. The airline staff agreed to this. The daughter tried her best, for she really wanted a holiday in the sun, but her fear was too great. She went back to grandma while her siblings went off for a holiday in Mallorca.

My fears are much more rational, I think. I simply refuse to go on roller coasters, which I regard as much less reliable and trustworthy than planes. As for flying, I enjoy the whole business, especially if I get a window seat!