Air travel is evil. I am sure of it. We're all being told how heavy a toll it takes on the environment and travel anyhow. Because it's cheap, because we want or need to travel. Living in the northern part of a long and thin and actually very long and thin island (aka the UK) while my family and friends live far enough to make other forms but air travel a real pain in the buttocks, I feel I have at least some sort of a right to occasional trips up high.

That doesn't mean I like it.

I've mentioned this before so won't bore you, but the usual double take of the water of life that gets me through panic attacks at take off and landing are out presently for obvious reasons, so things aren't easy. I was pleasantly surprised though at the lovely sunny day for take off at Prestwick and looking forward to a nice and soft hop across the channel.

Until the pilot attempted to land and failed.

Suddenly all the horror stories of Ryanair are in my mind. Lack of security, untrained pilots, pilots who may not be pilots at all, drunk pilots, rubbish planes, no fuel. And more. At the end of the day, to be fair, it was more the tail of the tornado that ripped through London and was having an away day at Weeze airport just as the plane I happened to be on attempted to land. At that moment, the plane was quite clearly not under anything that would deserve the term of "control" and whoosh, almost touching the tarmac with one wing, up we went again. My heart racing, visions of the day of judgement, I have to admit I even prayed. About two litres of sweat later and half an hour of testing hypnobirthing techniques for relaxations (if they take that long during labour they are rubbish), visions of starting panic induced early labour etc, I was ready to face the unpleasant truth that we would have to try landing again.

We did. Cartside and cubling are still alive. However, I need to fly back on Wednesday. Not a happy camper.