To Fly Or Not To Fly…
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As a kid I hated needles, snakes, heights and flying in that order. As an adult I was forced to find a way to overcome my fear of flying and needles but I'm still pretty phobic about snakes and heights. Back then I'd run a mile if I saw a doctor or nurse coming at me with a needle. I'd have to be cajoled, bribed and finally held down while the doctor attempted to take blood or administer medicine and avoid my flailing arms and bucking legs at the same time. My aunt told me once that I'd change my mind about receiving an injection one day when I was in real pain. I laughed her off saying no way Hose but she was right. It took a car hitting me at approx. 80 miles an hour for me to truly appreciate a needle in my vein and I can honestly say having spent years in and out of hospital since that fateful night you could stick me for 24 hours solid and I'd barely notice. I say this with confidence because having extremely poor veins over the years the various medics I've encountered especially junior doctors have spent pretty much day and night trying to get one vile of blood, freaking out, sweating buckets and tagging one another until eventually a nurse usually in her fifties got pissed off and did it herself. And here's a tip from me to you the reader of my nonsense, nurse's who have been around the block are usually the best at taking blood. They have a diviner's sense about where that one good vein. The really good ones are in and out in seconds, they have a plaster slapped on before you know it and with a smile or a nod they usually say something cheerful to send you on your way. One or two of these ladies mentioned in passing that although I suffered with weak veins at least I'd never make a heroin addict so every cloud….
I don't know when I first decided that I couldn't bear snakes but it was early. I was a big fan of the zoo and so maybe it was there in that rank smelling dark creepy moist house which was home to the fattest longest ungodliest thing I've ever seen(Insert mental sexual innuendo here). Or maybe it was before I'd ventured to that rank smelling dark creepy moist zoo house, maybe it was when my first teacher told me that the reason we'd all been kicked out of paradise was because a snake had tempted Adam and Eve. We could have had it all Sneaky little bastard. One of my uncles lived in a desert in America for a while in the 80's. He returned home with the skin of a rattle snake for my foster brother Denis, charmingly the rattle was still attached so he spent an entire evening chasing me with it. That definitely didn't help. My uncle mentioned he'd skinned the snake himself and ate the meat which of course tasted like chicken. I couldn't look a chicken for about six months but than again that could have something to do with my aunt chasing my foster sister Brenda and I around the kitchen with a bag of red bottle tops she pretended were chicken guts, in or around the time my uncle had returned from the desert with the already mentioned rattle snake skin. Brenda woke up screaming two days after the bottle top incident believing that a raw skinned chicken was hanging from her curtains. I was too hung up on the rattle snake which was nailed to the wall next door to my bedroom to worry about hanging chickens. Because I live in Ireland, snakes have no medicinal purposes and you can't use them for transport I will probably go to my grave phobic about snakes and that's OK with me.
Heights are a bigger problem. I suffer from vertigo. The higher I go the worse my vertigo gets. I have tried to cure myself of the problem by forcing myself to walk up stairs or steps or get on the lift that took me to the top of the sky tower or empire state building just because every dog and their duck said "you've got to see the view". The problem is that once I get up there I never see the view because my body becomes independent of my mind. My mind says all is well, look at the view Anna, isn't it lovely. My body says hit the deck, face on the floor, hands cup back of neck, rock a little, curl in a ball, basically behave as though you are a mental patient on a day time television show. My pal Hallie and I went to see Leonard Cohen play in The Royal Albert Hall last year. We walked up the stairs to take our seats and when we got to our section I realised I was in the Gods. I forced myself into the seat. Hal kept saying "let's just leave" because apparently I was becoming paler than one of Michael Jackson's kids. I decided I'd be fine until my hands started to shake and I realised that my eyes would not open. I swear to God it was as though they were glued shut. Hal decided this was definitely not the way that I should experience Leonard Cohen so she got an usher to help her move the crazy lady in ailse G unfortunately this crazy lady couldn't get out of the seat and walk instead I had to crawl on my hands and knees with my eyes screwed shut and follow the sound of my best pal's cackle. I've been on clifftops in Italy and hugged the walls, I've swam in rooftop pools and never ventured near the side. I've had meetings in skyscrapers and kept my eyes on the desk, floor or person in front of me at all times. I tried and tried and I will probably never get over my phobia of heights, it's a pain but it's a fact.
When I started flying first I was petrified. I felt physically ill. My hands became clammy and my skin crawled. When the doors closed my chest tightened and I could hear my heartbeat in my ear. I wanted to run but my legs refused to move. I wanted to scream but my voice was gone. I was frozen with fear. That's what petrification is and it's bloody awful. In my twenties I got drunk every time I flew. I would go to the airport an hour or two early and shove as many gin's down my gullet as was possible within the time frame I had given myself. I'd go onto the plane drunk as a skunk and I'd proceed to order as many drinks as the air hostess was willing to give me. I'd fall off the plane and depending on who I was with because I would never have flown alone I'd either be carried or wheeled off on one of those luggage thingy bobs through the airport and to the other side where I'd usually have to be sobered up with a tank of water or coffee or my head plunged into a sink of water before we ventured further. When we travelled to New Zealand as a family to attend my foster brother Denis' wedding I was in such a bad way my uncle plied me with so much wine that I ended up drinking at least two bottles from LA to Auckland that wouldn't have been so bad if my foster sister hadn't given me a pretty strong 'valium'. The first time I met my NZ in-laws I swayed through customs with a red wine stained mouth and slurred the words, "lovely to greet ya," before seeking directions to a place deemed appropriate to vomit. After that incident it became clear that I had to find another way to deal with my problem. Flying is unavoidable so I gritted my teeth, meditated, sang the song 'kum ba ya' in my head and finally after too many flights to count I found myself able to breath comfortably. I still grip the seat a little too tightly on take off and landing but for the most part frustration has replaced fear. The airport itself is now more daunting than climbing inside a metal bird. Having to deal with those stupid rules about the 50ml bottles because apparently you can't make a bomb with 50ml of regular old shampoo but you might just swing it with 100ml is pretty annoying. The requirement to practically strip off and then redress standing over a grey bucket with some crabby half naked dude try to push you and your bucket off the conveyor belt thingy with his oversized laptop while your still only one boot on, irks a bit. The necessity to display your passport and ticket 9000 times and of course the 90 mile hike from security to the plane culminating in paying approximately €20 for a coffee at the gate café which the airport staff refuse to allow you to bring on board is less than endearing. I've had expensive perfume, conditioner, tweezers and a bottle of Evian confiscated from me going from Dublin to Kerry and that hurt. And here's another tip for you security people don't like Macgyver jokes .
Flying is one of my least favourite things but I was coping and then came the ash cloud. I began to fret again. Two of my flights to London were cancelled and one I cancelled myself because there was no way I was going to be one of the first one's up there when the skies had just reopened. I did fly to France last weekend and I was on edge but luckily I was so exhausted by the onset of this new fear that I slept through it. I tried to pretend I was OK on the way back but that old familiar crawling feeling was slowly returning. We were flying Ryanair and it was the first time I'd flown Ryanair since I'd had to get shitfaced to get on a flight so basically France was my first time flying Ryanair. We arrived in Beauvais at 9pm for a flight leaving at 9:50pm and skipped through the customs delighted having had a fantastic weekend (See last week's blog). At 9:30pm we were told the flight was delayed leaving Dublin. At 10:00pm we were told that we'd be updated in 20 minutes because if the flight didn't leave before that time we couldn't fly out of Beauvais because Beauvais is a no fly zone after midnight. Of course the flight didn't take off and just after they turned off the landing lights it was announced that our plane had been redirected to Lille, we'd be bused there and flown out at approximately 5am. They gave us yoga mats and blankets and that should have been our first clue that we were going nowhere. We chose to sit in the bar area and stay awake which was a good thing because around 3:30am my pal heard a whisper that there was no plane and those who didn't want a refund would be forced to stay in Paris for two more days in an approved Ryanair hotel (Oh the humanity) before they could be flown home. At 4am we were on a bus to Paris and at 5am we were standing on a street hailing down the only taxi for miles while other sleepy passengers descended on us like zombies. I remember screaming to my pal Joanne 'Just go, go, go.' At 7:30 am we were sitting on an Air France flight headed for Dublin. We were 800.00 quid poorer but we were high on adrenaline. The nightmare that was our Ryanair experience kept us chatting throughout the flight and it was only when I reached terra firma that I realised I hadn't been petrified. Frustration beat fear. So thanks Ryanair. I'd rather catch a nasty case of the clap then fly with you again but credit where credit's due, you saved me from myself and now forever more I'll save myself from you.
