Last month, 30,000 feet over Wales, a remarkable thing happened to me: I stopped being afraid of flying. My fear just suddenly and instantly evaporated, like the pain from a burst abscess. One moment I was sitting there with a jittery, feathery stomach, and the next moment I was as comfortable as a cat on a plush duvet. And what's more, I think the change is permanent: I don't think I'll ever be afraid of flying again.
Why did the fear go away? I could probably make a fortune in self-help courses, or maybe even start my own religion, if I knew the answer to this question. But unfortunately I don't. Or not exactly.
To begin with, I'm not even sure why I was afraid of flying in the first place. I always knew that flying was the safest form of transport, and that taking a train was more dangerous, and driving and walking more dangerous again, and so on. I was also aware of how statistically unlikely an accident was, and how well-built and well-maintained aeroplanes are, and how they can fly with only one engine, and all that kind of stuff. It's just that none of it seemed relevant when I was hurtling through the air in a thin aluminium tube at five hundred miles an hour.
Maybe one unsettling thing was that flying is such a big deal. Hopping onto a plane isn't exactly like hopping onto a bus. Booking weeks in advance, passports, checking in, security checks: all this should in theory make me feel more reassured, but instead it just made me feel more nervous. It was as if everyone was saying: You're on the front line now. Don't mess up. One mistake and everything goes Boom.
And then there was the simple fact that I was unused to flying and all the trappings that went with it. Things like the constant boom of the engines, the odd wobble of turbulence, the occasional bottomless feeling you get in your stomach, the way the wings sometimes seem to flap: all of these really disturbed me on my first few flights, until I realised they were normal. Seasoned air-travellers probably don't even notice them.
One thing that really made me appreciate flying was thinking about the alternatives. The alternative to flying home, as I discovered last Christmas, is a 20-hour Eurostar/coach/ferry nightmare. The longest and worst part of this is the all-night coach journey, in which the only relief from the cramped seating is to stroll around lifeless truck-stops with names like Port William and Kipper's Bush where they sell you cans of Coke for 1.99. And when you're not trying and failing to sleep on the most unaccomodating surfaces imaginable, and picking up at least three infectious diseases from the hacking and coughing and snot-ridden other passengers, you're stressing out about making the next connection, which is by no means a certainity. Compared with all this, it's such a relief to step on a plane and have the whole journey over with in two hours. No matter how scary you think it's going to be.
Another thing that struck me on my last flight was the wonder of it all. Whereas on previous flights I had the feeling we only stayed in the air from one moment to the next through sheer coincidence, this time I believed in flying, and was tremendously impressed. What a feat of science and engineering a plane is! And isn't it brilliant that people can fly? We can fly through the air, godammit! It's something mankind has dreamt of for thousands of years, and now we can do it! Thinking thoughts like these, I was actually able to follow the captain's instructions, and 'sit back and enjoy the flight' for the first time. For the first time, I actually liked the sensation of floating on air, almost to the point of wanting the flight to last a bit longer. Whereas before I thought that anyone who enjoyed flights must be a little insane, now I looked across at the people who had their heads buried in pillows and thought they looked pathetic.
There are drawbacks to having no fear of flying, though. One is that I've stopped talking on planes. On my first few flights, to take my mind off being in mid-air, I used to babble incessantly to whoever was sitting next to me. I met some pretty interesting people in this way. But now I just sit on a plane like people sit on a bus: silently and avoiding eye-contact. If only it didn't take adversity to bring people closer together.
The other drawback? Well now that mid-flight glass of red wine seems just a little bit gratuitous.