Unexpected consolations as the clock ticks on by
Country Living with Francis Farragher
The thought crossed my mind last week after a trip to Dublin Airport to see off a loved one heading for the bright lights of New Zealand, that I never will have to endure a 24-hour plus plane journey to the other side of the world.
There are certain no-nos that take a firm root in your mind as you grow older, and one of them definitely in that category, is in spending longer than a few hours high up in the clouds.
Even in the days of my youth, I was never a great fan of trusting in that airborne mass of steel and aluminium to keep me safe – with the palpitations always that bit worse at the points of take-off and touchdown.
Now, I know that the statistical risk of separating body and soul is far, far greater every time you sit behind your car steering wheel, but I’m never quite reassured about how a flying machine weighing anything between 100 and 200 tonnes can stay up in the sky.
A few years back on a family visiting mission to China, the return trip from Beijing to Heathrow seemed to last an eternity, with our time over Russia having a ‘never-ending’ feel to it. There are many items on the ‘blacklist’ as more mature years arrive, and recently having observed the dying embers of a stag party where a mixture of sleep deprivation, sheer exhaustion and too much of ‘The Demon’ had taken a huge toll on young bodies, I knew this also had slipped into the ‘never again’ category.
Not that there’s too much of a chance of an old fogey like myself being asked to join in with such a practice, but the sheer longevity of the so-called celebration sends a little shiver down my spine.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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