On a wing and a prayer....

[Joe Chi Minh]

Here's an amusing snippet from (atheist) Suzanne Moore's page in today's Mail on Sunday:

"Yes, I have read the reassuring articles following the Madrid crash, about how safe flying is. They are sane and sensible but never get to the irrationality of our fear of flying.

The combination of claustrophobia, anxiety and increasingly enforced passivity is what really does us in.

Once, on a place that had a fault and had to turn around and land back in Dublin, a woman next to me got out her rosary beads, which wasn't exactly helpful.

When we did land safely we were told to stay in our seats until the engineers could clear us for take-off. I stood up and said I wasn't going anywhere on this plane, expecting my fellow-passengers to back me.

I was told to be quiet and everyone looked at me as if I had some sort of technical fault, while they carried on quietly weeping and praying."