I’ve been quiet on the blogging front since last week.
That’s because I flew over the sea and faraway on a weekend holiday with my family. Which turned into a week holiday, but that’s another story.
Of course to get there and back I had to fly a big scary aeroplane over the big blue sea. You know, I don’t think that I’ve ever actually written that word before. Is it ‘aeroplane’ or ‘airplane’? According to my non-American heritage, (which in itself is another tricky word to spell) it should be the former.
To get distracted for a moment, which I seem to do often, I was reading a book on the whatever-a-plane rather appropriate to this topic: ‘I before E except after C: Old school ways to remember stuff‘ by Judy Parkinson. An interesting read, although I didn’t necessarily find the hundreds of mnemonics for remembering spelling particularly useful (eg. ‘Argument’ = A Rude Girl Undresses, My Eyes Need Taping’). However, the clearly English author refers to the acronym ‘All Engines Running Okay’ as a means of remembering the spelling of ‘aeroplane’, which I think is actually quite useful, although I still failed to recall it when writing the above paragraph.
Anyway, there’s some science in here somewhere.
It all comes back to my current obsession. Yes, you’re onto it. The TV show ‘Air Crash Investigation‘. A former lover of flying, with several years backpacking experience, I am saddened that I have now entered the club of ‘anxious flyers’. I think this is ageing. (Another tricky word to spell, incidentally. Is there an ‘e’ in there or not?). Previously I was happy cruising at 30000 feet, reveling in my independence, and taste for adventure. Now that I’m just a few years older, I’m over all that, and I tend to ask myself ‘exactly how is this plane staying up in the air’?
And so the anxiety set in. The plane trunddled towards the start of the runway (is it long/smooth enough?), preparing for take off (are the wing flaps extended?), and I held my breath. The winds jostled the plane from side to side as it accelerated down the runway, ready to flip over at a misplaced rock on the runway or loner seagull in the engine. My heart beat faster, my palms sweated unnaturally, and I felt nauseous.
But then we were airbourne. The sun setting in the distance case a yellow glow across the pincushion clouds below us that stretched into eternity. No wonder long-ago explorers did not believe that the world was round. We were alone up there. Looking down, I saw the shadow of the plane cast onto the clouds, and a rainbow created an arc between each wing. I wished that ‘all electronic devices did not have to be switched off’, as I would’ve taken that Kodak Moment image, exemplifying the physics of chromatic aberration. As we came into land, I could see the near-invisible stream of air shooting behind us, formed by the difference in air flow across different parts of the wing. (I just learnt that these are not ‘jet streams‘ as I would assume, but rather ‘wing vortices‘).
I have to admit I felt a small thrill. The High Ride Is Loving Life.
Neural Culture 