Don't tell John!

From Richard & Judy today:

As a new series of Air Crash Investigations begins on Wednesday night, we ask how safe is it to travel by air? Air safety expert and journalist Andrew Weir says that you are 12 times more likely to die in a plane than in a car and that travelling by road or train is actually far safer than flying.

Goodness... this is BAD news!

In October 2003 on our way to Ireland for our summer (well autumn really) holidays John asked me 'If you could choose any country in the world to live would you choose Scotland?' Of course maybe I should do some scene-setting first! It was pooring down with rain, the roads were wet, the hills invisible through the fog, the windows all steamed up and it was only beginning of October. So.. after about half a second deliberation I said 'well ... it is gorgeous here but the weather DOES get to me, when we are old and grey I would love to live somewhere warm part of the year, winter in Spain or something'.

Man..... life did sort of take over after that.. it is scary sometimes how John and I take an idea and project manage it through to conclusion (as they would say at the Big American Company I work for :-)).

We went to a 'want to buy a house overseas' fair and decided that Almeria would be the best region for us to buy in. It is the cheapest area (well, was at the time anyway) and it is the hottest and driest area in the winter which of course was why we wanted to buy there anyway.
Tiny bit of detail was that it is a BIT far away.. like 4 days drive far away. (3000 km)

Lovely of these 'buy a house here' things is that the agents get SO much commission that you can go for an inspection trip for close to nothing (100 quid per person for 3 days in luxury hotel etc all meals paid etc.) But of course.. flying would be involved....

John had a bit of a fobia for flying, like sheer panic. Luckily the idea that he could save a lot of money by buying a house in Spain sooner rather than later convinced him to try it. And, I am happy to say that now after about 5 visits to the house we eventually bought, the fear of flying is at a do-able level.

You know this trick about asking someone who is panicking to give the feeling a number? First time we went it was about a constant 9, last time it hovered around 2 with maybe a 5 when taking off :)

The main thing that convinced John that flying though was not as scary as he thought was because all scientists kept saying that it is a lot more dangerous to drive a car than to fly and now this

Anyway.. with a bit of luck I can steer the TV away from this series :-)

And... found something interesting when I was fooling around... try and put 'Tanja Gommers' in Google and press the 'Im feeling lucky' button. Now... how COOL is that!!