As other travellers do, no doubt, I ruminate on all the potential problems that might sabotage the two of us and leave our carefully-planned trips in ruins. Of course if we thought there was a serious chance of all these mishaps occurring, we wouldn't book the trips in the first place. But I remain a sunny optimist who assumes such hitches are most unlikely.
That assumption is borne out by experience. Although we've flown all over the place, including Australia, the USA and Canada, my baggage has never so far been lost. It went astray once returning to Belfast, but was found and delivered to me the next day.
I did once go down with food poisoning on a trip to Australia. A very unpleasant experience. But it wasn't due to the airline food. I just happened to be sitting next to the one other person on the plane with food poisoning, and we deduced that the culprit was an egg sandwich from Costa at Heathrow.
I've never been thrown off a plane because of technical problems. My flight has never been diverted to some far-flung airport. I've never been hijacked. I've never experienced an engine fire. I've never had a drunken pilot on board (as far as I know). I've never been caught in severe turbulence. Virtually all my flights have been remarkably uneventful and routine.
Hopefully that luck will continue. I have great confidence that my plane will stay safely 35,000 feet in the air and I can happily watch rubbishy movies or snooze without any sudden mid-air crisis to disturb me.
The fact is that planes are astonishingly safe. I'm 86 times more likely to die in a car than in a plane. So why worry?
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I won't be blogging for a while. But don't worry, I'll be back in due course! In the meantime, talk among yourselves....
