Phobias

[Dr Lobster*]

do any of you guys and gals have any irrational phobias?

what really gets your knickers in a knot?

for me it's flying.

i'm not a great fan of spiders and crabs but it's not debilitating - it can pick them up if needed and i'm not a proper nutter that has to disassemble their bedroom to catch a spider that's run under the bed.

but flying fills me with dread. more so recently.

i've been on a plane several times now, once on long haul (to jamaica, about a 10 hour flight).

i know in my head flying is very safe. all the time planes are taking off and landing without incident, thousands of times a day all over the world.

but, the feeling of horror of knowing that the plane you're on is going to crash is something i keep thinking about. i've got a foreign holiday booked for this year (a spanish island jobbie so only a couple of hours), but i keep thinking about it. i can't in truth be arsed with hypnosis or the like as i know that when it comes to it, i'll just get on the plane have a couple of beers and be happy. but it does bug me in a kind of cold sweat at 2 in the morning kind of way.

what fills your boots with terror?

[cdd]

Death boxes, also known as lifts. As the friend who has witnessed me walk up 30 flights of stairs in an american hotel will testify. (I eventually managed to get a room on the third floor, which is just as well really!)

I used to be terrified of wasps too until I was stung by one last year. You might say it kind of took the sting out of it.

Not flying, which is odd given my lift phobia.

[marksi]

I don't like flying, but given the number of times that I have to travel from Belfast to other parts of the UK for work, I just get on with it. I do try and reduce the number of flights to a minimum to save money, primarily, but also simply so that I don't have to do it.

But recently I have decided that I'm slightly agrophobic. Not that I'm scared to go outside, but that I always want to know how and when I'm getting back home, even when there's no rush. This is particularly true when I am somewhere I'm not familiar with, and it doesn't even matter if I'm enjoying myself wherever I am - in my head I'm always working out how and when I will be able to get back to my house.

[Nick Harvey]

I'm definitely not into wasps.

My other one is an odd version of the flying thing. I don't like to be the passenger in anything where I can't see the driver or pilot. I'm okay in a little, two seater, plane where I'm up the front with the pilot and can see he hasn't died yet, but I'm useless on a passenger plane where the pilot's locked away up the front and might have died of food poisoning half an hour ago. Similarly, I can do downstairs on a bus, where I can see through to the driver, but don't put me upstairs where I can't see him. The same applies to any other form of transport; I just need to see the person in control of the thing, otherwise I'm a nervous wreck.

Oh, and waiting. The older I get, the more I get uneasy in waiting rooms. It's probably been brought on by hospital waiting rooms in recent years but I now get very uneasy in any waiting room, even waiting for something which will be nice at the end of it.

[Gavin Scott]

Age does seem to increase my aversions to some things. Spiders, wasps - creepy crawlies in general make me squeamish in a way I wasn't before.

Funnily enough I don't mind flying. I think I'm comfortable with the notion that, should it go down, I'll be dead very quickly. Besides, I fall asleep on planes the minute the door closes. Seriously. Sometimes asleep before it takes off.

Will be one a flight in 10 days, so will report back (provided we don't crash and due, naturally) on how I feel.

Heights though - they scare me. I can get over it if I'm strapped into a roller-coaster (and I will be in 10 days, woo!), but not if I'm in a high building, or the balcony of a large theatre. I don't have this compulsion to throw myself over the edge (which I've heard people say, and can't get my head around) - I'm more inclined to grab onto something solid and not move a muscle.

Very embarrassing when I went to see Victoria Wood years ago and got a seat in the balcony. I went for a pee mid-show, and when I got back I had to go down the steps on my bum to get to my aisle.

I got more laughs than she did in that moment.

[Alexia]

Wasps

Dead animals on the pavement

Heights (like Gavin almost) -- I can walk over a footbridge over a motorway, but I can't go on a high ride or climb up long ladders. Did manage to go on the London Eye though, and love walking along clifftops.

[Beep]

Death boxes, also known as lifts. As the friend who has witnessed me walk up 30 flights of stairs in an american hotel will testify. (I eventually managed to get a room on the third floor, which is just as well really!)
.

I agree there. If there is no clear route of escape I panic. Maybe it's because of all the horror stories I have read about lifts before. I once used the stairs to get to the 2nd level of the Eifel Tower. Sadly there was a lift only to the top so I just remained on the second level.

[dosxuk]

I have a fear of heights, which is odd considering the number of times I have to go up wobbly ladders as part of my day job, and the amount of times I've spent sitting on roofs in the past (while working again). But it really kicks in on high / wobbly bridges - the bridge at the top of the Royal Armouries in Leeds is almost impossible for me to cross without closing my eyes and running, and I think the singing bridge in the Science Museum was designed specifically to torture me, especially when there's kids jumping up and down in the middle to get the good sounds.

I also have an almighty hatred of the sound of fingernails on a blackboard.

Probably a good job that none of you were on my flight out to Athens for the Olympics, on our way into land, getting a bit bumpy as we cross the coast (literally minutes from landing), the little kid two rows up from us decided to unbuckle his seat and start running up and down the aisle screaming "we're all going to die!". Think one of the stewardesses grabbed him in the end and forced him into a empty seat just in time for landing.

[Gavin Scott]

Wasps

Dead animals on the pavement

Heights (like Gavin almost) -- I can walk over a footbridge over a motorway, but I can't go on a high ride or climb up long ladders. Did manage to go on the London Eye though, and love walking along clifftops.

Been browsing the net to see what new rides are in Disney/Universal in Florida, and there's some ludicrous 200ft plummet coaster. I'll do it, although the long clicky-clack ride to the top of these things is unbearable. Apparently I'm quite the screamer once it gets going, and I usually rush back to the queue again, pushing the young and enfeebled out of my way. The speed and the loops feel great.

But I tried some ride years ago in San Diego which was like a circular viewing platform that rose to the top of a pole hundreds of feet up, and just hung there for about 10 minutes.

I might have pooped a little, if memory serves.

[Critique]

Gavin, you would have hated a ride I went on in Spain a few years ago. You sat in a cage and were spun at at pivot upside down and in the air. Then, at one point the ride hangs, upside down, rather high up, and stays there for 30 seconds. It then 'let go' and you come spinning back down.

[Gavin Scott]

I would have hated that ride.