This is your Captain speaking...

Tomorrow morning at 7am I fly to Paris for our meetings.  OK fine, apart from the being picked up at 5.30am  part.  But this morning I took Django out for a walk in thick fog and started thinking "Oh no, what if it is like this tomorrow?".

You may already know that I am not a brilliant flyer. If the weather is fine, dry, perfect temperatures etc. and the pilot has a nice accent then it's not too bad, but if there are any negatives then I'm not too happy until we are safely on the ground. Well, the flying is fine, it's the landing that I hate.

So, if tomorrow morning is foggy again, but the airline is running the flight, would I refuse to fly?  Probably not.  After all, we trust the airline to know when the conditions are safe or not - they safely fly hundreds of trips a week after all.  

There have been psychological studies such as Milgram's which look at how we obey and trust authority figures, or even those we consider to be an authority figure. Likewise, we trust those we consider to be experts in their field - they know better than us. We trust doctors to know what they are doing, and we trust airlines to know when conditions are safe and when they aren't.  I can't understand people who complain because their flight was delayed due to bad weather or a technical difficulty. Would they rather die?

The other aspects which run through my head are - which airline is it?  is it a reputable one or a budget Sierra Leone one?  Once on the plane, what does the pilot sound like?  It's totally unreasonable, but we do judge people on their voices and accents when they are in charge of our lives, even though we don't have details of their skills.  I always feel safer when the pilot's name is Chris, simply because a previous 'Chris' managed the smoothest landing ever on a flight to Glasgow.

I do wonder though at what point I would miss a booked flight, through my choice. Would it depend on the reason for flying in the first place, and the importance of getting to the destination? or would it be down to things like some flights being cancelled and some not, and there being a general feeling of doubt in the air. And of course, whether I was in my home airport or half-way across the world.

And then there is always that nagging feeling that if I decided not to take a flight, people would be cross with me or laugh at me, or even worse be upset with me.

And that might be harder to take than the thought of a scary flight.

Flutterbies

I have butterflies. Great big fluttery ones.

Tomorrow I have the psychological assessment for the accident insurance and I am ridiculously nervous about it.  The only reason for this, I think, is that I have no idea what to expect. I'm scared of what his questions will be and how I will react to them.

Next weekend I go to Paris for three days for our annual international meeting.  "Fabulous!" everyone says, Paris in the Autumn.  But I'm not a big fan of large meetings (40+ delegates) anyway, and I'm worried about not being able to squirrel away on my own (but my GP says I have to make myself be sociable!). Also, apart from the Brits, most of them I haven't seen since the crash. I missed last year's meeting because of it, so I'm going to have to go through the 'how are you' rigmarole with them. Not that I blame them, it's just that sometimes I'd like to forget about it and be normal.

So, my anxiety levels are teetering, despite telling myself It Will Be Fine.

Sorry that I haven't written the promised blog posts, I haven't been in the right mood for it. So they may materialise or it may be something completely different!

"Lovely Lady? no, that's my wife"

Excuse me for sounding like a miserable cow, but what is the whole 'lovely lady' thing that seems to have sprung up on the internet and in texts?

"Happy Birthday lovely lady!"
"It was really good to see you yesterday, lovely lady".

Bleugh! It makes me cringe every time I see it.

There are a couple of girls I know who use it, and when they call me that I want to scream "aaghh don't CALL me that, it makes me want to vomit!"

I just wanted to say that, thank you.

Bones

Just a quick one to say I've just updated the x-ray page with the pics from March and September for anyone who's interested. Progress is good!

Spot's Spot : what season is it?

Hello, Django here, sorry I've not posted for a while but I've been busy... er... sleeping and stuff. Oh and, you know, inspecting the garden and being really important.

It's been seriously hot here the last few days and yet getting dark at 7.30pm - it's all wrong!  I'm terribly confused, one minute it's autumn and the next it's mid-summer. Still, it's nice to get some extra sunbathing in...

I went to the office today but it was too warm, even though they put the fan on for me.  So I was a bit fidgety, I think Mum got a bit annoyed, oops.  I like it better there in the winter when the heater is on, then I'm happy just to sleep in front of it.

I've been promised an early walk tomorrow because it's going to be hot again, so I'd better get to bed - I need my beauty sleep you know!

Bye for now,
Django x

Help....

Aaagghhh I have so many things I want to blog about!!

• Courts and judges
• Rambler Cottage and To Kill a Mockingbird
• Over-medicating
• Old people and the fear in their eyes
• Politeness
• Proactive rather than reactive

Ohhhhhh - you choose!

Change of track

I was going to write a sociological blog post entitled "Criminal Court or Theatre Stage?" but instead I spent the evening making Quince Jelly, walking Django round the field in the dark, and on the phone to Mr H for 55 minutes because I was feeling down and needed to talk to him.

In between I also managed to eat re-heated lasagne (always best on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th nights) and watch Doc Martin on ITVplayer.

Tomorrow I am going out socialising, a pretty rare event for me! Our sailing club is holding a Scalextric evening which sounded like fun, so Mr H was sent to get our box of cars out of the loft last time he was home. I might even treat myself to eating out while I'm there, and will hope not to let down the fairer sex with my performance on the track (it's been too many years since I last played).

So, I might get back to criminological discussions later in the week, if I can remember what it was I was going  to say...

What's your car called? and are you sorry?

Anthropomorphism, for those of you who don't already know, includes the bestowing of a human personality on a non-human thing eg. an object or animal.

We all do it all the time, without even thinking about it. We swear at inanimate objects which won't co-operate - just like I almost did at my watch which was clacking on the side of the laptop until I threw it off in annoyance.  We expect our animals to understand when we've had a hard day at work, and why we don't want them dragging their water-dribbling mouths across our study books.   We name our cars (well, sometimes) and talk to birds and plants as if they understand what we're saying.

We often don't understand why others react in situations differently from how we would react.   'How could they have done that?' 'Oh my goodness what possessed her to buy that coat'.  'Look at the way that idiot man is driving' 'That woman was so rude'.   We attribute other people with our own values and beliefs and assume everybody thinks the same way, but they don't.  I suppose we think that our way of seeing the world is the right way, so people who don't are somehow inferior.

Today I heard on the news a judge describe a murderer as displaying an "extraordinary and chilling lack of remorse". Oh really?

Reading the news story, Andrew Lindo strikes me as having psychopathic tendencies or similar.  None of his behaviour was that of a 'normal' human being - from the double life, to the murder to the huge lies he told to family and friends.  Yet the judge was surprised that he showed no remorse?  Did he expect Lindo to turn round and say "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to do it"?  Did he really think it extraordinary that he did not?

Is it realistic to expect a psychopath to show remorse - I suspect not.  By definition, a psychopath does not have the same social values or way of thinking as the average person. Why then do we expect them to suddenly react like an average person?

Is that not the same as expecting a dog to apologise for coming in without wiping his feet?