Pauline Starwoman, Psychic Oracle

One of my work colleagues had a sick day this week. Nothing remarkable about that at all... except that it was due to crashing his own plane. That's a more interesting reason for not going to work than a head cold. (Plane and pilot were both all right, by the way.)

Anyway, I had dinner with my mother tonight and we were talking about this accident and she told me about her own Flight Of Fear. We lived in central Australia for a few years when I was little, flying in and out of Alice Springs airport in a small plane with twenty-odd seats. So one day she got on the plane first and picked her favourite seat, the removable one near the cargo hold that had the most leg room. She was sitting there very pleased with the world, when she was overcome with the feeling that something wasn't quite right. "I couldn't explain it. I just thought, I can't sit here, something's wrong. It's dangerous."

Now, I know what you're thinking, because it's what I was thinking: she got off the plane and it crashed and there were no survivors. Well... no.

What did happen was this: she moved a couple of rows away; another woman got the good seat, and when the plane took off, the seat collapsed and the woman fell head first into the aisle.

"Was she hurt?"

"Oh, no. But we all laughed, and she was very embarrassed. And it could have been me." Manic laughter.