So, today I grapple with the fear of flying in aeroplanes. A few weeks ago I underwent a day of aeroplane conditioning. Having gone to Heathrow and sat in a hotel conference room directly beneath the flight path of a thousand jets crumbling the fabric of creation with their titan screaming, I got on a plane with a clutch of pscyhologists from Harley street, some excess pilots and over a hundred neurotic, psychotic, like-emotioned members of the public.

So that was ok, 45 minutes on a plane for the sake of it, nice day and lots of exhortations recalling the importance of breathing and squeezing buttocks to allay the stress. However, a flight to Malaga takes 2 hours 50 minutes, which by my calculations is more than 3 times as much hanging in the ether than on my therapeutic flying experience. Still I've got the tape to listen to and the train to Malaga is about two days...