I'm quite prepared to accept the statistics that show that air travel is safer than driving, crossing the road, hanging wallpaper and combing your hair. You know what I mean.
Until I moved to Ireland I had never flown in an aeroplane. Even now I've only flown three times. There's an impression of safety that one gets though. I know that planes crash occasionally, killing hundreds of people but it's removed somehow. It's something that happens a long way away and is only seen on the news.
On Thursday a plane crashed while trying to land in fog at Cork Airport, which is about five minutes brisk walk from the Airport Business Park where I work. I think I maybe even heard it happen. There were 12 people on board the place, six of whom survived. Two of them walked away from it, miraculously. Everyone I spoke with in our building was very upset and shaken by it. Having something like this happen so close to you brings home somehow just how quickly things can go wrong. My deepest sympathies to the families and friends of those who weren't lucky.
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My daughter's office was in Tavistock Square when the bomb on the bus went off; she'd travelled in by bus that morning. If you're not personally affected by something that devastates others, you don't feel a right to take it personally, but it does get to you. So sudden and random, it makes one conscious and appreciative of life.
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