My reactions are getting worse and worse. Booked to see a specialist sometime soon. Last surprise was that apples could garotte me.
I grew up in an apple orchard, in fact the house was called Orchard Villa. I ate apples from the time the buds fattened, to when they were huge and wrapped in paper for Christmas. Why now?
It seems they're sprayed with stuff from hell to keep them on the trees. Then they're gassed - for weeks. Then they're probably injected by a dæmonic creature so as to kill old blokes. I made the last one up cos I like using diphthongs, but anyway, a week ago I opened a supermarket packet and washed one apple. Not enough it seems. I'd cut it into segments, and topped and tailed each piece cos the ends is where the chemicals might congregate. In a moment, my throat closed around the part-munched pieces and stopped me breathing, and moaning my fate. Being good in a crisis, I knew the air I'd got was going to give me one go. Suffice it to say, I covered half the kitchen floor in debris. I then spent the rest of the day with swollen tonsil roots and a feeling of being predisposed to hunting down folk with an AK47 that poison food. Ba
tards.
Last full reaction was to Mr Muscle. Blue light job and this time, all the readings to my GP. At last he finally believed me.
These reactions can be so bad it's as though two guys with baseball bats broke into your house and set about you. Nothing you can do to stop going down, and out. You get better quicker I suppose. If you survive.
My first one, as mentioned above, happened after I'd finished flying. Good job, I might just have found myself on the flight-deck with a lovely bloke who was similarly affected by peanuts. The two of us writhing about foaming would have been a somewhat misleading puzzle. Him affected by someone who did not believe, and would ignore rules anyway. There was the recent case of the peanut eater, defying all the pleas not to consume nuts on that flight. The vulnerable child was four rows ahead of the nut-eater, but still she was poll-axed by the mist of particles in the air. It was touch and go whether she survived.
It was a famous case, world-wide news, but what was important was the father of a lovely family himself, allowed the defiant munching of peanuts by one of his own. Didn't he care? How could a moment of utterly self-indulgent disregard risk the life of a child? Beats me.
Crews not fit for purpose? Tough one that. If you'd known the man I was referring to, you'd have done anything to see that his chosen career wasn't ruined. As said, lovely bloke, with more than his fare share of problems. Tearing away his life's love of flying on top of other issues would have been profoundly cruel. Tough luck? I don't think so. Just stop selfish, self indulgent people from stuffing totally unneeded junk into their faces, and we're good. As the Americans would say.
I'm just beating the same drum now, but remember, everyone . . . that is every single pilot on Earth, is a potential victim of their immune system. What is not known, is which one, and if and when the first attack will occur.