Minnie’s Musings

Geddit?! Pun on Wuthering Heights ??!! Never mind.

Isn’t it odd how things change during the course of your life. As a child I was notorious for bouts of crippling vertigo and once got stuck up a castle in France because the steps from the battlements only had a single railing. My mum had to come back up and get me.

I am not a big fan of heights still. Best Beloved and His Nibs are both mountain goats and spent several years scampering across the crumbling cliffs of South Wales leaving me clinging to the grass, petrified to move while His Nibs shrieked “Come ON!” and tried to propel me forward if I was in his way.

Places I have got stuck include a mountain pass in the Pyrenees where I stopped the car and jumped out because the sheer drop on the side of the road was freaking me out and a rock face in Turkey where the instructor had to walk me down by vertically straddling my body and moving my hands and feet with his until we reached the bottom.

I also cannot watch my children go anywhere near the edge when there is a steep drop on the other side. Or watch any child hang over railings, particularly near running water. I remember being hung over the railings of a ferry when I was very small and being absolutely petrified. I think my dad thought my squealing was excitement.

I have always thought my sisters did not share my fear. But this summer has revealed that one cannot cope with the escalators in the big Oxford Street John Lewis which open up to a huge sky light and shake quite a bit as they go up and up towards the roof. And the other doesn’t like wobbly wooden bridges across muddy tracks and rock strewn paths. I am with them both on these as I don’t like the ground wobbling beneath my feet however far below, but it is quite nice not to be the only one who requires rescuing by one’s mother.