Sheer terror

In my (military) life I've been shot at by numerous people. One inconsiderate little sod once lobbed a petrol bomb at me, and there were certain parts of Northern Ireland in the mid seventies where my life would have been over in a second had I been even a little careless.

   I've been in three helicopter crashes and once found myself at five hundred feet with an extremely uncooperative parachute. Scared? Yes.

   But I've now discovered a new type of terror. An interpretation of the word of which I was not previously aware.

   I've just begun giving my daughter driving lessons.
Stop, Stop, Stop STOP!!! You'd have thought the first might have worked, or at least filtered through as forty tons of hurtling death in the form of a MacDonald's truck headed towards us, on the wrong side of the road. Actually he was on the correct side of the road - but we weren't.

   I almost wrenched the handbrake out of the floor twice and I'm convinced that under the passenger doormat there's a deep hole where my feverishly stamping foot tried  unsuccessfully to brake for her as, I'm pretty sure, my heart attempted to claw its way out of my chest before the impact.

   I don't know if I can survive another outing. In fact I'm toying with the idea of fire-bombing the car in the middle of the night and then be really shocked and upset tomorrow as she inspects the charred shell.

   It's six hours later and my heart still hasn't dropped below one hundred and fifty beats per second.