Pick three ideal attributes for a taxi driver? Punctual, careful and polite would seem a good starting point. But deaf, near sighted and stupid are probably not the first qualities you’d be stacking your CV with, if you were trying for a job driving the public around.

Clearly the bloke who fetched up at my place fifteen minutes late had somehow slipped through the net. Things didn’t start well when he turned left out of the road and headed for the motoring insanity that is Aylesbury on a wet Saturday morning. After a couple of polite interjections which he pointedly ignored while trying to reprogram the Sat-nav, I was forced to be a little firmer.

I explained that having lived here for 10 years and driven myself to the airport about a hundred times, I may be in a slightly better position to direct him than his sulking electronic mappage. Not only did I back my own route finding ability, a secret agenda was all about survival as his repeated punching of the touch screen diverted his weak eyes from the road.

Having persuaded him to tack in a direction TOWARD the airport, he then further undermined my confidence by asking which terminal we were trying for. I’ve no idea, I’m not good at details but I was able to whip out the communications thingy before being roundly beaten by the Air Canada website which only operates with Internet Exploder version 4 and that pre-assumes the worm hole expansion pack installed.

A more traditional approach of phoning the wife support service quickly put us back on track until he asked right terminal three, that’s Gatwick is it? Unless there has been a rapid building plan around Reigate, I’m pretty sure the UK’s second airport has only two terminals. And I would have though he’d have known that too.

At this point it was obvious that his fascination for the Sat-nav was to compensate for his partial blindness “ looking at the little screen seemed to be his terrifying approach of working out where the next corner would be.

I’m sure many of you “ as I did “ can immediately saw the flaw in this plan. The Sat-nav is blissfully unaware of the metal tonnage in play in front, behind and around us. I closed my eyes and waited for the airport or death by family car sandwich.

I’m sat here waiting to go, cheered by the happy news that the aircraft have been significantly refurbished which is welcome, although this doesn’t extend to crafting on an extra engine under each wing. So while I can have my ego polished in leather seated comfort, my mind will still be screamingly terrified of plunging into the Atlantic.

I hate flying.