Active imagination

“I have always been claustrophobic,” confesses a Craigie regular.

“Even on National Service in the 1950s, our platoon officer had almost to whip me into the tiny tunnel we squaddies had to crawl through on the assault course. I had been hanging back hoping to have a tunnel empty in front and behind. As it was, I was terrified crawling along underground with a fellow squaddie urging me on from behind and another’s boots right in my face, plus the officer jumping up and down on the roof. ‘What if the lad in front got stuck?’ I thought.

“In recent years, my fear of confined spaces has worsened. I avoid lifts, if possible, in case they break down, and I have several times refused MRI scans because I am afraid of the tunnel.

“Now I even have problems with films about people being trapped in underground caves or being forced into coffin-like boxes underground with no light and only a small aperture for air.

“I began watching a film about some poor soul in such a predicament with only a cigarette lighter or matches for light. I gave up. I deleted it altogether when my wife told me the man died, still entombed.

“It really is getting bad now, as I started watching a documentary about the history of Sicily, but abandoned it when the narrator lowered himself down a manhole in Palermo into an underground water supply system installed by the Moslem conquerors centuries ago.

“I console myself with the words of the German Second Wolrd War tank expert, General Guderian. Asked if he had ever been afraid, he replied: ‘Of course! Those who say they are never afraid are either liars or mad.’

“I guess I have too active an imagination! I always ask myself: ‘What if?’”