Be afraid, be very afraid, said the tagline to — which film? Answer at the foot of the page. Admit it: it's healthy to be scared. Is it spiders or snakes for you? Claustrophobia or clowns?

Watching a BBC4 feature on Nigel Kneale on Sunday, they showed clips from a John Mills version of Quatermass made for ITV in, I think, the late 1970s. I remember being pretty spooked at the time by the hippies chanting as they mindlessly followed the ley lines.

Fear leads to anger.
Anger leads to hate.
Hate leads to suffering.
— Yoda, The Phantom Menace (1999)

Entirely for your pleasure here are some peculiarly personal irrational fears:

• loo door isn't locked:
  multifarious issues bubbling away here, no doubt, inc. insecurity, personal hygiene and deep-seated (ha!) anxiety; see also "run out of Andrex"
• car tyres are way under or over pressure:
  once you get it into your head that you're feeling the speedbumps far more than you should, it's difficult to shake; plus I resent paying 20p to use the air, which limits my choice of garage forecourt to check the pressures once and for all
• missed another company deadline:
  being directory of my own extremely limited company, natch, entails numerous financial responsibilities w.r.t. the Inland Revenue and Her Majesty's (gawd bless 'er) Customs and Excise; they wants their monies and they wants it now!
• PDC:
  you see in the listings that there's a film on late night telly; you've been waiting to see it for yonks; you know it won't come around for ages; should you entrust the correct taping of said film to the whims of PDC? Case study: when I saw that Battle Royale was being shown on C4, I made sure to press the REC button myself.
• employers will catch up with me:
  only a matter of time before I'm found out, whatever it is I have or haven't done; that same awful feeling from juniors whenever the head got up to address the school
• sporadic bacon shortages:
  one day the streaky's there, the next day there's no back, then there's nowt but lardons: I foresee an irrational rash of rasher rations
• cotton wool:
  little fluffy clouds, my bottom: this stuff is fit for Beelzebub only; that texture and the noise made when you squeeze it (urgh!) set my teeth on edge
• mean to the kids:
  I pretend to be mean to them, pretending to drive away and leave them, f'rinstance; they say I'm mean to them, switching off Neighbours and The Fresh Prince; am I pretending or not?
• bike underpass en route to work has a trip-wire:
  there are two sections through Grange Farm where the cycle path dips under the overhead road; hurtling down one side and up the other, you may observe that I keep my head down on the ascent for fear that some darn kids have, for a laugh, set up a washing line at neck height; seen too many bad westerns?

Would be delighted to hear any of your own if you'd care to share. Go on, we won't laugh. Probably.

Be seeing you! Oh, that film was the The (Goldblum) Fly. Swat me!

Ed