The five scariest words in the English language are, without doubt, ‘Misha's flying the plane now'...

This afternoon I sat in the back of the aeronautical equivalent of a Reliant Robin and was flown from Tel Aviv to Haifa by a twenty-year-old. And Misha. Who has never, ever, flown a plane before.

We clambered in. We took off. I clung on to the seat in front of me. I mumbled. I swore. I giggled. About five rattly, shakey, hyperventilating minutes had gone when the pilot first spoke. It took me thirty seconds or so to realise he had just said, 'you've got control now Misha.' I gripped the back of the seat in front of me even harder. I tried CBT, DBT, EMDR, self-hypnosis, mindfulness and slapping myself in the face. Which was never going to work because I now found I was completely unable to let go of the seat. And I was no longer breathing. My heart was about to explode. I was more frozen-with-fear frightened than I've ever been in my life.

And then God joined me in the back of the plane. I hadn’t spoken to him for many years but I felt he was probably the only person that could help. He didn't, but we did make a couple of deals he might one day hold me to (particularly the one we made when I saw the pilot was - at Misha's instruction - taking a video of her flying. Which meant he wasn't actually concentrating. At all.)

Meanwhile, our call sign, it turned out, was 'Charlie Whisky Hotel.' Misha, as soon as she realised this, said she fancied some whiskey. I said I really fancied a hotel. And some charlie.

Eventually, we landed. I think it may have been Syria. It might have been Lebanon. Either way, we staggered out, wandered across the tarmac, walked through the front door of a little hut, watched the exchange of some small packages between the pilot and a moustachioed security man, showed our passports, and then walked out the back of the little hut to a bit of wasteground our plane had mysteriously - and remarkably quickly - been moved to.

I swore even more on the flight back. Misha was now - distressingly - even more confident, saying things like 'I've got the hang of this' and singing 'Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines'. At one point she used the word 'kamikaze', at another, the term 'loop the loop'. About ten minutes in, with no apparent response from the pilot, she was bouncing up and down dancing, whilst pulling the joystick back - hard.

An eternity later, we were back in Tel Aviv. We paid (oh yes, we had to pay for this trauma), said our goodbyes and got in the car. As Misha drove the rental Kia towards an electric fence and a big red 'Danger! No Entry!' sign, I spotted two peacocks. The sky had turned a strange shade of green. She braked suddenly. She revved and revved again. Then she slammed her foot down on the accelerator and we took off again towards the fence. At that moment, I knew. We weren't back safely: we must have crashed somewhere over Beirut. And the ghost of Crouch End's own Amy Johnson was now driving us towards another oblivion.