In that period of mounting dread, there were polite phone calls between heads of state and orderly airport closings.
There was dread, there was foreboding, there were metal detectors but there was also the whiff of excitement people get when they're about to escape from their everyday lives.
To add to my dread, there was the humiliating tradition of young women tying knots in blades of grass, a gesture of making a wish for a husband.
Yes, I have to say with dread, there are - for instance, the 20th Century American poet WD Snodgrass.
Among the many oblique fears that float in and out of daily consciousness – of crowds, phone calls and, in my case, vague elevator-dread – there is one, perhaps, that unites us: the fear of public nakedness.
Years later, a friend from those carefree, careless abseiling days retreated to the depths of the forest to end his life, throwing into sharp relief what I had perhaps always dreaded; there is sadness as well as solace among the old growth.
If you ever want to lose your dreads there is an alternative to chopping off all of your hair.
When I log into Tinder up here, I frequently only get one or two profiles to check out that match my criteria (ie, appropriate age range, not a dude, into women) before I run out of choices and get the dreaded There's No One Around You screen (thanks Tinder, that's kind of the point).
