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First - Swear! Second - Go fly in a wind tunnel or run a marathon or head for the hills.* Third - Once my head's clear and I've stopped thinking things are all bad, decide what to do next. * And if it's the sort of adversity that makes these things impossible, there's always the option of expressing your views on Facebook in a way that gives friends a laugh as well as getting their sympathy. Anne

There are a lot of people out there who are superbly good at what they do but never hit the headlines. They may only be recognised within their own communities, but they're still doers. There's a legacy of beautifully made historical artifacts whose makers' names never reached the history books. There are people who put huge effort into making things happen, or just doing their own job extremely well. Often their names just don't get a mention. And of course there are people who take part in a whole range of sports even though they don't have the skill levels to reach the Olympics or be sponsored by Red Bull. There are lots of doers out there who don't get recognised. Anne

You might want to consider having a go in a windtunnel to pick up some freefall skills before you jump. 3 in the UK, in order of size: http://www.bodyflight.co.uk/ http://www.airkix.com/our-tunnels/airkix-manchester.aspx http://www.airkix.com/our-tunnels/airkix-milton-keynes.aspx Anne

Done a couple and made some very good friends. Both cruises were based round exploration so everyone started off with common interests. As Wendy says, if there's a shared interest that helps you get to know people. Both ships were small in cruising terms - 50 and 80 passengers. I suspect that a bigger boat might be a lot more impersonal. Anne

Some moves can throw you at the tunnel walls at a speed sufficient to break bones, so the potential for injury is more than bumps and bruises. If you work on learning those moves with a good tunnel instructor, they will know grips and other techniques to reduce the risk of you damaging yourself on the walls - or by inadvertently propelling yourself out the door. As regards bumps and bruises, a lot of freeflyers wear elbow and kneepads under their tunnelsuits. Gloves protect your hands when you start learning head down by balancing on the net. If you compare the tunnel to the freefall part of a jump, you're trading the risk of collision with a soft body for the risk of collision with a hard structure. Better to look at the tunnel as an activity in its own right with its own risks, and find yourself a good coach to mitigate those risks. Good luck. Anne

When I started backflying it took me ages to feel comfortable but I did get there. Being able to sitfly came a lot more quickly but it took a lot of work to get confident about moving around, and I'm still working on being able to hold head down. I know I'm always going to be learning something but that's part of the fun. I watch some brilliant flyers and get very critical of myself for what I can't do. That's when I have to step back and remind myself how much I have learned, and that the people I'm watching are top athletes, which I'm not Re the tiredness, it's like anything else - do enough and you do get tunnel fit. Anne

I think a lot of people appear online these days when they're not looking at FB, because people leave teh PC on, or are logged in on their mobile, so there may be less of an expectation than you think about getting chat responses. This may even be the logic behind FB's decision to merge chat and messages. Anne

+1 for Vertical suits. Mine's custom made and they turned it round pretty quickly once the measurements were sorted out. Anne

Unless they've changed things very recently, there is a privacy setting that allows you to opt out of being associated with random junk ads. Anne

Suggestion - change your mindset from rebellion, reaction and proving a point. Do what you're doing because it's fun and / or interesting. Be with people because you enjoy their company - women are people too, not just targets for romance. Keep in touch with your family because you love them and they love you, not because it's a duty. If your parents give you money when you want to prove you don't depend on them, put the money in an emergency fund and don't touch it unless you have an emergency. There's no shame in accepting help in an emergency, and if you can cope without using the money, you've proved your independence. When you feel stifled it's easy to do things because you want to react. So keep asking yourself 'Am I doing this because I want to or am I doing it to prove a point?' When you can answer that question, and the answer is that you are doing things because you choose to, then you can say you're independent. Anne

I doubt you can tell that from the videos, it's more likely you're projecting your own thoughts. An unsmiling face might as easily be intense concentration as fear. Certainly on AFF I found that I was totally focussed on what I needed to do. A lot of videos find their way on to YouTube because there's something funny or scary in them which will make people react, so you may well be seeing an unrepresentative sample. Try looking at some of the videos posted on the websites of skydiving schools and you'll probably get a very different impression. Anne

Picked up one at Empuriabrava last year. They also did necklaces. Anne

I've never been able to ski more than a green run because of the feeling that I'm about to descend fast from height. I did a power fan jump from 125 feet to prove to myself I wouldn't freak out if I did a tandem - it's the scariest thing I ever did. But I had no height problems on my tandem, or later when I did an AFF course. Looking from that height is a bit like looking at Google Earth. And I'm so focussed on what I'm supposed to be doing that I'm not really thinking about height. Anne

Thoughts from someone who hates sewing! Learn to use the machine well. Learn about measuring and fitting - maybe a tailoring focus would be better than a more general class since fit is more important. If you don't already have views on the subject, learn about the properties of materials, and how that affects the properties of FF suits. Even consider apprenticing yourself to someone who makes suits. If you're naturally good at this sort of thing you might be able to produce something reasonable quite quickly. Personally, I'd be thinking of suit production as a business opportunity before putting in the time and money I'd need to learn to sew well enopugh, but that's me. Good luck with the project!

With a preference for not living in a large city, and most work opportunities being in and around London, 2 hours is a typical commute when everything is working. It can be longer when (frequently) the trains don't work, or when driving to a location on the periphery of London. I don't mind a hotel when I'm really away from home, but in central London either the state of the hotel or the price tends to be prohibitive. It means Monday - Friday without time for anything other than work, and a tendency to sleep deprivation. One day, managers will catch on to the concept that today's technology means there is very little need for people to be physically present in ranked desks in an office, like children in a schoolroom! Anne

May be worth looking up hyperventilation. Some people when over excited tend to take shallow gasping breaths which results in too much carbon dioxide being expelled. This can get you into a breathing cycle that continues to deplete your carbon dioxide. If you think this might be the problem, find a safe situation that causes the problem and try breathing in and out into a paper bag for a couple of minutes (or even cup your hands over your mouth). By rebreathing expelled breath you up the carbon dioxide level. If that improves things then you should be able to solve the problem by improving your breathing pattern BEFORE as well as during the jump. Anne

Don't forget to allow for import taxes Anne

You say there are absolutes, but it is not an absolute that tunnel experience makes someone overconfident. It's also not true that the only non-jumpers with fairly advanced freefall skills and no jumps are either children or tunnel employees. I'm speaking as someone who had spent 4 years tunnel flying for its own sake before jumping, and, of the people I know who are tunnel flyers but not jumpers, several are neither children not tunnel employees. For someone who comes to jumping through tunnel experience, the tunnel is an amazing opportunity to see what good freefall skills look like - and to realize just how far you are from that standard since you can see on debrief what you are really doing. The tunnel is an incredible opportunity to meet people who jump, who are enthusiastic about what they do, who are extremely good jumpers, and who are prepared to share their understanding. My experience was that people were very generous in that respect, whether tunnel instructors or people using the tunnel for training. A long time before I started AFF, it was very clear in my mind that, while I wasn't particularly worried about freefall stabiity, there were big learning areas to do with exit, navigation and canopy handling (sequence, not priority). I also knew that, while I understood how to track, I still had to find out whether I could translate that limited experience into a long straight line track. The tunnel is also an opportunity to fly with other people and if you do that, then you do have to control your fall speed. If there are two (or more) people with different fall speeds in the tunnel, the driver can't magic up a speed that suits both, it's down to the people in the tunnel to sort that out. There may well be people who are unjustifiably arrogant about their skills but I would question whether the tunnel can be blamed for that - I suspect the same people would be over estimate their skills after they were lucky enough to land safely, and it doesn't matter whether they are working on bellyflying or have used the tunnel to learn freefly skills. The tunnel is a tool, and it's useful for one of several of the skills needed for jumping. It doesn't take huge intellectual capacity to work that out and realize that there are things you can't do in the tunnel. People do some amazing stuff in the tunnel, making use of the walls. Nothing wrong with that, tunnel flying is a sport n its own right as well as a way of honing jumping skills. The tunnel's a tube with air being sucked through it, that's all. It's down to the person how they choose to use it, and how they choose to use their brain to assess their ability level. Anne

While I agree that (in any sport) there are people who assume expertise in one area makes them expert in all areas, there's another way of looking at tunnel experience. When someone has never jumped, the fact of going to the tunnel puts them in contact with people who have jumped, and that gives them an opportunity to find out about everything else that's involved in jumping. In othere words it's an opportunity to find out what they don't know. Anyone with half a brain spending time at the tunnel is going to get curious about what else is involved in jumping. Anne

Do your homework, find out who'll be interviewing you, and do a bit of research on them, then decide whether to mention skydiving. There are quite a few 50+ year olds out there who are into adrenaline sports. Researching the company leadership will give you an idea whether the culture is likely to be in favour of people who do adrenaline activities. Anne

Got 2 boogieman suits and one Vertical. Been using the Vertical for the last few months and just reverted to the Boogieman suits, because the Vertical is so fitted that I can't fight my way out of it because of a recent shoulder injury. Like both makes. Boogieman has more style and is more robust for tunnel use - both my suits are polycotton with cordura knees and backside. The more cordura you have, the sweatier the suit. At this time of year Boogieman may have a longer lead time for delivery. Anne

1) What type of skydiving do you mostly do? Tunnel freefly 2) What brand is your current suit and are you happy with it? Boogieman and Vertical. Yes and Yes 3) How do you think jumpsuits could be improved. The only way to improve is to start with a custom made suit and fly with it for a while then decide what changes you personally want for the type of flying you do. 4) What is required of your jumpsuit in terms of comfort, functionality and aesthetics? All of these. 5) For the female skydiver, how important is it for you to have clothing designed specifically for women? Custom made tends to allow for this, using slightly differrent sets of measurements for men and for women. Generally, women have shorter bodies in relation to leg length than men (and not just skydivers ) Anne

If coaching someone is new to the tunnel, first thing is to work out what wind speed is comfortable for them, not to default to your speed. If you are taking on a coaching role you need to focus on the student first. Tunnel where I train we have a hand signal to request a lower wind speed. I usually fly on a relatively low windspeed, and coaches a fair bit heavier than me can adapt to fly with me, especially when a higher speed would make it difficult for me to learn something. Have you tested your own ability to fly on lower speeds? Anne

I've got a pretty small head and use a Factory Diver small size. They also do a VS size. It's not a kids helmet but the sizing might work. Anne

Never intended to till I found myself surrounded by people who seemed to regard it as natural. Then it gradually crept up on me. Anne