My heart is racing, my breath ragged and my stomach threatening to send back the burger I ate for lunch. But as the safety harness I’m wearing is released and I lower my shaking legs to the ground there’s only one question on my mind: when can I experience it again?
My name is Antonia and I am a 44-year-old rollercoaster addict. I am hooked on rides that command queues of over an hour yet are over in seconds; that hurl me upside down, haemorrhage my bank balance and have spurious science-fiction names. In less than two years I have been to England’s twin temples of hair-raising attractions – Alton Towers in Staffordshire and Thorpe Park in Surrey – six times, battering my senses until I drive home in a stunned but satisfied stupor.
In mid-life, this is unusual, as Toby Young pointed out in The Spectator recently, writing that, after a trip to Alton Towers with his 14-year-old son, he realised he no longer enjoyed ‘the floating sensation you get in your stomach when you’re descending a steep incline and your internal organs are suddenly weightless’.
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