The thing I hate most about air travel. Other than the “fear of death” thing, obviously.

See these? These are my Tweezerman Point Tweezers. (Well, I mean clearly they’re not MY Tweezerman Point Tweezers, because this is just a generic picture of a set of said tweezers. But you know what I mean.) Pretty lethal looking, aren’t they? I mean, I can totally see why they wouldn’t allow those bad boys into the cabin of an aircraft. Totally.

Here’s the thing though: my eyebrows? They meet in the middle. Oh yes they do. Now, not a lot of people know that < /Michael Caine > (Or actually, wait: they kinda do now, don’t they?) because I have been tweezing my brows religiously since I was a teenager. Before that, I used to beg my parents to do it for me. They were all, "What do you want for Christmas, Amber?" and I’d be like, "For my eyebrows not to meet above my nose any more, thanks Santa!"

This eyebrow tweezing is a routine that I have to go through every day in life. I tweeze my eyebrows last thing at night, and if I ever missed a night, by the time I woke up next morning I’d be looking like the missing link. I’m not even joking here. Tweezing is a bit of a drag, but it’s one of those chores that I just can’t afford to skip – and to illustrate how very serious I am about this, I have made my mother promise that if I’m ever hit by a bus or something and end up in a coma/incapacitated in some other way, that she will visit me in hospital every day and TWEEZE MY DAMN EYEBROWS ALREADY.

The tweezers are one of the items I’d take with me to a desert island, and like I said, I never miss a day – other than when I travel long haul. Because long haul flights tend to involve getting up very early and not getting to where you’re going until very late. And tweezers are no longer allowed to accompany you into the cabin. Not even if you beg and grovel and promise not to use them to wrest the controls of the aircraft from its unwitting pilot.

Now, I understand why this is, and let me just say, I totally support the "No Tweezers in the Cabin" thing. I, after all, am the world’s most nervous flyer, and Terry still has the bruises on his hands from our trip to the Canaries last April to prove it. So I’d much rather be red hairy than dead, one of the victims of a terrifying mid-air scenario involving a crazed lunatic and a pair of pink tweezers. (Because yes, mine are pink. Obviously.)

But it still sucks, and I’ll tell you for why: because about halfway across the Atlantic next Monday, I will suddenly become aware of a nasty, prickly feeling around the general area of my eyebrows. This sensation is entirely imaginary. It’s my brains way of saying, "HELLOOO! HANDS! Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Hands! Forget something, ya think? Like, maybe something involving making The Face look human again? Better take care of that, or I will continue to make the eyebrows feel odd, and a little bit prickly: almost as if you can feel the fresh hairs starting to poke their way through the skin. I will do this until you’re almost ready to rip them out yourselves, Hands, without even needing to resort to the tweezers. Just letting you know. OK, bye, gotta go freak Her out by suggesting that the noise she just heard from the engines may mean that we’re about to fall from the sky in a fiery ball. Laters, Hands!"

This is why being without my tweezers is the second third worst thing about flying for me. (No 2 is that kid that’s always in the seat behind me, kicking like Jackie Chan.) And why my tweezers would be one of the things I’d take with me to that desert island – assuming that they let them on the plane, of course.

So, tell me, what would you take? What’s your desert island item?