I have just made my first visit to Israel, and I’m here to report that Israeli women (and the men, come to that) offer the only serious competition to Iceland and Italy in their exceptionally high standard of physical attractiveness. Ireland’s pretty good too; it must be something about countries that begin with an “I”. I’ve never been to Iran, but I imagine that it’s hard to tell.

If anything the Israeli women are even sexier than their Nordic and Latin counterparts, because so many of them are armed and in uniform. And even the ones that aren’t have plenty of attitude. One such gave me a long grilling at the airport over the number of Qatari stamps in my passport. Fair enough. I can see how Qatar, essentially a flat gravel strip floating on oil, might strike the uninitiated as a peculiar tourist destination. But my wife and I happen to have friends there and like to visit.

The security woman accepted this explanation and abruptly turned flirty. (Israelis seem to swing between extremes of brusqueness and friendliness very swiftly.) “I’m sorry this has taken so long,” she said. “Take as long as you want,” I said shamelessly. “Do you want me to leave our stamp out of your passport?” she asked. “No way,” I said, “stick it in there nice and clear, I’ll take the consequences.”

Peace in our times

Before I’d left London my daughter, 10, had said she’d heard Israel might be dangerous and was that true? Goodness me no, I said, very peaceful part of the world, the Middle East, hasn’t been any bother over that way for centuries. The day after getting back from Israel, I went to Sierra Leone. Again, my daughter had picked up a bad vibe from somewhere and asked me the same question. I gave the same reply.

Two days after coming home from Africa, I left for a weekend’s walking with friends in the Isle of Wight. Rachel got upset: in my absence she’d discovered I’d been lying about Israel and Sierra Leone and now assumed this Isle of Wight place must be another grisly war zone, full of yachties chucking petrol bombs and wielding machetes.

Wight knuckle ride

And yet, if I had to say where I felt safest during my itinerant seven days — the eastern Mediterranean, the west of Africa or the South Coast of England — I’d say Tel Aviv. (Jerusalem, however, that’s a different matter.) And after Tel Aviv, some way down the subjective security index, Sierra Leone. And tucked in below that, the Isle of Wight. If that sounds perverse, given male life expectancy in Sierra Leone is a dismal 42, you obviously haven’t caught the bus from Todland to Yarmouth in west Wight recently.

Narrow lanes, tight corners, and at the wheel a man making a late bid for a drive in the Brazilian Grand Prix. The top deck reminded me of being on the Big One at Blackpool Pleasure Beach just as you start the descent. Scariest 15 minutes of the week.

Although the final approach to Freetown in a storm runs it close. Sierra Leoneans are among those nationalities that applaud the pilot when he lands the aircraft. Never an encouraging sign, but justified in this instance.

Class war

I flew first class to Ben Gurion, economy to Freetown international. To bemoan the glaring inequalities of wealth in Africa is a commonplace, yet an aircraft anywhere must count as one of the most polarised environments on, or rather just above, Earth. To the rich or expense-accounted, all is calm and comfort and another glass of champagne at ten in the morning. Farther back all pretence of courtesy has been jettisoned. The steward is rude to passengers, passengers are rude to the steward, civilisation hangs by a thread.

I wish overcrowded, overheated, over-not-nearly- quickly-enough airlines would institute a scheme like Weekend First on the railways (we went Weekend First from Waterloo to Lymington Pier for a mere fiver extra and it was great.) That way, people like me who’ve got a bit of money but not nearly enough to fly anything other than steerage (unless someone else is paying) could have a crack at the luxury up front.

Standing room only

Is it still true, incidentally (presumably it was at least once in human history), that standing shoulder to shoulder the entire population of the planet would fit neatly on the Isle of Wight? This claim has long been the classic response to fears of over-population, and yet to my eye the Isle of Wight seems pretty crowded already, simply with the people who actually live there. I suppose an experiment to prove the hypothesis one way or another would be hard to organise.

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