AS DANGEROUS jobs go, climbing into a flood relief tunnel wasn't A-league. But when I stood at the top and looked down I was - as the other members of the party will vouch - very close to abandoning it.

Thankfully, I wasn't alone in my anxiety, and another person too teetered nervously on the brink. "I was glad that you spoke up, because I wasn't very keen but I didn't like to say," she told me afterwards.

Anyway, we both met the challenge, which, once on the ladder, wasn't as bad as it appeared.

I kicked myself for being such a wimp - and not for the first time. I remember years ago being sent to Blackpool to meet with the team of decorators that had the unenviable task of painting the famous tower gold to mark its centenary. There was a makeshift platform at the top and, on spotting it, my legs turned to jelly and I retreated in terror, all the way down to the safety of the lounge bar on the first floor.

I hate being a chicken. Listening to news items about those astronauts who have blasted into space makes me feel like a total wet. Not only are they brave enough to go up there, but they actually leave the spacecraft to carry out repairs. There's me fraught with worry about slipping a few feet into a culvert when people are doing DIY in outer space. One wrong move and they could end up drifting into black holes filled with gruesome, multi-toothed things that even Sigourney Weaver would not know how to fend off.

In the danger stakes, there's no comparison. Let's face it, there are plenty of jobs here on earth that are heaps more dangerous than my own. Soldiers, police officers, pilots, even telephone engineers who have to climb up poles - and look at window cleaners, hanging in those little cradles on the sides of high rise buildings.

Then there are those REALLY dangerous lines of work, where people go undercover, as reflected in the TV dramas Spooks and Murphy's Law. I couldn't do that, despite the experience gained trying to infiltrate the PTA at my daughters' primary school (harder than any drugs ring, I can tell you).

So on reflection, my foray into the drain was no big deal. When I mentioned it to my sister she laughed. The exact opposite to me, she is never happier than when she's clinging to the edge of a gorge or bungee jumping into a ravine. We once went on holiday to Italy together and there were many occasions when I waited on terra firma while she scampered up lofty monuments and ruins.

Having recovered from the drain experience, I was back at my desk when my boss plonked a piece of paper in front of me. I caught the words 'east coast' 'power boat' and, I think, something about record-breaking. "No, I can't," I whimpered. "I was joking," said my boss. "I thought of you because you are the most unlikely person to want to do it."

I know things are made funnier coming from someone with an aversion to a task, but this time I couldn't see me making it beyond the car park (I certainly didn't want to be filing copy from beyond the grave, and as I barely survived a comparatively feeble speedboat trip in Scarborough several years ago, I couldn't see me getting out alive).

So now I'm seen as yellow-bellied, a scaredy cat, and I'm going to have to make a huge gesture to prove otherwise.

If, over the next few weeks, you spot a red-haired person abseiling clumsily down the front of York Minster it might be me. But then again, it probably won't.

Updated: 09:33 Tuesday, August 09, 2005