Euro tunnel fires, Bio diesel and killer seaweed – why do I always think the worst?

Why is it that I always think the worst? My Boys go with their Dad to visit Granny in Yorkshire and until I know they are there safe I worry. For three hours I worry, I can feel my grief welling up at the thought of losing them all in some freak accident on the A1 involving a high sided Eddie Stobart artic called Dolly Mae or Sally Anne.
I feel the emptiness and I wander their rooms touching their clothes, straightening their beds and putting their toys away.
I can’t settle at all, the TV can’t distract me and I daren’t leave the house in case I get the call from the police or they come round for a visit. I watch the clock incessantly. I have a bath, I read, I restart my elliptical manoeuvres round the house.
I pounce on every telephone call, curt and almost rude with those who ring for a chat too close to the time when I know they should be arriving. Then of course I miss the all important one, I’m outside putting he chickens to bed and it takes me half an hour to check the ansaphone and it’s fine they got there and then, well then I can go to sleep can’t I without a care in the world, until it’s time for them to return.
Now my mind is working overtime about our trip to France. Firstly a kindly dear overhearing me chatting about my trip as I cancel the newspapers in the Village Shop says that wasn’t there a fire in the Channel Tunnel recently and how she couldn’t bear to be trapped underneath all the water. I laugh, albeit a bit nervously, but on the walk back home I start to hyperventilate at the thought of thousands of tons of seawater rushing to swamp me and mine and all the people running screaming along the train but to no avail – strangely the vision looks very similar to that scene in the Dennis Quaid film The Day After Tomorrow when New York gets drowned.
Then my in-laws call to warn me to remember NOT to put bio diesel in my car or was it Gazoil and how will I know which is which? I have visions of my beautiful new car dying and the moment juste on the Autoroute and being flattened by a giant German Juggernaught because of a mistake made by me on the forecourt.
Finally just as I am getting to grips with the inevitability of the vacation, my Mother rings to tell me all about killer seaweed.
Apparently and this is true, tons of sea lettuce is washed up on the shores of the Cotes D’Armor in Brittany and it then rots giving off a bad egg smell. But the killer thing about it is that the sea washes over it leaving the seaweed covered in a layer of sand that then dries forming a crust and it is when the seaweed is rotting and the crust breaks from the pressure of animals and even people walking across it that hydrogen sulphide escapes totally over powering you and making you unconscious and even making you fall in a coma. Obviously the closer to the ground you are the more quickly you will be overcome. Several dogs have died and the Prime Minister of France has even stepped in saying that something must be done.
I can tell you after looking this up on the web, as I did not believe my Mum, my brain has been in overtime. I think I can probably keep my children safe by basically never letting them get more than three feet from me but what of Dear Charlie? The man is on a health kick and insists on going off running. How am I going to be able to protect him – I really, really do not want to be off running with him at 5.30am every other morning and besides who will prevent the children from chocking on their cereal or falling off their bunk beds?