She’s survived a mid-air emergency aboard a 707 jet over Vancouver and surgery to repair her failing heart.
And now the former BA cabin crew member Katherine McIsaac is enjoying every precious moment of life.
Chatting to the vivacious 56-year-old in her home at Powhillimont near Kirkbean, a certain joie de vivre shines through.
And little wonder – that she’s still here at all is down to the skill of pilots, then, 27 years later, to NHS surgeons.
“I’m 53 plus three,” she smiles as we share a cup of tea.
“That’s because I’ve had three birthdays I thought I would never see.”
Katherine tells me she’s of mix of Scottish and English heritage, with a bit of Spanish thrown in.
“My dad Rory Wilson’s parents were both from Dunfermline in Fife, she explains.
“He left school at 16 to join the merchant navy and became a chartered marine engineer,
“When he was down south met and married my mum, Jennifer Calaz.
“Jennifer was from the London area and worked for BOAC – the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
“She was very beautiful and did some promo photos for them.
“Back in those days women had to be unmarried to work for the company and when she and dad got married in 1962 she stopped working for them.
“My mum has a Spanish connection somewhere,” she adds.
“But we don’t know much about it – somewhere in Catalunya but a long way back.
“Her grandad was a man called Mark Sheridan Shaw, a singer, entertainer and comedian who travelled the world doing music hall stuff in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“He was quite famous in his day and the song ‘I do like to be beside the seaside’ was written for him.
“The original recordings of it are of him singing.
“He shot himself in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow in 1918 because he thought his last show was not a success.
“He was only 52 – it was quite sad really.”
A cursory check bears out Katherine’s fragmentary knowledge of her great-grandfather, who was laid to rest in Cathcart Cemetery where his gravestone stands to this day.
Another surprise – it won’t be the last – comes when Katherine tells me she is an identical twin with Liz, who lives in South Africa.
“I was born in my grandmother’s house in Sanderstead in Surrey – and my mum did not know she was having twins,” she laughs.
“We were a month early and the midwife did not realise there was a second baby coming.
“She was so surprised when Liz arrived three minutes after me that she ran into the garden where my dad was waiting.
“‘Mr Wilson,’ she said to him, ‘you are twice blessed!’
Testimonies abound of siblings – genetic carbon copies of each other – having telepathic experiences which cannot be explained by science, and I wonder if the Wilson girls were on the such a wavelength.
“Well, I went to a convent for seven years, which I hated,” Katherine recalls.
“The convent was Catholic and we were not. The nuns were horrible and would hit you.
“The piano teacher would hit you over the knuckles with a ruler if you played the wrong note.
“And the cookery teacher, Sister Helen, if you did something wrong would hit you with a spoon!
“Anyway, one time, when we were 14, it was an English house exam.
“Liz and I were always in separate classes and in separate rooms yet chose the exact same essay title for the exam.
“Not only that, but we wrote the same story – and both our individual teachers marked us 84 per cent, which was a good ‘A’.
“There was a big hoo-ha about it.
“We were accused of cheating but it was a complete coincidence.
“The head teacher ripped up our papers in front of us.
“It was ignorance I suppose but at the time it was horrible.
“We wanted to leave and that gave us a good enough reason.
“That school is closed now.
“When I was 15 I went to Windsor Girls School, which I really enjoyed.
“It was the first year of comprehensive schools in England and you can imagine it was not as strict as the convent!
“And in exams our grades were twice as good.”
Katherine was halfway through her A-level studies, she tells me, when she quit to work with horses – which soon provided another example of the twins’ telepathic connection.
“Liz and I decided to leave school together,” she says.
“Mum and dad were divorcing and it was quite a turbulent time.
“Their decree nisi came through on our 18th birthday!
“Then, when we were 18 I had a bad riding accident.
“When I came off the horse fell on top of me and knocked me unconscious.
“Liz, who was with my mum at he time, immediately knew something had happened to me and suddenly felt really light-headed and panicky.
“She’d said to mum ‘something’s happened to Katherine!’
“Liz said it with such conviction my mum believed her.
“And literally within minutes the hospital phoned to say I had been hurt and was on my way there in the ambulance.
“Liz and I worked it out – the moment she felt strange was about the same time I had the accident.
“I got back of he horse two weeks later with my arm in a sling!
“I don’t know what it’s like not to have a twin and be on that same wavelength.”
The twins, Katherine adds, were both offered jobs at the same riding school and studied for their British Horse Society exams to train riding instructors.
“We worked at Windsor Great Park near Windsor Castle,” she says.
“I was there for two and a half years and would take people out on hacks and teach them how to ride.
“There was the day to day care of the horses, learned carriage driving and rode polo ponies as well!
“I still have three horses – they will always be part of my life.”
Did Katherine ever come across any of the royals while out and about in the saddle, I wonder?
“Well, one time – I would be 18 – I was exercising one of the horses and having a little bit of a gallop,” she chuckles.
“There’s a big statue called the Copper Horse in Windsor Great Park and all of sudden from behind it this corgi dog ran out from the trees.
“I almost ran it over but managed to pull up in time.
“Where I was riding is really close to Royal Lodge, which was the Queen Mother’s home.
“She came through the gate and was just standing there.
“She gave me such a look – a ‘we are not amused’ look.
“I stuttered a bit and said ‘I’m terribly sorry ma’am!’”
After three years at the riding school, Katherine recalls, she decided to spread her wings – in every sense of the word.
And both the Wilson girls went to work for British Airways.
“I joined British Airways when I was 22 and was ground staff initially,” Katherine tells me, recalling one hilarious moment in the departure lounge.
“I worked in check-in and used to do a lot of domestic flights.
“One time I was at the boarding gate and there were a lot of Scottish passengers travelling in kilts going up to Murrayfield.
“It was a very hot day and I announced that the that flight was ready to board but the air conditioning on the plane was not working.
“I meant to advise the passengers to remove any warmer clothing but actually said remove all clothing – and all these men lifted up their kilts and mooned to prove they were real Scotsmen!
“After a couple of years I decided to apply for cabin crew for a bet.
“BA was recruiting internally for cabin crew – this was 1992 – and a few of my colleagues said I should go for it.
“I thought ‘I don’t have the confidence, I don’t think I’ll get it’.
“So I bet my colleagues £5 I wouldn’t. But I got the job – and lost the bet!
Katherine later as cabin crew and Liz as ground staff.
“Sometimes Liz and I would have a bit of fun with he passengers,” she smiles.
“Liz was ground crew and would be boarding the flights when I’d be flying.
“Once Mick Hucknall of Simply Red got on a flight to LA that I was working on.
“He was quite a flirty guy and flirted with all the ground staff – Liz being one of them.
“I was taking boarding passes on the plane and when Mick saw me he a did a double take and said ‘whoa, how did you get here?’
Getting airborne must have been a ticket to see the world, I suggest.
“We would fly to Harare and Lusaka a lot and at Nairobi visited an elephant orphanage and took BA blankets to keep the babies warm,” Liz recounts.
“Their parents had been shot by poachers.
“We went to a children’s orphanage too, in Lusaka, and took in shoes and formula milk for the babies.
“One Christmas all these children were singing Christmas carols for us.
“BA were very supportive of these charities and we were unofficial ambassadors for the airline.
“They were very rewarding trips.”
Other adventures during her career in the air, Katherine says, included horse riding round the pyramids in Egypt and tobogganing down from the Great Wall of China.
Then I and ask if there were any hair-raising moments during Katherine’s 11 years on flights.
“Well, one time we were on a twin-engine 707 taking off from Vancouver,” she says quietly.
“Everything was normal.
“The plane raced down the runway and was lifting off – the point of no return, when the laws of physics state you have to get into the air.
“But just at that moment we flew into a whole flock of Canada geese and hit a minimum of 60 birds.
“That’s how many carcasses they swept off the runway afterwards.
“We had just lifted off the ground and the right hand engine went bang!
“The plane kept climbing but he left hand engine was also damaged.
