We're all going on a summer holiday

Well, husband and I are.

We're not very good at holidays. Organising them that is. So a couple of weeks ago husband sat himself down with a large cup of coffee and began to search. His requirements were simple: somewhere warm and sunny, flying from Cardiff, in the morning.

Zakynthos came up.

'That'll do,' we said. (After husband had checked it out very carefully on every True Review he could find and we'd dithered a suitable length of time - long enough for husband's first choice hotel to be fully booked.

So we're off there tomorrow morning for a week.

I don't usually look forward to holidays as I'm not keen on flying, don't like too much heat and I'm a bit of a home bird, but I am really looking forward to this one. I think we both need a good rest. I have done the important packing - half the suitcase is full of books - and the rest is ready to go in. More or less. I am remarkably well-organised, which makes me think I have forgotten something vital.

But on holidays husband is in charge of all the critical things, like tickets, passports and money. I am like the Queen and I just call him when I need him to pay for something. I like that arrangement.

Until 2000 I hadn't flown for about 25 years. It was one of those things: the longer I put it off, the less I wanted to do it. But then I needed to go to New York to talk some more to the ex-NYPD cop whose autobiography I was ghost-writing, so it had to be done.

We flew out in July, the day after Concorde crashed.

Sitting in the airport terminal (name chosen specially with nervous flyers in mind?) waiting to get on the plane, there was nowhere we could look without seeing a newspaper with the aeroplane and its trailing flames blazoned across it.

The previous day, the day of the crash, daughter had phoned me. 'You um heard the news today?' she said casually.
'Oh, yes,' I sighed.
'Well, you mustn't worry. Look at it this way: if it's happened today, it's not going to happen again tomorrow, is it?'
'What's not going to happen?'
'There's not likely to be another plane on its way to New York crashing.'
'A plane crashing!' I squeaked. 'What are you talking about?'
'Concorde crashing.'
'Concorde crashing?!'
'Yes, I thought you said you'd heard the news?'
'I thought you were talking about the outbreak of deadly mosquitoes in Central Park.'

In case there's any confusion we weren't travelling on Concorde but Air India, whose in-flight curries come highly recommended. And our plane didn't crash and we weren't bitten by deadly mosquitoes.

Probably the worst bit of the trip was queuing in Times Square for cheap theatre tickets. We had Mikey with us and he 'entertained' us with an oratory about how the kingdom of God is approaching and the true meaning of the Book of Daniel. I suspect he entertained a lot of people in the queue.