The Wine Widow on chaos ahead of a holiday.

I am anxious about the sweet peas (about to hit full throttle) and Zam is anxious about the vines (heatwave followed by rain = potential trouble) but we are committed to a holiday in Spain. The day before we go I wake up deaf in one ear. This is not unusual. I ring the ear clinic who tell me the audiologist is also going on holiday tomorrow and there are no appointments. A text pings in from our daughter: Can you talk? As she has just arrived in Greece this cannot be good news. In fact I know, as soon as I read it, that she has lost her passport.

The passport has indeed disappeared somewhere between the airport and the B&B.

The clinic call to say they’ve had a cancellation. Anna rings to say a taxi driver found her passport and Alf eventually secures a third choice bed.

I abandon my online search for an alternative ear clinic and enter “emergency travel documents” but the main focus of the day remains trying to book our son’s university accommodation for which he has a timed slot and not a minute before - we tried. (Whenever I recount this to anyone they say “like buying tickets for Glastonbury” to which I nod although in truth I’ve no idea.)

At the appointed hour the accommodation website crashes. I yell. Alf tells me to calm down. The clinic call to say they’ve had a cancellation. Anna rings to say a taxi driver found her passport and Alf eventually secures a third choice bed. It’s nearly lunchtime. Trouble, everyone knows, comes (and in this case goes) in threes.

The next day I sit next to a very nice woman on the flight to Seville who tells me she broke her jaw when she fell off her daughters bunk bed where she was trying to kill a daddy long legs on the ceiling. The jaw went undiagnosed until she insisted that she could hear her teeth rattling every time she spoke and she then underwent various procedures including pins and pin removals which have left one side of her face paralysed “And it’s been peeled back twice” she explained. I stare. “I’m a keen runner” she went on “but I broke a shoulder when I tripped. Then I broke the other one when I slipped in the rain.” I do not say that this confirms my deep distrust of running. “And while being introduced to a new member of our running club as Most Accident Prone Member I fell over and broke my foot.”

My own jaw is now pretty much on the floor. Not least because that puts paid to the three rule. “Jesus,” I say, “and you’re on my flight.”