The Other Half sends a fraught email from his Florida business trip. It is 93 degrees - too hot to stay on the beach, poor love.

Still, I suppose you should allow someone a day to get over his jet lag and the horror that is Gatwick Airport.

But then comes the news that chills my marrow like a blast of U.S. air conditioning. He's been there precisely a day and he has already managed to block the sink.

Thankfully, Stateside notions of service are everything they are supposed to be, and the offending item is swiftly repaired.

But the OH's tale of woe is just the latest in a list of mishaps that leaves me wondering if we two are really safe to be let out of the house, let alone the country.

There was the awkward holiday in the Canary Islands last year when OH decided to try out the washing machine at our villa, even though we had enough clothes to last us until the next Ice Age.

He couldn't be certain, but he thought he had 'done something' to the handle, because it wouldn't close easily.

The machine was full of clothes belonging to the unsuspecting villa owner, but we didn't know where she lived, and we weren't sure our Spanish would stretch to 'we are not sure if the catch is the same as it was before we started/it was an accident/the cheque is in the post'.

We spent the remaining five days of our break terrified of returning one night to find a shotgun-toting matron furious that her white goods had been ruined, and we made frequent, furtive trips to the washhouse to see if the clothes had been removed.

Finally, the day before we left, we returned to find the clothes flying from the line and the washer door closed, apparently without effort. Clearly, there was a knack to it.

There have been other happy holiday incidents, usually involving hire cars which develop sinister knocking noises.

These sounds can transform the most carefree sightseeing jaunt into a white-knuckle ride.

At such times, we barely exchange a word.

He is wondering why the hell we haven't got a mobile phone with us; I am counting dead cars in the gorge, far, far below.

In fairness, things don't only go wrong for the OH. There was the memorable occasion when we did manage a carefree drive along the coast before deciding to lunch in a fetching Corsican port.

We were just sipping our coffee when he said: 'Come on then, your turn to pay.' I reached for my purse, then tried the other pocket, and said: 'Sorry. Left my cash back at the ranch.'

Oh dear. So had he. It's amazing how long I can make a coffee last when waiters are hovering round my table - and it's amazing how fast a man can drive a dodgy hire car when he needs to fetch the readies.

Best of all, there was the time I lost the flight tickets on the way to the airport.

We went back, searched the house, couldn't find them until, in desperation, I checked the outside bins, having remembered that I had tidied up just before we left in our usual mad rush.

The tickets were on top of the rubbish, and the bin wagon was at the top of the street. We just about made the flight.

We're going to Spain next month. What could possibly go wrong?

Updated: 11:29 Wednesday, June 02, 2004