Had you spied a rather smug-looking chap a couple of months ago, strolling around Malaga as if he was everybody every self (as my granddad used to describe the endlessly self-satisfied among us), it was, in all probability, me.
Well in advance, you see, I'd been able to organise my holiday travel arrangements with a military precision of which Alexander The Great would have been justly proud. The coordination of the whole trip was a thing of extraordinary beauty and a source of boundless pride.
And then... Boom! Just like that, the email that nobody who's looking forward to a vacation ever wants, arrived in my inbox informing customers - rather offhandedly in my opinion - that owing to 'commercial reasons' one of my flights was no longer available, leaving me with no option but to change to a 6am departure and, in one fell swoop, leaving my intricate battle plans in shreds. You really do have to take these things on the chin, mind you, because it's what you sign up for when you pay peanuts to swap countries, so no quibbles there. Them's the rules.
The real problem, however, is the age-old sleep dilemma. Should a man who habitually hits the sack at about 4am even bother to try to get some shut-eye at 10pm, or should he just stay up all night and snore his way through the first morning of his hols?
On these occasions there are always those who will offer wholly ludicrous advice like 'You can sleep on the plane' but they, of course, are nothing short of deranged. Anyone who can slumber contentedly in seat 16E at thirty thousand feet on a budget airline is, quite frankly, sinister in character and, quite possibly, a menace to society. Avoid these people at all costs.
No, the only reasonable option is to stay up through the night, avoiding all temptation to fall headlong into the arms of Morpheus the following day before, much later that evening, plunging into bed prostrate and, hopefully, comatose, with the only discernible objective on the table being to awaken some time before August 2026.
This way of doing things does have the disadvantage of turning a man's brain into vanilla blancmange, however, and it's a strong possibility that anyone employing such tactics will find themselves falling into random hedgerows and walking through plate-glass windows and such like during the period in question but, you know, you can't have everything, can you?
Anyway, must dash - it's time for my afternoon nap.
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