Diamond TAP

12.58... 12.59... 13.00 - I quickly click on the 'out of office' message and log off - holiday begins.

By 13.27 I am ensconced on the Gatwick Express bound for the airport, book in hand.

It goes against the grain to carry a real life book, when the Kindle is fully loaded and ready for the trip but with less than hundred pages to go of Evie Wyld's debut novel I'm too far in to leave it behind.

At the terminal by 14.00 - plenty of time to check in for my first ever flight with TAP Portugal, to Lisbon. The line is depressingly long, a whole plane's worth of people and just two desks open... I return to my book, if I can just get to end before I reach the front of the queue I can slip it into my case and save carrying it. No such luck, still ten pages to go.

Gatwick security is a breeze - almost fully automated for maximum efficiency - and by 14.30 I am sat airside in Prêt skinny latte in one hand, last few pages of book in the other.

A quick tour of the duty free shops (one Clinique purchase) and a stroll to the gate in plenty of time to board at 15.40 for take off at 16.10. Make that 16.50 after forty minutes of faffing by the baggage handlers.

The flight is uneventful except for the casual attitude taken to the 'fasten seatbelts' instruction by ostensibly middle-class parents with children who frankly you would expect to be more safety aware.

Fully sated by the turkey ham roll and strawberry smoothie in the strawberry shaped bottle, I emerge onto Portuguese soil about an hour later than expected. The girls are arriving on a later flight from Manchester, also TAP, also late. Should I wait in arrivals or brave the slightly convoluted instructions to the apartment?

One slightly confusing phone conversation later (me in English, apartment keeper in Portuguese) with the added complication of a stag party sound track in the background I proffer my phone to the taxi driver to read the email directions to the point of drop off in the Alfama neighbourhood. I am instantly shamed by his impeccable English as he asks if I am here for the Bryan Adams concert?

I am dropped off at the allotted location and my phone rings, it is the apartment keeper's daughter with a slightly better command of English 'did you call this number?' 'oh - you're already there!'. 'I'll be 10 minutes, maybe 15'. 15 minutes later the phone rings again 'maybe another 15 - sorry!'.

Finally after a forty minute wait on a bench with my suitcase trying to look both nonchalant and visible, she arrives. The apartment is literally two minutes walk away. It is charming, once you have climbed the vertiginous stairs (I have been up ladders that were less steep).

The girls arrive about 10pm and after a brief tour and bartering session over the two beds and the sofabed we head out for a late night snack, before hitting the sack at midnight.