I was idly turning the pages of one of those holiday brochures that occasionally drop through the letter box.

Same old stuff. This one was no different.

It was trying it’s best to send us on a cruise.

’Optimist World Wide Cruising’. Book now and enjoy a complimentary upgrade to lifeboat deck.

I think that we’ll give that one a miss.

Have you seen the size of these ships? They’re bigger than a block of Lord Street flats.

The brochure promises that you will have the holiday of a lifetime. I don’t think so.

Do they realise that they’re trying to sell ’the holiday of a lifetime’ to the man who once set out to take his wife to Portugal and ended up in Cyprus?

It’s true! Sit down, pour yourself a cup of tea, and I’ll tell you the story.

It was the year that I retired.

I had been to Birmingham on a one-day business trip and was wandering around the airport shops while I waited for my flight back to the island to be called.

I stopped at a travel agency and, because there were no customers, I thought that I would go in for a chat. I had just had an idea.

’Tell me’, I said. ’Is it true that travel agents always have last-minute holiday bargains?’

’Very much so,’ he replied.

’And is it true that Birmingham Airport flies to destinations all over Europe?’

’Yes,’ he said. ’This is Birmingham International Airport.’

I thanked him and went to board my flight back home to the Isle of Man.

That night, I asked Brown Eyes if she fancied going on holiday.

She asked me what I had in mind. I explained the plan.

Each February, we would go to a trade show in Birmingham for a couple of days.

Then we would stay for an extra few days in somewhere like Oxford or Stratford. But this year, because I was retiring, I thought that we could go a bit further.

So we had a think and decided that it would be nice to go to Portugal.

We bought a couple of guide books, a road map and some local currency (this was before Euros) and two weeks later we were back in Birmingham.

The weather was wicked.

It was snowing, raining and blowing a gale.

We had to buy some cheap waterproofs just to get around Birmingham.

We went to see the travel agent in the airport.

’Good morning’, he said. ’Can I help you?’

’Yes,’ I said. ’I was here a couple of weeks ago and you said that we could go on a last minute holiday from Birmingham airport.’

’That’s right,’ he said. ’I remember you calling in. Where would you like to go?’ Well, we thought that it would nice to go to Portugal, if that was possible.

He tapped his keyboard.

’When was it we wanted to travel?’ he asked with his fingers poised.

’Tomorrow,’ I said.

’Hmm,’ he said. ’Let me see.’ He consulted his screen

The next flight to Portugal from here is on Saturday, he said.

But I could fly from East Midlands to Portugal on Friday.

It was Tuesday. Outside, it was pretending to be the North Pole and we were staying in an airport hotel.

I thought that I would try a different approach.

OK I said, what do you have that leaves Birmingham tomorrow and goes anywhere that has better weather than we have here?

Tap--tap--tap.

’Cyprus,’ he said.

’In that case, I said, we’ll go to Cyprus.’

And that is why, the very next day, we stood on the tarmac of Paphos airport in Cyprus under a bright blue sky and a warm sun.

We were wearing wellies and waterproof coats, and carrying a Portuguese guide book, road map and currency.

Happy days.