So tomorrow I have to go to Spain to meet a client. It’s lucky that I love flying, the hubbub of airports, the very ritual of it all. I love flying so much, that even at the moment when the plane accelerates down the runway, I have been know to pop on ‘The Ace of Spades’ by Motorhead just to give it that little bit of a frisson.

But I digress. The only thing that puts a teeny weeny bit of a dampener on things in between is that ‘orrible little yellow and blue airline called Ryanair.

What amazes me is how one airline has managed to wring the very last ounce of romance from air travel. So much so that I think Michael O’Leary himself must be pathologically against it. Richard Branson has managed to cut costs yet inject some romance back in (I knew a couple of Jazz musicians who used to serenade passengers on Atlantic flights, classy) but Branson’s mum was a glamorous hostess who passed on some spirit to the man himself. O’Leary must have lived under a flight path, made airline food from the age of seven under duress or had been nibbled by a Piper Cherokee until he cried.

The antidote to this is to bring your own romance with you. Chit chat with the pretty hostess as she wrestles with that bursting overhead locker, sip a miniature brandy whilst reading an Eric Newby and ask your neighbour politely about the weather in Nice even if you’re landing at Manchester airport.

Make an effort. I will.