BEING punctual and aware of the time has always been a cornerstone of John’s day-to-day routine.

When we first married I had not appreciated how rigidly a 12 o'clock lunchtime was adhered to. None of those "shall we eat later?" or "Nothing is ready yet” excuses would do. His mother had lunch on the table at 12, and I was expected to do the same.

Compromises, of course, had to be made. But only if they did not affect John. If I was away I still had to ensure a progression of meals from the freezer and detailed list of timings for the cooker were in place so that that hallowed lunchtime deadline was always met.

This was necessary of course because for many years our routine had to fit around milking times. It always necessitated an early start, a physical morning and a raging hunger by lunchtime. But with the sale of the herd and most of the sheep, we can get away far more than we ever could before. Almost as much as our prosperous all arable friends. “We wish” they all answer.

So this week we are back in Malta where I spent most of my teenage years and where we return regularly to visit and meet up with friends from that time. As we have packing off to a fairly fine art, I decided we did not need as many clothes, shoes, etc and that we would just take small cases and no hand luggage.

For once I left John in charge of the tickets, as they, and our passports, were all he needed to take. I didn’t even check our take off time. So I sprang out of bed when the alarm, that he had set, rang at just after two, and had an hour to get myself ready to drive to the airport.

Strangely the dogs never made a murmur, so hopefully we didn’t wake our friends who were house and animal sitting for us. After an uneventful drive to the airport, we walked in to check our flights at the arrival desk, to find we were precisely four hours too early as John had read our departure time on the ticket for the day we come back.

I was very good. No reprisals. No snide comments. No.."well I could have had a few more hours sleep”. In fact, John says I have been alarmingly quiet about the whole thing. Till now of course.

The joy of having a regular column is I can share life’s ups and downs with a readership who I can celebrate, commiserate, collaborate and relate to, without having to exchange a spoken word with anyone. Ohh, it is so liberating.