I can remember the exact moment the travel bug bit me.

It was the summer of 1993 and it seemed everyone from school was off on a week’s package holiday paid up over the year. But even putting a bit aside each month was too much for my unemployed, single mum, who had enough trouble keeping us housed and fed. We’d never even had an overnight holiday and when we stayed in B&Bs it was because we were homeless and that was where the council had dumped us.

Still, at age 12 the only thing I wanted was to have my own passport, wave from the top of the stairs of a plane, and, most of all, to have been, always said in hushed reverent tones, "abroad". Coming from where I did, I couldn’t imagine it. It seemed like an impossible luxury, to go somewhere just for the pleasure of it, eat as much as you wanted and lie in sunny places, far, far away from my grey Lanarkshire scheme.

One day, in a fit of Pernod-fuelled bonhomie, my errant and alcoholic, but fairly well-off, dad, told me he’d take me to Greece in the holidays. "You choose anywhere and I’ll get us the ticket," he’d cheerfully slurred down the line as I gripped the payphone receiver in elation. God love the kindly, slightly orange, travel agent on Coatbridge High Street who let me take an armful of glossy brochures even though she guessed, as I’m sure you have........

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